
Class 
Book 



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Kti<J "by r. HTEiiip"hrey"i 



K D C IHl T E ^ 



.^V3>.j?- 


P K S E WRITERS 


GKRIANY. 


Br 

FREDERIC H. HEDGE. 

i 

i 


ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS. 


Die deutsche Nation ist nicht die ausfjebildetste, nicht die reichste an Geistes- 
und Kunstprodukten, aber sie ist die aufgeklaerteste, well sie die gruendlichste ist, 
sie ist eine philosophische Nation. — Fr. H. Jacobi. 


NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENIARGED. 


PHILADELp'n'Tii, : 

POETEE & COATES. 

822 CHESTNUT STREET. 



^■^ 



\ 



30 






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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by 

CAEEY AND HART, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 

Ee-Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 
PORTER & COATES, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



/2-3y/y^ 




CAXION PEESS OP 
3HEEMAN h CO., PHILADELPHIA. 



PKEF A CE 



The volume of translations which is now offered to the Public, 
though bearing the title, " Prose Writers of Germany," in conformity 
with the series of publications to which it belongs, is far from pre- 
tending to be a complete exhibition of the prose literature of that 
nation. 

The impossibility of representing in adequate specimens, the vast 
body of writers who might claim to be represented under this title, 
too-ether with the unsatisfactoriness of brief extracts, has induced the 
editor to adopt a different course, — to give few writers and large 
samples, and instead of a " collection," as Mr. Longfellow has cha- 
racterized his "Poets and Poetry of Europe," to make a selection. 

Every selection is liable to the charge of partiality ; and those who 
are much conversant with German literature will doubtless miss some 
favorites who shall seem to them entitled to a place in these pages. 
It is believed however that the Classics, in the stricter sense, (writers 
of the first class) are mostly here. With regard to the rest, access or 
want of access to their writings has had some share, as well as per- 
sonal preference, in determining the admissions and the omissions. 

Some difficulty has been found in reconciling a just apportionment 
of space in our pages to different writers with the prescribed limits 
of the work. The difficulty, the editor is aware, has not been entirely 
overcome. While want of room has compelled him to omit altogether 
some writers whom he would gladly have introduced into the present 

(iii) 



PREFACE. 



selection, he regrets that the same necessity has required him in 
several instances to limit his extracts. 

The editor avails himself of this opportunity to thank those who 
have assisted him in the work of translation. Besides his indebted- 
ness to existing publications, especially to Carlyle's German Romance, 
he has to acknowledge the contributions of J. Elliot Cabot, Esq.,* 
Rev. J. Weiss,t Rev. C. T. Brooks, J Mr. Geo. Bradford, § and Mr. 
Geo. Ripley. II The extracts from Moser, with the exception of the 
first, and that from Hamann, are by the same, anonymous, contribu- 
tor. Likewise the translations from Hegel are by an anonymous 
friend possessing peculiar qualifications for that difficult task. Above 
all, his thanks are due to the Rev. Mr. Furness of Philadelphia, who 
has kindly taken upon himself the general superintendence of the 
work while passing through the press. 



Bangor, May, 1847, 



* In the translations from Kant with the exception of the last, and in the translation 
from Schellino^. 



t In the translation from Schiller. 

f In the extracts from the Titan of Jean Paul. 

§ In the translation from Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften. 

II In the translation from Schleiermacher. 



CONTENTS. 



yvwwwww 



MARTIN LUTHER Page 9 

On Education 11 

Concerning God the Father 15 

Concerning Angels 16 

Simple Method how to Pray 18 

Prayer at the Diet of Worms 20 

Selections from Letters — Letter to the Elector Frederic 20 

To the Elector John 23 

To Caspar Guttel 23 

To his Wife 25 

To his Wife 25 

To his Wife 26 

JACOB BOEHME 35 

To the Reader 37 

Of God and the Divine Nature 37 

Of God's First Manifestation of Himself in the Trinity 38 

Of Eternal Nature after the fall of Lucifer, &c 38 

Of the Creation of Angels, &c 41 

Describing what Lucifer was, &c 41 

Of the Third Principle, or Creation of the Natural World 42 

Of Paradise 42 

Concerning the Supersensual Life 43 

Concerning the Blessing of God in the Goods of this World 44 

On True Resignation 45 

ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA 46 

On Envy 46 

JUSTUS MOSER 50 

Letter from an Old Married Woman, &c 52 

How to Attain to an Adequate Expression of Our Ideas 54 

Moral Advantages of Public Calamities 55 

IMMANUEL KANT 57 

From the Critique of the Judgment 63 

1* (V) 



CONTENTS, 



The Notion of Adaptation in Nature 65 

V Judgment by Means of Taste, Aesthetic 66 

The Pleasure that Determines the Aesthetic Judgment 67 

The Pleasure Derived from the Agreeable 67 

The Pleasingness of Good, Connected with Interest 67 

Comparisons of the Three Kinds of Pleasure 68 

The Beautiful What 68 

Comparison of the Beautiful with the Agreeable : 68 

An Aesthetic Judgment, when not pure 69 

Of the Ideal of Beauty 70 

Plan of an Everlasting Peace 71 

Of the Guaranty of an Everlasting Peace 73 

Supposed Beginning of the History of Man 74 

Remark 77 

Conclusion of the History 78 

Concluding Remark 79 

JOHANN GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING 81 

From Laocoon 85 

From the Educator of the Human Race 91 

Fables 95 

Extract 98 

MOSES MENDELSSOHN 99 

Letter to J. C. Lavater • 102 

Supplementary Remarks 106 

On the Sublime and the Naive 107 

JOHANN GEORG HAMANN 119 

The Merchant 121 

CHRISTOPH MARTIN WIELAND 128 

Philosophy Considered as the Art of Life 130 

Letter to a Young Poet 132 

On the Relation of the Agreeable and the Useful 1 38 

From the Dialogues of the Gods 141 

JOHANN AUGUST MUSAUS 154 

Dumb Love 158 

MATTHIAS CLAUDIUS 1 82 

Dedication to Friend Hans 182 

Advertisement to Subscribers 182 

Speculations on New Years' Day 183 

■- The Sorrows of Young Werther 183 

On Prayer 183 

A Correspondence 184 

On Klopstock's Odes 185 



CONTENTS. vli 



JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER 187 

On the Nature of Man 191 

Of the Truth of Physiognomy 193 

Of the Universality of Physiognomical Sensations 195 

On Freedom and Necessity 196 

Of the Excellence of the Form of Man 197 

Of the Congeniality of the Human Form 198 

Resemblance between Parents and Children 200 

Observations on the Dying and the Dead 202 

Of the Influence of Countenance on Countenance 202 

Of the Influence of the Imagination 203 

V Male and Female 204 

FRIEDRICH HEINRICH JACOBI 206 

From the Flying Leaves 209 

Learned Societies 220 

JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER 231 

Love and Self 236 

Tithon and Aurora 242 

Metempsychoris 248 

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GCETHE. , 263 

The Vicar of Wakefield 270 

From the Elective Affinities 278 

Confessions of a Fair Saint 282 

Indenture , . , 304 

The Exequies of Mighon 305 

Extracts 30G 

Novelle 345 

The Ta-le 353 

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER 365 

Upon Naive and Sentimental Poetry 372 

JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 383 

The Destination of Man 384 

JOHANN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER 405 

Rome 407 

Leibgeber to Siebenkas 411 

Second Extract from " Flower, Fruit and Thorn pieces" 413 

Dream 415 

Letter to my Friends 417 

The Marriage 418 

Thoughts 420 

AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL 423 

Lectures on Dramatic Literature 424 



vjij CONTENTS. 

FRIEDRICH DANIEL ERNST SCHLEIERMACHER 441 

Discourse IV. Church and Priesthood 441 

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL 446 

V Introduction to the Philosophy of History 447 

Who thinks abstractly ? 456 

JOHANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE 459 

The Poor Vicar 459 

FRIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL 472 

Lectures on the Philosophy of History 473 

NOVALIS (FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG) 489 

From Heinrich von Oefterdinger 491 

From the Fragments 496 

LUDWIG TIECK 498 

The Elves 501 

FREDERIC WILLIAM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING 509 

On the Relation of the Plastic Arts of Nature 510 

ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN 521 

The Golden Pot 522 

ADALBERT VON CHAMISSO 544 

The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemilil 547 

HEINEICH HEIITE 568 

Essay on Heine, by Matthew Arnold 568 

Great Men 575 

Napoleon 573 

The Three Elvers 579 




L QJ T &^ E ^ 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



Born 14S3. Died 1546. 



" Japed dt stirpe satum Doctore Luthero 
Majorem nobis nulla propago dabit." 



To Martin Lother belongs, with strict 
propriety, the foremost place in this collec- 
tion intended to represent the German mind. 
Luther is regarded by his countrymen as the 
original of that mind, — the prototype of all that 
is most distinctive in German modes of thought 
and speech. Other writers of German had 
attained to eminence before him. Tauler, in 
particular, the celebrated mystic of Strasburg, 
is still an honored name. Nevertheless, the 
national-intellectual life of Germany dates from 
Luther as its parent source, and is emphati- 
cally referred to him by a grateful posterity. 
There is scarcely another instance in history, 
in which an individual, without secular autho- 
rity or military achievement, has so stamped 
himself upon a people and made himself, to so 
great an extent, the leader, the representative, 
the voice of the nation. He has been to Ger- 
many, in this respect, what Homer was to 
Greece. 

While devoting himself to the regeneration 
of the national religion, he unconsciously con- 
ferred upon the national literature a service as 
signal in its kind, as any which the church de- 
rived from his labors. He first gave to that 
literature an adequate organ. He created the 
language* which is now written and spoken 
by educated Germans. For though a constant 
approximation to the modern High German is 
undoubtedly visible in the writings of his im- 
mediate predecessors, — as e. g. in Albrecht 
Diirer, the painter, and the translator of the 
Gesta Romanorum, — there is still a great 
stride between tlieir language and the Lu- 
theran, in point of movement and well-defined 
inflection. On the whole, the modern High 
German must be considered as having first at- 

* " Er schiif die Deutsche Sprache." Heine. This may 
seem too strongly put, when we consider the necessary 
laws of languafre. The Lutheran was not a creation out 
of nothing, certainly; but it was the evolution of a per- 
fect and harmonious form out of a rude and undigested 
mass. 



tained its full development and perfect finish 
in Luther's version of the Bible. By means 
of that book, it obtained a currency which no- 
thing else could have given it. It became 
fixed. It became universal. It became the 
organ of a literature which, more than any 
other since the Greek, has been a literature 
of ideas. It became the vehicle of modern 
philosophy, — the cradle of those thoughts which, 
at this moment, act most intensely on the hu- 
man mind. 

Martin Luther was born at Eisleben, in Sax- 
ony, during a visit of his parents to that city, 
November 10, 1483. His father, Hans Luther, 
a poor miner, who had previously resided in 
the village of Mohra, removed to Mansfeld the 
following year; and here it was that Martin 
received the first rudiments of education. At 
the age of twenty, he obtained the degree of 
Master at the University of Erfurth. His father 
had destined him to the study of the Law, but 
Theology drew him with irresistible attraction. 
He became a monk of the Augustine order, at 
Erfurth, and, in process of time. Doctor of Di- 
vinity, at Wittenberg. 

He began his labors, as a reformer, in the 
year 1517, with an attack on the sale of Indul- 
gences, in ninety-five propositions, which he 
sent forth into the world, as it were a cartel 
aimed at Tetzel and Rome. Three years later 
we find him at the Diet of Worms, defending 
himself and his doctrine before the emperor 
Charles V. and the German princes. That 
was the most remarkable assembly ever con- 
vened on earth, — an empire against a man ! 
Lucas Granach's picture represents Luther as 
he stood there, so lone and strong, with his 
great fire-heart, — a new Prometheus, confront- 
ing the Jove of the sixteenth century and the 
German Olympus. "Here I stand, I cannot 
otherwise. God help me! Amen." Imme- 
diately upon this followed his translation of 
the Bible, which was his best defence; and 

13) 



10 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



from this time, until his death, which occurred 
on the 18th February, 1546, such a succession 
of labors in behalf of tiie Reformed religion, as 
to justify the epitaph, 

" Pestis eram vivens, moriens, tua mors ero Papa r 

Luther is represented as a man of low sta- 
ture* but handsome person, with a " clear brave 
countenance," lively complexion, and falcon 
eyes. Antonio Varillasf says; "Nature gave 
him an Italian head upon a German body ; such 
was his vivacity and diligence, his cheerfulness 
and health." His voice was clear and pene- 
trating, his eloquence overpowering. Me- 
lanchthon,on beholding his picture, exclaimed, 
" Fulmina erant singula verba tua." Another 
contemporary said of him, that he was a man 
"to stop the wrath of God." Another calls 
him the third Elias. He was a husband and a 
father, fond of society, of a free and jovial na- 
ture, much given to music, himself a composer 
and an able performer on the flute. A man 
of singular temperance and great industry. 
He throve best on hard work and spare diet. 
An easy life made him sick. As to his cha- 
racter, a man without guile, open, sincere, 
generous, obliging, patient, brave, devout. " He 
was not only the greatest," says Henry Heine,! 
" but the most German man of our history. In 
his character all the faults and all the virtues 
of the Germans are combined on the largest 
scale. Then he had qualities which are very 
seldom found united, which we are accustomed 
to regard as irreconcileable antagonisms. He 
was, at the same time, a dreamy mystic and 
a practical man of action. His thoughts had 
not only wings but hands. He spoke and he 
?cted. He was not only the tongue but the 
;;v'ord of his time. Moreover, he was, at the 
•same time, a scholastic word-thresher and an 
inspired, God-intoxicated prophet. When he 
had plagued himself all day long with his dog- 
matic distinctions, in the evening he took his 

• " Untergesetzter Statur." See Des seligen Zeugen 
Gotfes. D. Martin Luther's Lcbens umstiinde in 4. Th, 
von Fricdrich Siegmund Kcil. Leipzig. 17G4. 

1f Liber hist, de hacres, quoted by Keil. 

I Zur Gescliichte der Religion und Philosophie in 
Oculscliland. Salon, vol. 2d. Hamburg. 1835. 



flute and gazed at the stars, dissolved in me- 
lody and devotion. He could scold like a fish- 
wife, and he could be soft, too, as a tender 
maiden. Sometimes he was wild as the storm 
that uproots the oak, and then again, he was 
gentle as the zephyr that dallies with the vio- 
let. He was full of the most awful reverence 
and of self-sacrifice in honor of the Holy Spirit. 
He could merge himself entirely in pure spi- 
rituality. And yet he was well acquainted 
with the glories of this world, and knew how 
to prize them; and out of his mouth blossomed 
the famous saying, 

" Wer nichi liebt JVein, JVeiber und Oesang, 
Der bleibt tin JVarr sein Lebenlang." 

He was a complete man, I would say, an ab- 
solute man, one in whom matter and spirit 
were not divided. To call him a spiritualist, 
therefore, would be as great an error as to call 
him a sensualist. How shall I express it"! 
He had something original, incomprehensible, 
miraculous, such as we find in all providential 
men, — something awfully naive, blunderingly 
wise, sublimely narrow; — something invinci- 
ble, demoniacal." 

The position which Luther holds in the es- 
timation of his countrymen, as father of the 
German language and literature, together with 
the intrinsic worth of his writings, has seemed 
to me to justify more copious extracts, than one 
who knows him only as the great Reformer 
or the dogmatic theologian, might expect to 
find in a work like this. I have endeavored 
to preserve in the translation the slight taste 
of antiquity which marks the writer of the 
sixteenth century ; although the language of 
Luther is less antiquated than that of contem- 
porary English writers. In fact the antiquity 
resides in the thought rather than the idiom. 
The idiom is substantially that of the present 
day. 

The following specimens, with the excep- 
tion of the letters, are taken from the edition 
of Luther's works by Walch, in twenty-four 
vols. 4to. The letters are from the complete 
collection published by Martin Leberecht de 
Wette, in five vols. 8vo. Berlin. 1826. 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



11 



ON EDUCATION. 

FROM A-DISCODRSE ON THE SPIRITUAL ADVANTAGES ARISING FROM 
THE FURTHERANCE OF SCHOOLS, AND THE INJURY CONSEdUENT 
ON THE NEGLECT OF THEM. 

Now if thou hast a child that is fit to receive 
instruction, and art able to hold him to it and 
dost not, but goest thy way and carest not what 
shall become of the secular government, its 
laws, its peace, &c., thou warrest against the 
secular government, as much as in thee lies, 
like the Turk, yea, like the Devil himself. For 
thou withholdest from the kingdom, principal- 
ity, country, city, a redeemer, comfort, corner- 
stone, helper and saviour. And on thy account 
the emperor loses both sword and crown ; the 
country loses safe-guard and freedom, and thou 
art the man through whose fault (as much as 
in thee lies) no man shall hold his body, wife, 
child, house, home and goods in safety. Rather 
thou sacrificest all these without ruth in the 
shambles, and givest cause that men shall be- 
come mere beasts, and at last devour one an- 
other. This all thou wilt assuredly do, if thou 
withdraw thy child from so wholesome a con- 
dition, for the belly's sake. Now art thou not 
a pretty man and a useful in the world? who 
makest daily use of tlie kingdom and its peace, 
and by way of thanks, in return, robbest the 
same of thy son, and deliverest him up to ava- 
rice, and labourest with all diligence to this 
end, that there may be no man who shall help 
maintain the kingdom, law and peace ; but that 
all may go to wreck, notwidistanding thou thy- 
self possessest and boldest body and life, goods 
and honour by means of said kingdom. 

I will say nothing here of how fine a plea- 
sure it is for a man to be learned, albeit he 
have never an office ; so that he can read all 
manner of things by himself at home, talk and 
converse with learned people, travel and act in 
foreign lands. For peradventure there be few 
who will be moved by such delights. But see- 
ing thou art so bent upon mammon and victual, 
look here and see how many and how great 
goods God has founded upon schools and scho- 
lars, so that thou shalt no more despise learning 
and art by reason of poverty. Behold ! empe- 
rors and kings must have chancellors and 
scribes, counsellors, jurists and scholars. There 
is no prince but he must have chancellors, ju- 
rists, counsellors, scholars and scribes: so like- 
wise, all counts, lords, cities, castles must have 
syndics, city clerks, and other learned men; 
nay, there is not a nobleman but must have a 
scribe. Reckon up, now, how many kings, 
princes, counts, lords, cities and towns, &c. 
Where will they find learned men three years 
hence'! seeing that here and there already a 
want is felt. Truly I think kitigs will have to 
become jurists and princes chancellors, counts 
and lorils will have to become scribes, and 
burgomasters sacristans. 

Therefore I hold that never was there a bet- 



ter time to study than now ; not only for the 
reason that the art is now so abundant and so 
cheap, but also because great wealth and honour 
must needs ensue, and they that study now will 
be men of price ; insomuch that two princes 
and three cities shall tear one another for a 
single scholar. For look above or around thee 
and thou wilt find that innumerable offices wait 
for learned men, before ten years shall have 
sped; and that few are being educated for the 
same. 

Besides honest gain, they have, also, honour. 
For chancellors, city clerks, jurists, and people 
in office, must sit with those who are placed on 
high, and help counsel and govern. And they, 
in fact, are the lords of this world, although 
they are not so in respect of person, birth and 
rank. 

Solomon himself mentions that a poor man 
once saved a city, by his wisdom, against a 
mighty king. Not that 1 would have, herewith, 
warriors, troopers, and what belongs to strife 
done away, or despised and rejected. They 
also, where they are obedient, help to preserve 
peace and all things with their fist. Each has 
his honour before God as well as his place and 
work. 

On the other hand, there are found certain 
scratchers* who conceit that the title of writer 
is scarce worthy to be named or heard. Well 
then, regard not that, but think on this wise : 
these good people must have their amusement 
and their jest. Leave them their jest, but re- 
main thou, nevertheless, a writer before God 
and the world. If they scratch long, thou shalt 
see that they honour, notwithstanding, the pen 
above all things; that they place if|' upon hat 
and helmet, as if they would confess, by their 
action, that the pen is the top of the world, 
without which they can neither be equipped 
for battle nor go about in peace ; much less 
.scratch so securely. For they also have need 
of the peace which the emperors, preachers and 
teachers (the lawyers) teach and maintain. 
Wherefore thou seest that they place our imple- 
ment, the dear pen, uppermost. And with 
reason, since they gird their own implement, 
the sword, about the thighs ; there it hangs fitly 
and well for their work; but it would not be- 
seem the head; there must hover the plume. 
If, then, they have sinned against thee, they 
herewith expiate the offence, and thou must 
forgive them. 

There be some that deem the office of a 
writer to be an easy and trivial office ; but to 
ride in armour, to endure heat, cold, dust, thirst 
and other inconvenience, they think to be la- 
borious. Yea ! that is the old, vulgar, daily 
tune ; that no one sees where the shoe pinches 
another. Every one feels only his own troubles, 



* Scharrhansen, men who scratch for money, and think 
of nothing else. Tr. 

fThe word Feder, feather, is used indifferently in Ger- 
man to denote pen or plume. Tr. 



12 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



and stares at the ease of others. True it is, it 
would be difficult for me to vide in armour ; but 
then, on the other hand, I would like to see the 
rider wlio should sit me still the whole day- 
long and look into a book, though he were not 
compelled to care for aught, to invent or think 
or read. Ask a chancery-clerk, a preacher or 
an orator, what kind of work writing and ha- 
ranguing isl Ask a schoolmaster what kind 
of work is teaching and bringing up of boys? 
The pen is light, it is true, and among all trades 
no tool so easily furnished as that of the writing- 
trade, for it needeth only a goose's wing, of 
which one shall everywhere find a sufficiency, 
gratis. Nevertheless, in this employment, the 
Ijest piece in the human body, (as the head) 
and the noblest member, (as the tongue) and 
the highest work (as speech) must take part 
and labour most; while, in others, either the 
fist or the feet or the back, or members of that 
class alone work ; and they that pursue them 
may sing merrily the while, and jest freely, 
which a writer cannot do. Three fingers do 
the work (so they say of writers), but the whole 
body and soul must cooperate. 

I have heard of the worthy and beloved em- 
peror Maximilian, how, when the great boobies 
complained that he employed so many writers 
for missions and other purposes, he is reported 
to have said; "what shall I do? They will 
not suifer themselves to be used in this way, 
therefore I must employ writers." And fur- 
ther : " Knights I can create, but doctors I can- 
not create.'' So have I likewise heard of a fine 
nobleman, that he said, " I will let my son 
study. It is no great art to hang two legs over 
a steed and be a rider ; he shall soon learn me 
that; and he shall be fine and well-spoken." 

They say, and it is true, the pope was once 
a pupil too. Therefore despise me not the fel- 
lows who say '■^paneni propter Deuni" before the 
doors and sing the bread-song.* Thou hearest, 
as this psalm says, great princes and lords sing. 
I too have been one of these fellows, and have 
received bread at the houses, especially at 
Eisenach, my native city. Although, afterward, 
my dear father maintained me, with all love 
and faith, in the high school at Erfurt, and, by 
his sore sweat and labour, has helped me to 
what I have become, — still I have been a beg- 
gar at the doors of the rich, and, according to 
this psalm, have attained so far by means of 
the pen, that, now, I would not compound with 
the Turkish emperor, to have his wealth and 
forego my art. Yea I would not take for it the 
wealth of the world many times multiplied; 
and yet, without doubt, I had never attained to 
it, had I not chanced upon a school and the 
writers' trade. 

Therefore let thy son study, nothing doubting, 
and though he should beg his bread the while, 

* A song or psalm which the poor students of Luther's 
time sang, when they went about imploring charity at 
the doors of the rich. 



yet shall thou give to our Lord God a fine piece 
of wood out of which he can whittle thee a lord. 
And be not disturbed that vulgar niggards con- 
temn the art so disdainfully, and say: Aha! if 
my son can write German and read and cipher, 
he knows enough ; I will have him a merchant. 
They shall soon become so tame that they will 
be fain to dig with their fingers, ten yards deep 
in the earth, for a scholar. For my merchant 
will not be a merchant long, when law and 
preaching fail. That know I for certain ; we 
theologians and lawyers must rerTrain, or all 
must go down with us together. It cannot be 
otherwise. When theologians go, then goes the 
word of God, and remains nothing but the hea- 
then, yea! mere devils. When jurists go, then 
goes justice together with peace, and remains 
only murder, robbery, outrage, force, yea ! mere 
wild beasts. But what the merchant shall earn 
and win, when peace is gone, I will leave it to 
his books to inform him. And how much profit 
all his wealth shall be to him when preaching 
fails, his conscience, I trow, shall declare to 
him. 

Ivnll say briefly of a diligent pious school-teacher 
or magister, or of whomsoever it is, that faithfully 
brings up boys and instructs them, that such an 
one can never be sufficiently recompensed or paid 
with money ; as also the heathen Aristotle says. 
Yet is this calling so shamefully despised among 
us, as though it were altogether nought. And 
we call ourselves Christians! 

And if I must or could relinquish the office 
of preacher and other matters, there is no office 
I would more willingly have than that of school- 
master or teacher of boys. For I know that 
this work, next to the office of preacher, is the 
most profitable, the greatest and the best. Be- 
sides, I know not even, which is the best of the 
two. For it is hard to make old dogs tame and 
old rogues upright; at which task, nevertheless, 
the preacher's office labours, and ofterr labours 
in vain. But young trees be more easily bent 
and trained, howbeit some should break in the 
effort. Beloved ! count it one of the highest virtues 
upon earth, to educate faithfully the children of 
others, which so few, and scarcely any, do by their 
own. 



ON THE SAME SUBJECT. 

FROM AN EXHORTATION OF M. LUTHER TO THE COUNCILMEN OF 
ALL THE CITIES OF GERMANY TO ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN 
CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS. 

Let us consider our former misery and the 
darkness wherein we have been. I deem that 
Germany has never before heard so much of 
God's word as now. One finds no trace of it 
in history. If, then, we let it pass thus, without 
thanks or honour, it is to be feared we shall 
sutfer yet more horrible darkness and plagues. 
Dear Germans! buy while the market is at the 
door. Gather while the sun shines and the 
weather is good. Use God's grace and word 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



13 



while it is there. For you shall know that 
God's grace and word is a travelling shower 
which does not appear again where it has once 
been. It dwelled once with the Jews, but gone 
is gone ; — now they have nothing. Paul brought 
it into Greece, but gone is gone; — now they 
have got the Turk. Rome and Italy have had 
it once ; gone is gone; — now they have got the 
Pope. And ye Germans must not think that 
you will have it forever ; for ingratitude and 
neglect will not suffer it to remain. Therefore 
seize and hold fast whoever can. Idle hands 
have slender years. 

Yea ! sayest thou, though it be fitting and 
necessary to have schools, of what use is it to 
teach the Latin, Greek and Hebrew tongues, 
and other fine arts? Could we not teach, in 
German, the Bible and God"s word, which are 
sufficient for salvation ? Answer: Yes, I know 
alas! too well, that we Germans must always 
be and continue beasts and wild animals. So 
the surrounding nations call us, and we deserve 
it well. But I wonder we never say : of what 
use are silks, wine, spices and outlandish wares 
of foreign nations 1 seeing we have wine, corn, 
wool, flax, wood and stones in German lands — 
not only a sufficiency for support, but also a 
choice and selection for honour and adornment? 
We are willing to contemn the arts and lan- 
guages which, without any injury, are a great 
ornament, use, honour and advantage, both for 
the understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, and 
for the conduct of worldly government ; and are 
not willing to dispense with outlandish wares 
which are neither necessary nor useful, and 
moreover distress and ruin us. Have we not 
good reason to be called German fools and 
beasts ? 

Indeed, if there were no other use to be de- 
rived from the languages, it ought to rejoice and 
animate us that we have so noble and fine a 
gift of God; wherewith he has visited and fa- 
voured us Germans above all other lands. It 
doth not appear that the Devil would suffer 
these same languages to come forward by means 
of the High-schools and Cloisters ; on the con- 
trary they have always raved most vehemently 
and still rave against them. For the Devil 
smelled the roast,* that if the languages revived, 
his kingdom would get a hole which he could 
not easily stop up again.-j- Now, since he hath 
not been able to prevent their revival, he thinks 

• " To smell the roast" is a proverbial expression with 
the Germans, ptjuivalerit to our " smell the rat," i.e. to 
suspect mischief. Tr. 

t The stiiily of the Greek and the Hebrew is said to 
have been discouraged by the clergy prior to the Refor- 
mation, in order to prevent a nearer acquaintance with 
the Scriptures. "They have discovered," says a monk 
of that period, *'a new language which they call the 
Greek ; beware of it, for it is the mother of all heresies. 
I see in the hands of some a book written in that lan- 
guage, called the New Testament. It is a book full of 
thorns and poison. And as to Hebrew, my beloved bre- 
thren, you niay be sure that whoever meddles with that 
Will immediately become a Jew." Tr. 



still to keep them so poorly, tliat they shall de- 
cline and fall away again of themselves. It is 
no welcome guest that hath come into his house 
with them ; therefore he means to entertain him 
in such a way that he sliall not long remain. 
There be few of us that perceive this wicked 
trick of the Devil, my dear masters! Therefore, 
beloved Germans ! let us here open our eyes, 
thank God for the noble treasure and take fast 
hold of it, that it may not again be wrested from 
us, and the Devil wreak his spite. For we 
cannot deny this, that howbeit the gospel caine 
and comes daily through the Holy Spirit alone, 
yet it came through the instrumentality of the 
languages, and, by means of them, has ad- 
vanced, and by means of them must be pre- 
served. For straightway, when God was minded 
to let his gospel go forth into all the world 
through the apostles, he gave tongues for that 
end. And he had before diffused the Latin and 
Greek tongues so widely in all lands, by means 
of the Roman Government, to the end that his 
gospel might bring forth fruit speedily far and 
near. Thus also hath he done now. No one 
knew why God caused the languages to revive, 
until now, when it is evident that it was done 
for the gospel's sake, the which he was minded 
afterward to reveal, and thereby to discover and 
destroy the kingdom of Antichrist. For this 
cause also he gave Greece to the Turks, that the 
Greeks who were driven out and scattered 
abroad might carry forth the Greek tongue and 
become an introduction to the study of other 
languages also. 

And let us understand this, that we shall not 
be able to preserve the gospel without the lan- 
guages. The languages are the sheath in which 
this sword of the Spirit is hid. They are the 
casket in which this jewel is borne. They are 
the vessel in which this drink is contained. 
They are the cupboard in which this food is 
laid. And, as the evaiigile itself showeth, they 
are the baskets which hold tliese loaves and fishes 
and fragments. Yea ! if we should so err as to 
let the languages go, (which God forbid!) we 
shall not only lose the gospel, but it shall come 
to pass, at length, that we shall not know to 
Speak or write, neither Latin nor German aright. 
Of this let the miserable and dreadful example 
of the High-schools and Convents be a proof 
and a warning; where they have not only lost 
all knowledge of the gospel, but have so cor- 
rupted the Latin and the German language that 
the wretched people have beome mere beasts, 
cannot write or speak correctly, either Latin or 
German, and have also well nigh lost their 
natural reason. 

Yea! sayest thou, many of the Fathers have 
attained to blessedness, and have also taught, 
without languages. That is true. But to what 
dost thou impute it, that they have so often 
failed in the Scriptures'? How often does St. 
Augustin fail in the psalms, and in other ex- 
positions? So also Hilary, yea all who have 
taken upon themselves to expound Scripturi* 
2 



14 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



without the languages. Was not St. Jerome 
compelled to translate the Psalter anew from 
the Hebrew, because, when men argued with 
the Jews out of our Psalter, they mocked and 
said it was not so written in the Hebrew, as 
our people quoted if? 

Thence comes it that since the time of the 
apostles the Scripture has remained so obscure 
and that no certain and permanent exposition 
of it hath been written. For even the holy 
Fathers (as I have said) have often failed, and 
because they were ignorant of the languages, 
they are seldom agreed, but one goes this way, 
another that. St. Bernard was a man of a large 
spirit, insomuch that I might almost place him 
above all other teachers who have become cele- 
brated, both ancient and modern. But see, how 
he so often sports with the Scriptures, (howbeit 
spiritually] and quotes them aside of their true 
meaning! For this cause the sophists have said 
that the Scriptures were dark, and have thought 
that in its own nature the word of God was so 
obscure and spoke so strangely. But they see 
not that the whole difficulty lies in the lan- 
guages. Nothing more simple than tlie word 
of God has ever been spoken ; so we under- 
stood the tongues. A Turk must needs speak 
obscurely to me — because I know not his lan- 
guage — whom, nevertheless, a Turkish child of 
seven years can well understand. 

Neither let us be deceived for that some boast 
themselves of the Spirit and think meanly of the 
Scripture. Some also like the Brethren, the 
Waldenses, deem the languages not to be useful. 
But, dear friend, Spirit here, Spirit there, — I have 
also been in the Spirit and have also seen Spi- 
rits, (if ever it be lawful to boast of one's own 
fiesh) perhaps more than these same people 
shall see in a year, howsoever they boast them- 
selves. Also, my spirit has proved itself some- 
what, while theirs is quite silent in a corner 
and does little else than protrude its praise. I 
might have led a pious life and have preached 
well enough in quiet. But the Pope and the 
Sophists and the whole Government of Anti- 
christ I should have been forced to leave as 
they are. The Devil cares not for my spirit so 
much as for my language, and my pen in the 
Scriptures. For my spirit takes nothing from 
him save myself alone. But tlie holy Scriptures 
and the languages make the world too narrow 
for him and injure him in his kingdom. So then, 
I cannot praise the Brethren, the Waldenses, in 
that they despise the tongues. For though they 
should teach aright, they nmst often fail of the 
right text, and remain unarmed and unfurnished 
to battle for the faith against error. 

Now, although, as I have said before, there 
were no soul and no need of schools and lan- 

uuages for God's sake and the Scriptures, yet 

were this alone a sufficient reason for establish- 
ing everywhere the very best schools both for 
boys and girlt^, — that the world has need of 
skilful men and women in order to maintain 
outwardly its secular condition. The men 



should be fit to govern Land and People; the 
women should be well able to guide and pre- 
serve fiouse, children and servants. Now must 
such men be made out of boys and such women 
must be made out of little girls. Therefore it 
is important to train and educate little boys and 
girls aright for such work. I have said above 
that the common man does nothing toward this 
end, neither can lie, neither will he, neither 
knows he. Princes and lords ought to do it, but 
they are occupied with sleigh-riding, with drink- 
ing and with mummery; they are laden with 
grave and important affairs of the kitchen, the 
cellar and the chamber. And though some 
would do it willingly, the others must needs 
scare them with the fear of being called fools 
or heretics. Therefore, my beloved Council-men, 
it remains in your hands alone. You have 
space and vocation for it more than princes and 
lord s. 

Thou sayest let each one teach and train his 
own. Answer: Yes! we know very well what 
kind of teaching and training that is. Even 
when it is carried farthest and succeeds well, 
it amounts to nothing more than a little disci- 
pline of forced and decent manners. For the 
rest, they are mere blocks of wood, and know 
nothing either of this or of that, and can neither 
counsel nor help. But if they were taught and 
trained in schools or elsewhere, where there 
are learned and able masters and mistresses, 
who teach languages and other arts and histo- 
ries, they would hear the history and the say- 
ings of all the world ; — how it fell out with this 
or that city or kingdom or prince, man or woman ; 
and they would be able, in a short time, to bring 
before them, as it 'were in a mirror, the being, 
life, counsels and designs, the successes and 
failures of the whole world, from the beginning; 
whence they might learn to order their thoughts 
and adjust themselves to the course of the world, 
in the fear of God. And they should be made 
witty and wise by these histories, knowing what 
to seek and what to avoid in this outward life; 
and should be able moreover to advise and 
govern others. But the education which is given 
at home, without such schools, attempts to make 
us wise by our own experience. Ere that comes 
to pass we shall be dead a hundred times over, 
and shall have acted inconsiderately all our life 
long. For experience requires much time. 

How much time and trouble are bestowed in 
teacliing children to play at cards, to sing and 
to dance. Why will we not spend as much 
time in teaching them to read and other accom- 
plishments, while they are young and have lei- 
sure and capacity and disposition for them ? I 
speak for myself: if I had children and were 
able, they should not only hear me languages 
and histories, but they should also sing and learn 
music and the whole of the mathematics. For 
what is all this but mere child's play, in which 
the Greeks aforetime instructed their children, 
and by means of which they afterward became 
wonderfully skilful people and capable of many 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



15 



Vbings ? Yea ! what grief it is to me now, that 
i did not read more poets and histories, and 
that no one instructed me in tliese matters. 
Instead thereof, I have been made to read the 
Devil's filth, philosophers and schoolmen, with 
great cost and labour and injury, so that I have 
enough to do to get rid of it all. 

Tliou sayest, who can give up his children 
and train them all, for squires? They must at- 
tend to the work at home. Answer : My opi- 
nion is not that we should establish such schools 
as there have been heretofore, where a youth 
would pore for twenty or thirty years over Do- 
natus and Alexander and learn nothing after 
all. We have a different world now, and things 
are otherwise managed. My counsel is that 
the boys should be suffered to go to school an 
hour or two each day and none the less work 
at home the rest of the time, — learn a handy- 
craft and do whatever is wanted of them. Let 
both go together, seeing they are young and can 
wait. Besides, do they not spend ordinarily 
tenfold as much time at marbles and ball and 
in running and wrestling? 

So likewise a girl may find time enough to 
go to school an hour a day, and still wait upon 
her work at home. They sleep away and dance 
away and play away more time than that. 
The only difficulty is this, that there is no hearty 
desire to train the young and to help and in- 
struct the v-forld with fine people. The Devil 
loves, rather, coarse blocks and good-for-nothing 
people, that man may not fare too well upon 
the earth. 

Therefore, dear masters, take to heart the 
work which God so imperatively demands of 
you, to which your office binds you, which is so 
necessary to the young, and which neither the 
world nor the Spirit can do without. Alas! we 
have long enough been rotting and corrupting 
in darkness. All too long have we been " Ger- 
man beasts." Let us, for once, make use of our 
reason, that God may mark our gratitude for his 
gifts, and that other lands may take note that 
we too are men, and such as can either learn 
something useful of them or teach them some- 
thing; — so that by us also the world may be 
made better. I have done my part. It was 
my desire to counsel and help the German land. 
And albeit some may contemn me in this thing 
and give to the winds my faithful advice and 
pretend to better knowledge, I must even en- 
dure it. I well know that others might have 
done better ; but seeing they are silent, I have 
done as well as I could. It is better to speak 
right forth, however unskilfully, than always to 
be silent on this head. And I am in hope that 
God will arouse some among you, to tlie end 
that my true coimsel may not wholly fall in the 
dust, and that you will consider not him that 
speaketh but ponder the thing itself and let it 
go forward. ••»«.* 

Herev/itli I commend you to the grace of God. 
May he soften and kindle your hearts so that 
they sha.l earnestly take the part of these poor, 



suffering, forsaken youth, and, by Divine aid, 
counsel and help them to a happy and Chris- 
tian government of the German land, in body 
and soul, with all fulness and redundancy, to 
the praise and honour of God the Father, through 
Jesus Christ our Saviour ! Amen. 
Given at Wittenberg, Anno, 1524. 



CONCERNING GOD THE FATHER. 

FKOM AN EXPOSITION OF THE CHBISTIAH CREED, DELIVERED AT 
SMALCALD IN THE YEAR 1537. 

Aht. I. " I believe in God the Father, the Al- 
mighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.'' 

Here, it is first of all held up to us, that we 
know and learn whence we are derived, what 
we are and where we belong. All wise men 
have ever been concerned to know whence the 
world and ourselves have proceeded, but have 
not been able to discover. They have supposed 
that man is born by chance, without a master 
by whom his birth is ordained and brought to 
pass, and that he lives and dies by chance, like 
other beasts. Some have advanced farther and 
have pondered this subject until they were 
forced to conclude that the world and man must 
have proceeded from an eternal God, because 
they are such mighty and glorious creations. 
Nevertheless, they have not been able to attain 
to any true knowledge thereof But we know 
it well, howbeit not of and from ourselves but 
from the word of God which is here brought 
before us, in the creed. Therefore wouldst thou 
know whence thou and I and all men are de- 
rived, listen and I will tell thee. It is God the 
Father, the almighty creator of heaven and 
earth, an only God, who has created and pre- 
serves all things. Now thou knowest it. It is 
indeed a simple doctrine to look at, and a plain 
sermon. And yet no man, be he as wise as he 
could be, was able to find it, save he who came 
down from heaven and revealed the same to us. 

The wise man, Aristotle, concludes that the 
world existed from eternity. To that one must 
say, that he knew nothing at all of this art. But 
when it is said that heaven and earth are a 
creation or work made by him who is called 
an only God and made out of nothing; that is an 
art above all arts. And thus it is with me and 
thee and the world. Sixty years ago I was 
nothing as yet. And so, innumerable children 
will be born after us who as yet are nothing. 
So the world six thousand years ago was nothing, 
and, in time, will be nothing again. And so, 
all was brought out of nothing into being, and 
shall be brought out of being into nothing again, 
until all is created anew, more glorious and fair. 
This, I say, we know, and the Holy Scripture 
teacheth it us, and little children have it pre- 
sented to them thus, in the words of the creed 
— "I believe in God the Father, &c.'' 

Therefore, learn first of all, from this, whence 
thou comest; namely from him who is called 



]6 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



Creator of heaven and. earth. That may be 
counted a great and sublime honour, which I 
ought reasonably to accept with great joy, that 
I am called and am a creature and work of the 
only and most high God. The world seelceth 
after honour with money, force and the like. 
But it hath not the piety rightly to consider and 
reflect upon this honour, concerning which we 
pray, through the mouth of young children, here 
in the creed, that God is our master, who has 
given us body and soul, and preserves them still 
from day to day. If we rightly believed this, and 
deemed it true, there would spring from it great 
praise and boasting ; for that I can say, the 
Master who has created the sun, he has also 
created me. As now the sun boasts its beauty 
and its glory, so will I boast and say: I am the 
work and creature of my God. 

With this honour should every man be satis- 
fied, and say with joy, I believe in God, Ci-eator 
of heaven and earth, who has hung his name 
about my neck, that I should be his creature, 
and that he should be called my God and Maker. 
It is a children's sermon and a common saying, 
nevertheless, one sees well who they be that 
understand it. We deem it no particular honour 
that we are God's creatures, but that any one 
should be a prince or great lord, we open eyes 
and mouth. Yet are these but human creatures, 
as Peter calls them, and an afterwork. For, if 
God did not come first with his creature, and 
make a man, there could be no prince. Yet do 
all men clamour about such an one, as if it were 
some great and precious thing, whereas it is 
much greater and more glorious to be a creature 
of God. Therefore should servants and maid- 
servants and all men accept this high honour, 
and say, I am a man. That is a higher title 
than to be a prince. Not God, but men make 
the prince, but God alone can make me a man. 

It is said of the Jews, that they have a prayer 
wherein they praise God for three things. First, 
that they are created men and not irrational 
animals. Secondly, that they are created male 
and not female. Thirdly, that they are created 
Jews and not heathen. But that is praising God 
as fools are wont, by flouting and vilifying other 
creatures of God, at the same time. So doth 
not the Psalmist praise him. He includes all 
that God has made, and says. Praise the Lord 
on the earth! ye whales and all the deeps! &c. 

Furthermore, this article teacheth us not only 
who hatli created us and whence we are, but 
also where we belong. This is shown us by 
tlie word Father. He is at the same time Father 
and Almighty Creator. Tlie beasts cannot call 
him Father, but we are to call him thus and to 
be called his children. With this word he 
showeth what destination he hath appointed us, 
having first taught us whence we are and what 
praise and honour have been bestowed upon us. 
What is the end and purpose of the whole? 
This, — that ye shall be children and that I will 
be your Father. That I have not only created 
vou and will preserve you here, but that I will 



have you to children, and suffer you to be my 
heirs, who shall not be thrust out of the house 
like other creatures, oxen, cows, sheep, &c., that 
either perish all, or else are eaten, but, besides 
that ye are my creatures, ye shall also be for- 
evermore my children and live alway. 

Thus do we pray and confess, when we say 
in the creed, I believe in God the Father, that, 
in like manner as he is Father and liveth for- 
ever, we also, as his children, shall live forever 
and shall not perish. Therefore are we by so 
much a higher and fairer creation than other 
creatures, that we are not only creatures of God 
and his work, but are destined also to live for- 
ever with our Father. 

This is an article with which we should day 
by day converse, that, the longer we taste 
thereof, the more we may prove it; for it is im- 
possible, with words or with thoughts, to com- 
prehend what is meant by God the Father. A 
sated and weary heart may hear but doth not con- 
sider it. But the heart which rightly received 
such words would often think thereon with joy, 
and when it looked upon the sun, moon, and' 
other creatures, would recognise herein a special 
favour, that it is called a child of God, and that 
God is willing to be and remain our Father, and 
that we shall evermore live and remain with 
God. 

This then is the first article, whence we 
briefly learn that a Christian is a fair and glorious 
creation that cometh from God, and that the end 
which he craves and for which he is destined, 
is eternal life. 



CONCERNING ANGELS. 

FROM A DISCOURSE ON GOOD AMD EVIL ANGELS, PREACHED AT WIT- 
TEMBEEG, AT THE FEAST OF MICHAELMAS, 1633; FROM THE WORDS : 
"TAKE HEED THAT YE DESPISE NOT ONE OF THESE LITTLE ONES! 
FOR I SAY UNTO YOU. THAT IN HEAVEN, THEIR ANGELS DO ALWAY'S 
BEHOLD THE FACE OF MY FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN." M.4.TT. 
XVin. 10. 

• • * Seeing then, that the Feast of St. 
Michael, and of all the angels, exists, we wll 
retain the same in our churches. Not for secul^r 
reasons alone, and the income which is derived 
from it; but much rather for spiritual reasons. 
Because it is useful and necessary that Christians 
should continue in the right understanding of 
angels, — so that the young people may not grow 
up, neither learning nor knowing what dear 
angels purpose and do ; and have no joy therein, 
and never thank God the Lord for this gift and 
benefit. 

Now beginneth the Lord a sermon for chil- 
dren, and saith, " Take heed that ye despise not 
one of these little ones," &c. There thou hast 
a clear text, which thou oughtest, with certainty 
to believe. For this man, Christ, knows, of P 
surety, that children have angels, which do not 
make the children, but help to preserve them 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



17 



whom God hath created. So then, we preachers 
and parents ought to begin where Christ began, 
and impress upon children that they have an- 
gels. • • • After this manner would I 
train a child from early youth, and say to him, 
Dear child, thou hast an own angel. If thou 
prayest morning and evening, this angel shall 
be near thee and shall sit by thy little bed. He 
has a little white coat, and he shall nurse thee 
and rock thee and take care of thee, that the 
bad man, the Devil, may not come nigh thee. 
Also, when thou lovest to say thy Benedicite and 
thy Gratias before meat, thy little angel will be 
near thy table, and will wait upon thee and 
guard thee and watch, that no evil may befal 
thee, and that thy food may do thee good. If 
this were impressed upon children, they would 
learn and accustom themselves from youth up 
to the thought that the angels are with them. 
And this would not only serve to make them 
rely on the protection of the dear angels, but 
also cause that they should be well-behaved, 
and learn to stand in awe, and to think : Though 
our parents are not with us, yet the angels are 
here; they are looking after us, that the evil 
Spirit may do us no mischief. 

This, peradventure, is a chiklish sermon, but, 
nevertheless, it is good and needful ; and so 
needful and so simple that it may profit us old 
folks also. For the angels are not only present 
with children, but also with us who are old. 
So says St. Paul, in the first epistle to the Co- 
rinthians, xi. 10, "For this cause ought the 
woman to have a power on her head, because 
of the angels."' Women should not be adorned 
in the church and in the congregation as if they 
were going to a dance, but be covered with a 
veil for the sake of the angels. St. Paul here 
fetcheth in the angels, and saith that they are 
present at the sermon, and at sacred offices and 
divine service. This service of the angels doth 
not seem to be precious, but herein we see 
what are genuine good works. The dear angels 
are not proud as we men ; but they walk in 
divine obedience, and in the service of men, and 
wait upon young children. How could they 
perform a meaner work than to wait day and 
night upon children? What doth a child 1 It 
eats, weeps, sleeps, &c. Truly, an admirable 
thing, that the holy ministering Spirits should 
wait upon children who eat, drink, sleep, and 
wake! To look at it, it doth indeed seem a 
lowly office. But the dear angels perform it 
with joy, for it is well pleasing to God, who 
hath enjoined it upon them. A monk, on the 
contrary, saith, shall I wait upon children? 
That will I not do. I will go about higher and 
greater works. I will put on a cowl and will 
mortify myself in the cloister, &c. But if thou 
wilt consider it aright, these are the highest and 
best offices, which are rendered to children and 
to pious Christians. What do parents'? What 
are their works? They are the menials and 
the servants of young children. All that they 
do— they themselves confess — they do for the 



sake of their children, that they may be edu- 
cated. So do also the dear angels. Why, then, 
should we be ashamed to wait upon children ? 
And if the dear angels did not take charge of 
children, what would become of them ? For 
parents, with the help of prince and magistrate, 
are far too feeble to bring them up. Were it 
not for the protection of the dear angels, no 
child would grow to full age, though the parents 
should bestow all possible diligence upon them. 
Therefore hath God ordained, and set for the 
care and defence of children, not only parents, 
but also emperors, kings, princes, and lastly, his 
high and great Spirits, the holy angels, that no 
harm may befall them. It were well that the 
children were impressed with these things. 

On the other hand, one should also tell chil- 
dren of the wiles of the Devil and of evil 
spirits. Dear child, one should say to them, if 
thou wilt not be pious, thy little angel will run 
away from thee, and the evil Spirit, the Mack 
Popelmann, will come to thee. Therefore, be 
pious and pray, and thy little angel will come 
to thee, and the Popelmann will leave thee. 
And this is even the pure truth. The Devil 
sits in a corner, and if he could throttle both 
parent and child, he would do it not otherwise 
than gladly. *»**»» 

Thus are the dear angels watchmen also, and 
keep watch over us and protect us. And were 
it not for their guardianship, the black Nick 
would soon find us, seeing he is an angry and 
untiring Spirit ; but the dear angels are our true 
guardians against him. When we sleep, and 
parents at home and the magistrate in the city 
and the prince of the country sleep likewise, 
and can neither govern nor protect us, then 
watch the holy angels and guard and govern 
us for the best. When the Devil can do nothing 
else, he affrighteth me in my sleep, or maketh 
me sick that I cannot sleep. Then no man can 
defend me ; all they that are in the house are 
asleep ; but the dear angels sit at my bed-side, 
and tney say to the Devil : Let this man sleep, 
&c. This is the office which the angels perform 
for me, unless I have deserved that God should 
withdraw his hand from me, and not jiermit his 
angels to guard and defend me, but suffer me 
to be scourged a little, to the end that I may be 
humbled, and acknowledge the blessing of God 
which he conferreth upon me by the ministry 
of the dear angels. 

Further, it is the office of the dear angels tc 
protect and accompany me when I journey, — 
to be with me by the way. When I arise in 
the morning and perform my prayer, and pro- 
nounce the blessing of the morning and go Ibrth 
into the field, I am to know that God's angels 
are with me, — that he keeps good watch over 
me against the devils that are around nie, be 
hind and before. 

* * * This doctrine comforteth and re- 
joiceth us, and causeth that we take courage in 
our necessities, and think within ourselves Thou 
art alone, i*. may be, and yet thou art not alone ; 

a* 



the dear angels given thee by God are present 
wilh thee. Thus we read in the second book 
of K.in<js, c. vi. When the propliet Elisha was 
about to go forth from the city of Dothan with 
his servants, he saw a great army of the king 
of Syria, which had come to take him. Never- 
theless the prophet went forth. This was an 
excellent boldness that the prophet should go 
forth with his servant against so large a host 
and a nation of warriors. The servant was 
affrighted, and said, "Alas, my master! what 
shall we Jo?" But the prophet was undis- 
mayed, and said, Fear not: for they that be 
with us are more than they that be with them. 
Such was his defiance and courage. Tlie ser- 
vant could not see it, but the prophet prayed 
that the Lord would open the eyes of las ser- 
vant. Then he saw that the mountain was full 
of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. 

So, likewise, we read of the patriarch Abra- 
ham, that he sent out his servant to bring home 
a wife for his son Isaac. And when the ser- 
vaut knew not the way, Abraham said, " Tlie 
Lord God of heaven shall send his angel before 
thee, and thou shall take unto my son a wife 
from thence." Abraham sends his servant out 
as one would throw a feather into the air. It 
doth not trouble him that his son Isaac is not 
acquainted with the bride, and doth not know 
where she is to be found ; but he saith : The 
Lord will let his angel go with thee, who shall 
show thee the way; and thou slialt find the 
bride. Is it not a fine thing that the angel of 
the Lord must be present an(i woo a wife for 
Isaac? It sounds foolish in the ear of Reason, 
that an angel should trouble himself as to how 
we wed. * » • And David also, in the 
thirty-fourth Psalm, saith: "The angel of the 
Lord encampetlr round about them that fear him 
and delivereth them." Castra metalur angelus 
Domini, the angel of the Lord erects a bulwark, 
he saith. An angel can soon do that. In a 
trice he can make a rampart and a bulwark 
about a city, and it shall be an excellent wall. 

Ill like manner, we read that the bad and the 
good angels contend and war with each other. 
We know not how this is, neither do we behold 
it; but the Holy Scripture declareth it. 

How many devils were there, tliinkest thou, 
last year, at the diet at Augsburg? Every 
bishop brought as many devils there as a dog 
hath fleas at St. John's time. But God sent 
thither also more numerous and more powerful 
angels, so that their evil purpose was defeated. 
And howbeit the devils stood in our way, and 
we were forced to separate ere peace was made, 
yet were our enemies unable to accomplish 
aught that they meditated and desired. 

In the Revelation of St. John, cap. xii., it is 
written that the old dragon, the Devil, and Mi- 
chael contended one against the other. The 
Devil had his angels and came up against Mi- 
chael: and Michael had his angels also. That 
must have been a grand and mighty warfare in 
wliich the holy angels and the devils strove 



thus with each other. The Devil is strong in 
understanding, power and wisdom ; but Michael 
with his angels v/as too strong and powerful 
for him, and thrust him out of heaven. That 
is a warfare which is carried on every day in 
the Christian world. For heaven is Christen- 
dom on the earth. There good and evil angels 
contend. The Devil hinders men from receiv- 
ing the gospel, creates enthusiasts and factious 
spirits. Even among us, he maketh many to 
be sluggish and cold. That is the Devils army 
in which he placeth himself and fighteth against 
us. But Michael with his angels is with us. 
He awakeneth other pious preachers, who con- 
tinue in the pure doctrine and in the truth, that 
all may not perish. For one preacher can save 
twelve cities, if God will. 

I myself do often feel the raging of the Devil 
within me. At times I believe; at times I be- 
lieve not. At times I am meny; at times I am 
sad. Yet do 1 see that it happeneth not as the 
evil multitude wish, who would not give so 
much as a penny for preaching, baptism and 
sacrament. Now although the Devil is beyond 
measure wicked and hath no good thing in pur- 
pose, yet do all orders proceed and remain ac- 
cording to wont. • * » » • 

If we keep these instructions of which T have 
spoken, then shall we continue in the true un- 
derstanding and faith, and the dear angels will 
continue in their office and honours. They will 
do what is commanded them by God, and we 
shall do whatsoever is commanded us. That 
thus we and they may know and praise God 
for our Creator and Lord, Amen. 



DR. MARTIN LUTHER'S 

SIMPLE METHOD HOW TO PRAY. 

written for master peter balbierer. (ba.rber.) 

Dear Master Peter. 

1 give you as good as I have, and will show 
you how I myself manage with prayer. Our 
Lord God grant unto you and every one to ma 
nage better. Amen ! 

First, when I feel that I am become cold and 
indisposed to prayer, by reason of other business 
and thoughts, I take my psalter and run into 
my chamber, or, if day and season serve, into 
the church to the multitude, and begin to repeat 
to myself — just as children use — the ten com- 
mandments, the creed, and, according as I have 
time, some sayings of Christ or of Paul, or some 
psalms. Therefore it is well to let prayer be 
the first employment in the early morning, and 
the last in the evening. Avoid diligently those 
false and deceptive thoughts which say : Wait 
a little, I will pray an hour hence; I mus'. first 
perform this or that. For, with such thoughts, 
a man quits prayer for business which lays hold 
of and entangles him, so that he comes not tc 
pray, the whole day long. 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



19 



Howbeit works may sometimes occur which 
are as good, or better than prayer, especially if 
necessity require them. There is a saying to 
this effect, which goes under the name of St. 
Jerome: "All the works of the faithful are 
prayer." And there is a proverb: "Whoso la- 
bours faithfully, he prays twice." The meaning 
of which saying must be, that a believer fears 
and honours God in his labour, and thinks of 
his commandment — to do wrong to no man, — 
not to steal nor take advantage, nor to betray. 
And, doubtless, such thoughts and such faith 
make his work a prayer and an offering of 
praise. On the other hand, it must be equally 
true that the works of the unbelieving are mere 
2urses, and that he who labours unfaithfully 
curses twice. For the thoughts of his heart in 
his employment must lead him to despise God 
and to transgress his law, to do wrong to his 
neighbour, to steal and to betray. What are 
such thoughts but mere curses against God and 
man ? * * * Of constant prayer, Christ in- 
deed says, men ought always to pray. For men 
ought always to guard against sin and wrong, 
which no man can do except he fear God and 
set his commandment before his eyes. Never- 
theless, we must take heed that we do not dis- 
use ourselves to actual prayer, and interpret 
works to be necessary which are not necessary, 
and by that means become at last negligent and 
indolent, and cold and reluctant to pray. For 
the Devil is not indolent nor negligent around 
us. And our flesh is alive and fresh toward 
sin and averse from the spirit of prayer. 

Now when the heart is warmed by this oral 
conjmunion and has come to itself, then kneel 
down or stand with folded hands and eyes to- 
ward heaven, and say or think, in as few words 
as possible, &c. &c.* 

Finally, observe that thou must ever make 
the "Amen" strong, and not doubt but that God 
assuredly heareth thee with all his grace, and 
saith "yea" to thy prayer. And think that thou 
kneelest or standest not alone, but the whole 
Christendom, or all pious Christians, with thee, 
and thou among them, in consenting unanimous 
supplication which God cannot despise. And 
quit not thy prayer until thou hast said or 
thought, — "Go to now, this prayer hath been 
heard with God ; that know I surely and of a 
truth." That is the meaning of Amen. 

Also, thou must know that I would not have 
thee to repeat all these words in thy prayer, for 
that would make it, at last, a babble and a vain 
empty gossip — a reading from the book and 
after the letter, such as the rosaries of the laity 
and the prayers of priests and monks have been. 
My purpose is to awaken the heart and instruct 
it what kind of thoughts to connect with the 
Lord's prayer. If the heart be rightly warmed 
and eagerforprayer, it can express these thoughts 
with very different words, perhaps with fewer, 

* Here follows, in the original, after a brief invocation, 
a paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer. 



perhaps with more. For I, myself, do not bind 
myself to precisely these words and syllables, 
but say the words to-day after this fashion, to- 
morrow otherwise, according as I feel warm 
and free. I keep as nearly as I can to the same 
thoughts and meaning. But it will sometimes 
happen that, while engaged with some single 
article or petition, I walk into such rich thoughts 
that I leave the other six.* And when these 
rich and good thoughts come, one ought to give 
place to them and let other prayers go, and listen 
in silence, and on no account offer any hin- 
drance; for then the Holy Ghost himself preaches, 
and one word of his preaching is better than a 
thousand of our prayers. And so I have often 
learned more in one prayer than 1 could have 
got from much reading and composing. 

Wherefore, it is of the greatest importance 
that the heart be disengaged and disposed to 
prayer; as saith the Preacher, (cap. iv. 17,) 
" Prepare thy heart before prayer, that thou 
mayest not tem])t God.'''j- What else is it, but 
tempting God, when the mouth babbles while 
the heart is distracted with other things? Like 
that priest who prayed after this fashion : '•'■ Deus 
in auditorium meum intende ; Fellow, hast thou 
unharnessed the horses ? Domine ad adjuvan- 
dum me festina ; Maid, go and milk the cows! 
Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto ; Run, boy, 
as if the Devil were after thee!'' &c. Of such 
prayers I have heard and experienced much in 
Popedom, in my day. » * • Bi,t now, God 
be praised, I see well that that is not prayer, in 
which one forgets what one has said. For a 
true prayer is conscious of all its words and 
thoughts, from the beginning to the end of the 
prayer. 

Even so a good and diligent barber^: must fix 
his thoughts, his purpose and his eyes, with 
great exactness upon the razor and the hair, and 
not forget where he is, in the stroke or the cut. 
But if he chooses to chat much at the same time, 
or hath his thoughts or his eyes elsewhere, he is 
like to cut one's mouth and nose, and throat into 
the bargain. Thus each thing — if it is to be 
done well — requires the entire man, with all 
his senses and members. As the saying goes : 
Plurihus intentus, minor est ad singula sensus : he 
who thinks of many things thinks of nothing, 
and does nothing aright. How much more 
must prayer — if it is to be a good prayer — pos- 
sess the heart entirely and alone. 

This is briefly said of the "Our Father," or 
of prayer, as I myself am wont to pray. For, 
to this day, I suck still at the Paternoster, like 
a child. I eat and drink thereof like a full- 
grown man ; and can never have enough. It 
is to me, even more than the psalter, (which 
notwithstanding, I dearly love,) the best of all 
prayers. Assuredly, it will be found that the 

* Luther divides the Lord's Prayer into seven petitions. 

■f The text here quoted is probably the first verse of tha 
fifth chapter of Eccl. ; but it differs widely from the com 
mon English vers^ion. 

X Luther was probably writing to a barber by profession 



20 



MARTIN LUTHER, 



right Master hath ordained and taught it. And 
it is a pity upon pities that such a prayer of 
such a Master, should be babbled and rattled 
over by all the world, so entirely without devo- 
tion. Many pray, it may be, some thousand 
Paternosters a year ; and if they should pray a 
thousand years, after that fashion, they would 
not have tasted or prayed one letter or tittle 
thereof In fine, the Paternoster (as well as the 
name and word of God) is the greatest martyr 
upon earth, for every one tortures and abuses it; 
few comfort and make it glad by a true use of it. 



LUTHER'S PRAYER 

AT THE DIET OF WORMS. 

Almiohtt, eternal God ! What a stranse 
thing is this world! How doth it open wide 
the mouths of the people ! How small and poor 
is the confidence of men toward God ! How is 
the flesh so tender and weak, and the Devil so 
mighty and so busy through his apostles and the 
wise of this world ! How soon do they with- 
draw the hand, and whirl away and run the 
common path and the broad way to hell, where 
the godless belong. They look only upon that 
which is splendid and powerful, great and 
mighty, and which hath consideration. If I 
lUrn my eyes thither also, it is all over with 
me ; the bell is cast ami the judgment is pro- 
nounced. Ah God! Ah God! O, Thou my 
God ! Thou my God, stand Thou by me against 
the reason and wisdom of all the world. Do 
Thou so! Thou must do it, Thou alone. Be- 
hold, it is not my cause but thine. For my own 
person I have nothing to do here with these 
great lords of the world. Gladly would I too 
have good quiet days and be unperplexed. But 
Thine is the cause. Lord ; it is just and eternal. 
Stand Thou by me. Thou true, eternal God ! I 
confide in no man. It is to no purpose and in 
vain. Everything halteth that is fleshly, or that 
savoureth of flesh. O God ! O God ! Hearest 
Thou not, my God? Art Thou dead? No! 
Thou canst not die. Thou only hidest Thyself. 
Hast Thou chosen me for this end ? I ask Thee. 
But I know for a surety that Thou hast chosen 
me. Hal then may God direct it. For never 
did I think, in all my life, to be opposed to such 
great lords ; neither have I intended it. Ha ! 
God, then stand by me in the name of Jesus 
Christ, who shall be my shelter and my shield, 
yea ! my firm tower, through the might and 
strengthening of thy Holy Spirit. Lord! where 
stayest Thou 1 Thou my God ! where art Thou ? 
Come, come! I am ready, even to lay down 
my life for this cause, patient as a little lamb. 
For just is the cause and Thine. So will I not 
separate myself from Thee forever. Be it de- 
termined in Thy name. The world shall not 
be able to force me against my conscience, though 
it were full of devils. And though my body, 



originally the work and creature of Thy hands, 
go to destruction in this cause — yea, though it 
be shattered in pieces — Thy word and Thy Spi- 
rit, they are good to me still ! It concerneth 
only the body. The soul is Thine and belong- 
eth to Thee, and shall also remain with Thee, 
forever. Amen. God help me ! Amen. 



SELECTIONS FROM LUTHER'S LETTERS. 

FROM A COLLECTION IN HVE VOLS. Bvo.. PUBLISHED BY DB. W. M. L. 
DE WETTE. PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT BASLE. BERLIN. 1826. 

Extract from a Letter to ihe Elector Frederic and Duke John 
of Sa.vony, containing an admonition to those princes to sup- 
press, according tii the authority entrusted to them hy God, the 
rebellious spirit which at that time possessed Ihe peasantry in 
various parts of Germany, and which manifested itself in the 
destruction of churches and in other riotous acts. 

To the most Serene, the High-born Princes and 
Lords, Duke Frederic, Elector of the Roman 
Empire, and John, Duke of Saxony, Land- 
grave of Thuringen and Margrave of Meissen 
— iny most gracious Masters : 
Grace and peace in Christ Jesus our Saviour. 
— This fortune hath ever the Holy Word of 
God, that wherever it appeareth, Satan opposeth 
it with all his power; first, with the fist and 
insolent force; and where that will not avail, 
he assaileth it with false tongues, with erring 
spirits and teachers. Where he cannot quell it 
with his might, he would suppress it by means 
of cunning and lies. Thus did he in the begin- 
ning, when the gospel first came into the world. 
He assaulted it mightily with the Jews and the 
Gentiles, shed much blood, and made Christen- 
dom full of martyrs. When that availed not, 
he brought on false prophets and erring spirits, 
and made the world full of heretics and sects. 
* * * So must it be now, that it may be 
seen that it is the genuine Word of God, because 
it happeneth unto it as it hath happened in all 
time. Pope and emperor, kings and princes 
assail it with the fist, and would fain quell it 
with force. They damn it, blaspheme it, and 
persecute it unheard and unknown, like men 
devoid of sense. But judgment hath been pro- 
nounced, and their defiance condemned long ago. 
(Ps. 2.) "Why do the heathen rage and the 
people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the 
earth rise up and the rulers take counsel to- 
gether against the Lord and against his Anointed. 
But he that sitteth in the heavens shall mock 
at them; the Lord shall have them in derision. 
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath 
and vex them in his sore displeasure." Thus, 
of a certainty, shall it happen to our raging 
princes. And they will have it so, for they will 
neither see nor hear. God hath blinded and 
hardened them, that they shall run upon de- 
struction and be shattered in pieces. They 
have been sufficiently warned. 

All this Satan seeth well, and perceiveth that 
such raging will come to nought. Yea! he 
noteth and feeleth that the more it is oppressed 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



21 



(as is the wont of God's word ) the more doth it 
spread and increase. Therel'ore he will now 
attack it with false spirits and sects. And we 
must consider this, and not suffer ourselves to 
be deceived by it. For it must be so, as Paul 
saith to the Corinthians : " For there must be also 
heresies among you, that they which are ap- 
proved may be made manifest among you.' So 
then, Satan being cast out, after that lie hath 
wandered about one year or three, through dry 
places, seeking rest and finding none, he hath 
settled down in your Electoral and Princely 
Graces' dominions, and hath made him a nest 
at Alstadt, and thinks to fight against us under 
cover of our own peace and shelter and protec- 
tion. For Duke George's kingdom, howbeit it 
is near, is far too kind and gentle toward this 
undaunted and unconquerable spirit, (for so it 
boasteth itself) to prevent the manifestation of 
its bold daring and defiance. It shrieks and 
wails horribly, and complains of its sufferings, 
whereas no one hath yet touched it, neither with 
the fist, nor with the mouth, nor v/ith the pen. 
Tliey dream to themselves some great cross 
which they sufter. So wantonly and without 
all reason must the Devil lie. ! he cannot 
by any possibility hide himself 

Now it is a special joy to me that our own 
proceed not after this fashion. And they them- 
selves boast that they are not of our party, and 
that they have learned nothing and received 
nothing from us. No! they come from heaven, 
and hear God himself speaking with them as 
with the angels ; and it is a poor thing that Faith 
and Love and the cross of Christ are preached 
at Wittenberg. God's voice, say they, thou must 
hear thyself, and must suffer and feel God's 
work within, that thou mayest know how heavy 
thy pound is. Scripture is naught — "Bah! Bi- 
ble, bubble, babble !"' &.i:.&c. If we should speak 
such words of them, their cross and suffering I 
ween would be dearer than the cross of Christ, 
and they would esteem it more highly. So will- 
ing is that miserable spirit to bear the credit 
of cross and suffering, and yet they cannot bear 
that one should entertain the least doubt or 
question that their voice is from heaven and 
their work of God ; but they will have it straight- 
way believed by force, without consideration. 
So that I have never read or heard of a more 
high-minded or prouder " Holy Spirit," (if such it 
be.) But here is neither time nor room to judge 
their doctrine. I have examined and judged it 
twice, I think, ere this, and, if need be, can judge 
it again, and will, by the grace of God. 

I have written this letter to your Princely 
Graces chiefly for this cause, that I have heard 
and have also gathered from their writing, liow 
this selfsame spirit will not rest its cause upon 
the Word alone, but is minded to carry it on 
v/itli the fist, and would fain rise with force 
against the magistracy, and straightway set on 
foot a veritable rebellion. Here Satan suffereth 
the rogue to peep forth. It is too palpable! 
» • » Therefore, your Princely Graces, here 



is no time to sleep or loiter, for God demands 
and will have an answer touching the negligent 
use of the sword which he hath committed to 
you in earnest. Neither is it excusable, before 
the people and the world, that your Princely 
Graces should tolerate rebellious and insolent 
fists. 

* * * First, it must needs be a bad spirit 
which cannot manifest its fruit in any other way 
than by destroying churches and cloisters, and 
burning saints, which the inost abandoned vil- 
lains in the world can do as well, especially 
when they are safe and unresisted. I ■>"0uld 
think more of this Alstadt Spirit if it wouid go 
up against Dresden, or Berlin, or Ingolstadt, and 
there storm and break down cloisters and burn 
saints. 

Secondly, that they boast themselves of the 
Spirit availeth nothing, for we have the word 
of St. John for it, to prove first the Spirits whe- 
ther they be of God. Now is this Spirit not yet 
proved, but dashes on with impetuous vehe- 
mence, and rages wantonly, according to its 
own pleasure. If it were a good Spirit, it would 
first suffer itself to be proved and judged in hu- 
mility, as the Spirit of Christ doth. * * • 
What manner of Spirit is that which fears in 
the presence of two or three and cannot bide a 
dangerous assembly ? I will tell thee. He 
smelleth the roast.* He hath had his nose hit 
once or twice by me in my cloister at Witten- 
berg. Hence he fears the soup, and will not 
stand, save where his own people are, who say 
yea, to his precious words. If I (who have no 
Spirit at all and have no voice from heaven) 
had suffered such a word to be heard of me by 
my papists, how would they have cried victory, 
and have stopped my mouth! 

I cannot boast myself and bid defiance with 
such lofty words. I am a poor miserable man. 
I did not open my cause with excellency of 
speech, but, as Paul confesses of himself, with 
weakness and fear, and much trembling. And 
he might, notwithstanding, have boasted of a 
voice from heaven, had he chosen. How hum- 
bly I attacked the Pope, how I besought and 
entreated, let my first writings prove. Never- 
theless, with this poor spirit of mine, I have 
rlone that which this world-eating spirit of theirs 
hath not yet attempted, but, on the contrarj'', 
hath thus far shunned and fled, after a very 
knightly and manly fashion; and hath even 
most nobly boasted of such evasion, as of a 
knightly and sublime act of the Spirit. For I 
stood up to dispute at Leipsic before the most 
dangerous of all assemblies. I appeared at 
Augsburgh before my greatest enemy, without 
escort. I stood up at Worms before the empe- 
ror and the whole empire, albeit I knew before 
hand that my escort were betrayed, and that 
wild, strange malice and treachery were level- 
led against me. 

Weak and poor as I then was, yet such wa« 



♦Sni 



82 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



the state of my heart, — had I known that as many 
devils were aiming at me as there were tiles 
on the roofs at Worms, 1 would none the less 
have ridden in; and yet I had never heard 
aught, as yet, of the voice from heaven and of 
God's pounds and works, and of the Alstadt 
Spirit. Item : I have been made to answer for 
myself, in corners, — to one, to two, and to three, 
to whomsoever, and where and howsoever they 
listed to question me. My timid and poor spirit 
hath been forced to stand forth, free as a flower 
of the field, and could not appoint either time, 
or person, or place, or mode, or measure, but 
must be ready and willing to give an answer to 
every man, as St. Peter teacheth. 

And this Spirit, which is as high above us as 
the sun is above the earth, which scarce consi- 
ders us as worms, appoints for himself only un- 
perilous, friendly, and safe judges and hearers, 
and will not stand and answer to two or to three 
in sundry places. He feels somewhat that he 
does not love to feel, and thinks to scare us with 
swelling words. Well! we ran do nothing but 
what Christ gives us. If He shall leave us, 
then shall a rustling leaf perchance affright us ; 
but if He will keep us, that spirit shall yet be 
made sensible of its lofty boasting.* 

But I would fain know whether, — seeing the 
Spirit is not without fruit, and that theirs is so 
much loftier than ours, — whether it bears nobler 
fruit than ours? Truly, it ought to bear other 
and better fruit than ours, seeing it is better and 
nobler. So we teach and profess, that the Spirit 
which we preach bears the fruits spoken of by 
Paul to the Galatians — " love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance." In fine, the fruit of our Spirit is 
the fulfilling of the ten commandments of God. 
Now then, the Alstadt Spirit, that will not leave 
ours in peace, must, of a surety, yield something 
higher than love and faith, long-suffering and 
neace ; notwithstanding St. Paul reckons love 
to be the highest fruit. It must do much better 
ihan God hath commanded. I would fain know 
what that is, since we are assured that the Spirit 
imparted by Christ is given for this end only, 
that we fulfil the commandment of God. * * 

I perceive as yet no particular fruit of the 
Alstadt Spirit, except that it is minded to strike 
Willi the fist, and to destroy wood and stone. 
Love, peace, long-suffering, goodness, gentle- 
ness, — they have thus far been very sparing in 
their exhibition of Doubtless, they would not 
have the fruits of the Spirit become too common. 
But I can show, by the grace of God, much fruit 
of the Spirit among our people. And, if it comes 
to boasting, I might set up my single person — 
the meanest ai.d most sinful of all — against all 
the fruits of tlie whole Alstadt Spirit, much as 
they blame my life. But, to accuse the doctrine 
A any man because of the infirmities of his life 
— that is not the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spi- 
rit reproveth false doctrine, and beareth them 

•i.e. be made sensible of the vanity of it. 



that are weak in faith and in life, as Paul teach- 
eth, Rom. xiv. and in all places. Neither am 
I troubled that the Alstadt Spirit is so unfruitful, 
but because it is a lying Spirit, and setteth itself 
up to judge the doctrine of others. 

* * * Be this then the conclusion of the 
whole matter, my gracious Masters. Your 
Graces shall not hinder the function of the Word. 
Let them preach away as much as they please, 
and against whom they please, for, as I have 
said, there must be sects, and the Word of God 
must take the field and fight. * • * If 
their Spirit be the true one, it will not be afraid 
of us, but maintain its ground. If our Spirit be 
the true one, it will not be afraid of them, nor 
of any man. Let the Spirits tilt and charge 
agairist each other. If, meanwhile, some are 
led astray, so be it ! It is according to the course 
of war. Where there is fighting and strife, some 
must fall and some must be wounded. But he 
that striveth honourably shall receive a crown. 

But if they attempt to do more than to fight 
with the word; if they go about to destroy and 
to smite with the fist ; — then your Graces shall 
take hold, whether it be we or whether it be 
they, and straightway forbid them the land, and 
say to thein : " We will willingly bear with you, 
and see you contend with the Word for the 
maintenance of the true doctrine ; but keep the 
fist still, for that is our business; or else take 
yourselves out of the land." For we who bear 
the Word of God must not fight with our fists. 
* * * Our work is to preach and to suffer, 
not to defend ourselves and to strike. Christ 
and his apostles destroyed no churches and 
broke in pieces no images, but won hearts with 
God's word, and then churches and images fell 
of themselves. So should we do likewise. * * 

What need we care for wood and stone, if 
we have men's hearts? See how I do. I have 
never laid hands on a single stone. I have de- 
stroyed and burned nothing in the cloisters. 
And yet, through my word, the cloisters are now 
empty in many places, — even under those 
Princes who are opposed to the gospel. Had I 
attacked them with storm, like these prophets, 
the hearts of men in all the world would have 
remained captive, and I should only have de- 
stroyed here and there a little wood and stone. 
Who would have been the better for that? 
Honour and fame may be sought that way, but, 
assuredly, the good of souls is not sought by 
such means. There be some who think that I, 
without carnal weapons, have done the Pope 
more injury than a mighty king could have done. 
But these prophets, willing to do something 
special and better, and not being able, leave the 
saving of souls and take to assailing wood and 
stone. That is the new and wonderful work 
of this high Spirit. 

If they argue that the Jews were commanded 
in the law of Moses to destroy all idols, and to 
abolish the altars of the false gods, the answer 
is, they themselves know that God, from the 
beginning, has wrought with one word and 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



'-iJ 



faith, but with diverse kinds of saints and 
works. ••*»»»• 

Nay, if it were right that we Christians should 
storm and break down cliurches like the Jews, 
it would follow further that we ought to put to 
death all who are not Christians, as well as de- 
stroy images, — as the Jews were commanded 
to slay the Canaanites and the Aniorites. Then 
the Alsiadt Spirit would have nothing more to 
do but to shed blood ; and all who did not hear 
their "voice from heaven" must be slain by 
ihem, that there might remain no occasion of 
offence among the people of God. Which of- 
fence is much greater from living unchristian 
men, than from images of wood and stone. * • 

The removing of offences must be accom- 
plished by the Word of God. For though all 
outward ofience were destroyed and done away, 
it would avail nothing, unless the hearts of men 
were brought from unbelief to the true faith. 
For an unbelieving heart will always find new 
cause of offence; as it came to pass among the 
Jews, who erected ten idols where they de- 
stroyed one. Wherefore, we must employ the 
true method, according to the New Testament, 
of banishing the Devil and offences; that is, the 
Word of God. With that we must turn away 
the hearts of men from evil ; and then, perad- 
venture, the Devil with all his splendour and 
his power shall fall of himself 

Here will I rest the matter for the present, 
humbly beseeching your Princely Graces ear- 
nestly to discountenance such storming and 
swarming, that these matters may be managed 
by the word of God alone, as befitteth Chris- 
tians ; and that all occasion of tumult, for which 
Master Omnes* is ever more than too much ;n- 
cliued, may be averted. For they be no Chris- 
tians who, not content with the Word of God, 
are fain to lay hold with their fists also, and are 
not rather ready to suffer all things, — yea, though 
they boast themselves filled with ten Holy Spirits 
and filled again. 

May Gods mercy strengthen and keep your 
Princely Graces evermore! Amen! Given the 
21st August, Anno 1!524. 

Your Princely Graces' 

Obedient Mart. Luther, Doctor. 



TO THE ELECTOR JOHN. 

A LITTER OF ACKiNOWLEDOMENT IN RETURN FOR A PRESENT OF 
SO.ME ARTICLES OF CLOTHING. 

Grace and peace in Christ! Most Serene, 
High-born Prince, and Gracious Lord ! I have 
long delayed to thank your Electoral Princely 
Grace for the clothes and garment sent and pre- 
sented to me. But I will humbly entreat your 
Electoral Princely Grace not to believe them 
that speak of me as one that hath need. Alas! 

* The mob. 



I possess more especially from your Electoral 
Princely Grace, than my conscience will bear. 
It befitteth ii.e not, as a preacher, to have super- 
fluity, neither do I desire it. 

Hence I receive your Electoral Princely 
Grace's all too generous and gracious favour in 
such wise, that I straightway fear. For by no 
means would I willingly, here in this life, be 
found with those to whom Christ sairii : "Wo 
unto you that are rich, for ye have had your re- 
ward." Moreover, to speak after the manner 
of this world, I would not be burthensome to 
your Electoral Princely Grace, since I know that 
your Electoral Princely Grace hath so much of 
giving to do that it may not have more than 
enough for its need. For too much bursts the 
bag. 

Wherefore, although the liver-coloured cloth 
had been too much, yet, that I may be grateful 
to your Electoral Princely Grace, I will also 
vvear the black coat in honour of your Electoral 
Princely Grace, howbeit it is far too costly for 
me, and were it not your Electoral Princely 
Grace's gift, I could nevermore wear such a coat. 

For this cause, I entreat that your Electoral 
Princely Grace will wait until I complain and 
beg, myself, to the end that your Electoral 
Princely Grace's anticipation of my wants may 
not make me shy of begging for others who are 
much more worthy of such grace. For without 
this, your Electoral Princely Grace does too 
much for me. Which Christ shall graciously 
and richly recompense. That he may do so, I 
pray from my heart. Amen. 

Your Electoral Princely Grace's 
Obedient Martinus Lutbeh. 
The 17th Aug. 1529. 



EXTRACT 

FROM A LETTER TO CASPAR GUTTEL, PREACHER AT EISLEBEH, 
WRITTKN AGAINST THE ANTINO.MIANS. JANUARY, 1S39. 

* * * I MARVEL much how the rejection 
of the Law and the Ten Commandments can be 
imputed to me, seeing there are so many and 
such various expositions of the Ten Command- 
ments by me, which are daily preached and 
made the subject of exercises in our churches; 
to say notliing of the Confession and the Apology 
and our other books. Moreover they are sung 
in two different ways, and painted and printed, 
and done in woodcuts, and repeated by the 
children, morning, noon, and evening, so that 
I know of no way in which they are not prac- 
tised, save (alas!) that we do not paint and 
practise them in our conduct and life as we 
ought to do. And I myself, old and instructed 
as I am, repeat tliem daily, word for word, like 
a child. So, if any one had received a dift'ereut 
iloctrine from my writings and yet saw how 
diligently I handled the Ten Commamlments, he 
ought to have accosted me in this wise • " Dear 



24 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



Doctor Luther, how is it that thou insistest so 
strongly on the ten commandments, seeing it is 
thy doctrine that they ought to be rejected?" 
So ouglit they to have done, and not to have 
mined in secret behind me, to wait for my 
death, to make of me what they listed, after 
that. *»*»«*» 

I have taught indeed, and still teach, that 
sinners should be moved to repentance by 
preaching, or by the contemplation of the suf- 
ferings of Christ, that they may see how great 
is the wrath of God against sin, for which 
no other remedy could be found than that the 
Son of God should die for it. Which doctrine 
is not mine but St. Bernard's. What do I say? 
St. Bernard's? It is the doctrine of all Christ- 
endom. It is the preaching of all the prophets 
and the apostles. But how doth it follow there- 
from, that the Law should be done away? I 
And no such consequence in my dialectic, and 
I would like to see and hear the master who 
coul-d demonstrate the same. » • » For 
the devil knoweth that Christ may soon and 
easily be withdrawn, but the Law is written in 
the core of the heart and cannot by any possi- 
bility be done away. * • ♦ But he goeth 
about to make people secure, and teacheth them 
to regard neither the Law nor sin, that when, 
hereafter, they are suddenly overtaken by death 
or an evil conscience, who before had been 
accustomed only to sweet security, they may 
sink, without help, into hell, because they have 
learned nothing but sweet security in Christ. 
* * * It is only sorrowful and suffering 
hearts that feel their sin, and tliey are to be 
comforted, for the dear Jesus can never be made 
sweet enough to such. * * * But these 
spirits are not such Christians, because they are 
so secure and of good courage. Neither are 
their hearers such, for they also are secure and 
well to do. A fine and beautiful maiden singeth 
in a certain place — an excellent singer — "He 
hath fed the hungry with good things, and the 
rich he hath sent empty away. He hath put 
down the mighty from their seats and exalted 
them of low degree. And his mercy is on them 
that fear him." (Luke i. 50, 52, 53,) If this 
magnificat be correct, God must be an enemy of 
spirits that are secure and that fear him not. 
And such spirits must they be, who put away 
Law and sin. * * * Po,. this I will and 
may boast with truth, that no papist of this time 
is, with such conscience and earnest, a papist 
as I have been. For what is now a papist is 
not so, irom the fear of God, as I, poor wight, 
was forced to be. But they seek other things, 
as any one may see, and they themselves know 
it. I have had to experience that saying of St. 
Peter : " C'rescite in cognitione Domini." I see no 
Doctor, no Council, no Fathers — though I should 
even distil their books, as it were, and make a 
qninta essentia out of them — who have accom- 
plislied the ^^ crescite" at once, at the beginning, 
in such sort, as to make the crescite a per/ectum 
isse. By token, St. Peter himself was forced to 



learn his own crescite from St. Paul, Gal. ii. 11 
and St. Paul from Christ himself, who must say 
to him : " Sufficit tibi mea gratia," &c. 2 Cor. 
xii. 9. 

Dear God ! can they not bear that the holy 
Church should confess herself a sinner and be 
lieve in forgiveness of sins, and pray for the 
same, in the Lord's prayer? 

Ah ! I ought, in reason, to have peace with 
mine own. To have to do with the papists 
were enough. One might well nigh come to 
say with Job and with Jeremiah : "Would that 
I had never been born !" So likewise might I 
almost say : Would that I had never come with 
my books ! I care nothing for them. I could 
bear that they had already perished, all of them, 
and that the writings of these high spirits were 
offered for sale in all the bookstalls as they de- 
sire, — that they might have their fill of fair 
fame. Then again, I must not esteem myself 
better than our dear Goodman of the house, — 
Jesus Christ, — who, also, here and there com- 
plaineth: "In vain have 1 laboured, and my 
trouble is lost."* But the Devil is lord of this 
world. And I could never believe, myself, that 
the Devil should be lord and god of this world, 
until now that I have pretty much experienced 
that this also is an article of faith ; Princeps 
mundi, deus hujus scbcuH. But God be praised ! 
it will remain unbelieved, peradventure, by the 
children of men ; and I, myself, believe it but 
feebly. For every man is well pleased with 
his own way, and all hope that the Devil is 
beyond the sea, and God in our pockets. 

But, for the sake of the pious who wish to be 
saved, we must live, preach, write, do all and 
suffer all. Otherwise, when we behold so 
many devils and false brethren, it were better 
to preach nothing, to write nothing, to do no- 
thing, but only to die quickly and be buried. 
They pervert and blaspheme all things, and 
make of them nothing but mischief and a cause 
of offence, even as the Devil rideth and guideth 
them. There will and must be fighting and 
suffering. We cannot have it better than the 
dear prophets and apostles, to whom it hap- 
pened also after the same fashion. » * » 

It was a special presumption and arrogance 
in them that they also must needs bring forth 
something new and peculiar, that people might 
say, "I opine truly, this is a man! He is 
another Paul! Must they of Wittenberg alone 
know all things? I have a head too!" Yea! 
a head indeed, that seeketh its own honour and 
befooleth itself with its own wisdom ! * * 

From all which we see, and might, if we 
would, understand the history of the churches 
from the beginning. It hath happened so in all 
time. Wherever God s word hath arisen and 
his flock been gathered together, the Devil hath 
become aware of the light, and hath blown 
against it, out of every corner; — puffed and 

* These words are given as a quotation from Isaiah, 
xlix. 4. 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



25 



stormed with great and strong winds to put out 
the divine liglit. And if one or two winds 
were ciiecked and fended off, he hath evermore 
blown tlirough some new hole, and stormed 
against the light. And there has been no end 
nor cessation, neither will be until the last day. 

I hold that I alone (not to speak of the elders) 
have suffered more than twenty storm-winds 
and factions which the Devil hath blown. First, 
there was Popedom. Yea! I think all the world 
should know with how many storm-winds, Bulls 
and books the Devil hath raged against me from 
that quarter ; how miserably they tore, devoured 
and destroyed me; and how 1 only breathed 
upon them a little now and then, with no effect, 
save that they became the more wrathful and 
mad to blow and to spit, without ceasing, lo this 
day. And when I had now well nigh ceased 
to fear this manner of the Devil's spitting, he 
bursts me another hole by means of Miinzer and 
that uproar, wherewith he had near blown out 
my liglit. And when Christ had almost stopped 
that hole, he tears me sundry panes out of my 
window with Karlstadt, and breezes and fumes, 
so that 1 thought he would carry away the light, 
wax and wick together. But here too, God 
helped his poor torch and preserved it, that it 
went not out. Then came the Sacramentists 
and the Baptists, pushed open door and window, 
and thought to quench the light. Perilous they 
made it, but their will they accomplished not. 

And though I were to live yet a hundred 
years, and could lay all future storms and fac- 
tions, as, by the grace of God, I have laid past 
and present ones, I see well that no rest would 
be secured by such means to our posterity, 
seeing the Devil lives and reigns. Wherefore 
I also pray for an hour of grace,* and desire no 
more of this stuff. Ye, our posterity! do ye 
continue to pray and diligently lo follow after 
the word of God! Preserve God's poor taper! 
Be warned and armed! as those who must ex- 
pect every hour that the Devil will break you a 
pane or a window, or tear open door or roof, to 
put out the light. For he will not die before 
the last day. I and thou must die, and when 
we are dead he shall remain the same that he 
hath ever been, and cannot cease from storming. 

I see yonder, from afar, how he putfeth out 
his cheeks, till he becometh red in the face, and 
intendeth to blow and to storm. But as our 
Lord Christ, in the beginning, (even in his own 
person,) smote those puffed cheeks with his fist, 
and caused them * • * so will he do now 
and ever forth. For he cannot lie who saith, 
•'I am with you always unto the end of the 
world :" • • • Jesus Christ, " heri et hodie 
et in stecula,^^ — who was, and is, and shall be. 
Yea ! so the man is called, and so no other man 
is called, and so no other shall be called. 

For thou and I were nothing a thousand 
years ago; nevertheless, the Church was pre- 
served without us. It must have been his doing 

* i. e. for the final tioiir. 
D 



whose name is "jwi eraf^ and '■'■heri.'" So, now, 
too, we exist not by our own life, and the 

Church is not preserved by our means, and 

we and it must go to destruction together, as 
we daily experience, were there not another 
man who evidently sustains both the Church 

and us whose name is ^'qui est' and " Ao- 

die." Even so shall we contribute nothing to 
the preservation of the Church when we are 
dead; but it will be his doing whose name is 
"qui Venturas est" and "m scecula." And what 
we now say of ourselves, as touching tliese 
things, that have our forefathers also been con- 
strained to say, as the Psalms and the Scripture 
witness; and our posterity shall also experience 
the same, and they shall sing with us and the 
whole Church, Ps. 124, "Had it not been the 
Lord who was on our side, now may Israel say." 
• * * For this time enough of such com- 
plaining! Our dear Lord Christ be and remain 
our dear Lord Christ, praised in eternity ! Amen. 



TO HIS 'WIFE. 

To my Gracious Lady,* Catherine Luther, of 
Bora and Zulsdorf, near Wittenberg, — my 
Sweetheart 

Grace and peace, my dear maid and wife! 
Your Grace shall know that we are here, God 
be praised! — fresh and sound; eat like Bohe- 
mians, — yet not to excess — guzzle like Germans, 
— yet not much ; — but are joyful. For our gra- 
cious Lord of Magdeburg, Bishop Amsdorf, is 
our messmate. We know nothing new but that 
Doct. Caspar Mecum and Menius have journeyed 
from Hagenau to Strasburg, in the service and 
in honour of Hans von Jehnen. M. Philipjjsj" 
is nice again, God be praised! Tell my dear 
Doct. Schiefer, that his King Ferdinand will 
have a cry, as if he would ask the Turlc to be 
godfather, over the Evangelical Princes. Hope 
it is not true, it would be too bad. Write me 
whether you got all that I sent you, as lately, 
90 Fl. by Wolf Paerman, &c. Herewith I com- 
mend you to God. Amen. And let the children 
pray. There is here such a heat and drought 
that it is unspeakable and insupportable, day 
and night. Come dear Last Day! Amen. Fri- 
day after Margarethae, 1540. The Bishop of 
Magdeburg sends thee friendly greeting. 



TO HIS WIFE. 

To the rich Lady at Zulsdorf, Lady Katherin 
Lulherin, — bodily resident at Wittenberg, and 
mentally wandering at Zulsdorf, — my be 
loved, — for her own hands. In her absence 
to be broken and read by Doct. Pomeran, 
Preacher 

* Jun/ffer, hlerally, virgin. LuiherV letters lo his wile 
are generally marked by a dash of irony, parliciilarly in 
tile superscriplioiis. t Melanchtliun 



2fi 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



* grant that we may find a 

good drink of beer with you ! For, God willing, 
to-morrow, as Tuesday, we will set out for Wit- 
tenberg. It is all dung with the Diet at Hage- 
nau, — pains and labour lost, and expenses in 
vain. Howbeit, if we have done nothing else 
we have brought M. Philipps out of hell, and 
will fetch him home again, from the grave, with 
much joy, if God will, and by his grace. Amen. 
The Devil out here is, himself, possessed with 
nine bad devils; he is burning and doing mis- 
chief, after a frightful fashion. More than a 
thousand acres of wood in the Thuringiari forest 
belonging to my most Gracious Master have 
been burned and are yet burning. Moreover, 
there is tidings to-day that the f'licst of Werda 
is also on fire, and many others beside. No 
attempts to quench the flames are of any avail. 
That will maUe wood dear. Pray and cause 
prayers to be said against tlxe wicked Satan, 
who seeketh, vehemently seeketh to ruin us not 
only in body and soul but also in name and 
estate. May Christ our Lord come from heaven 
and kindle a bit of a fire too, for the Devil and 
his angels, that he shall not be able to quench! 
Amen ! I am not certain whether this letter 
will find you at Wittenberg or at Zulsdorf, else 
I would have written more. Herewith I com- 
mend thee to God, Amen! Greet our children, 
our boarders and all. Monday after Jacobi 1640. 



TO HIS WIFE. 

To the deeply learned Lady Katharin Lutherin, 
— my Gracious Housewife at Wittenberg. 
Grace and Peace ! Dear Kate, we sit here 
and let ourselves be martyred, and would fain 
be otf; but methinks that cannot be, under a 
week. Thou mayest tell M. Philipps to correct 
his postil. He never understood why our Lord, 
in the gospel, calls riches thorns. Here is the 
school to learn that. But I shudder to think 
that thorns, in the Scripture, are always threat- 
ened with fire. Wherefore I have the greater 
patience, if haply, by the help of God, I maybe 
able to bring some good to pass. Thy sons are 
still at Mansfeld. For the rest, we have enough 
to eat and to drink, and shoulil have good days, 
were it not for this vexatious afl'air. I think 
the Devil is mocking us. May God mock him 
again! Pray for us! The messenger is in 
great haste. St. Dorothy's day, 1546. 



TO HIS WIFE. 

To my dear Housewife, Katharin Lutherin, Doc- 
toress, Self-martyress, my Gracious Lady, — 
for her hands and feet. 
Grace and Peace in the Lord ! Dear Kate, 

♦ A line is wanting here. 



do thou read John and the little catechism, con 
cerning which thou once saidst, that all con- 
tained in that book is by me. For thou must 
needs care, before thy God, just as if he were 
not Almighty, and could not create ten Doctor 
Martins if the single old one were to drown in 
the Saale,or the Oven-hole, or Wolf's Vogellieerd. 
Leave me in peace with thy anxiety. I have 
a better guardian than thou and all the angels 
are. He lies in the crib, and hangs upon the 
Virgin's teats, but sitteth, nevertheless, at the 
right hand of God, the Almighty Father. There- 
fore be in peace. Amen ! 

I think that hell and the whole world must 
now be emptied of all their devils, who, — per- 
ad venture all on my account, — have come to 
gether, here in Eisleben. So firm and hard the 
matter stands. • * • Pray ! pray ! pray 
and help us that we may do well ! For I was 
minded to grease the wagon to-day, in ira niea, 
but pity for my fatherland withheld me. I too 
am become a jurist. But it will not go. It were 
better they let me remain a theologian. • • • 
They demean themselves as they were God ; 
which they were best cease from betimes, ere 
their God-head becomes a devil-head, as it hap- 
pened unto Lucifer, who could not remain in 
heaven by reason of his arrogance. Well, God's 
will be done i • • * The domestic wine 
here is good, and the Naumburg beer is very 
good, except that I think it makes my breast 
full of phlegm with its pitch. The Devil has 
spoiled us the beer, in all the world, with his 
pitch, and, with you, the wine, with sulphur. 
* * * And know that all the letters which 
thou hast written have arrived here ; and to-day 
came that which thou wrotest next Friday, to- 
gether with the letter of ilf. Philipps, — that thou 
mayest not be impatient. The Sunday after 
Dorothy's day, 1546. 

Thy dear Lord, 

M. LCTHEB. 



TO HIS WIFE. 

To my friendly, dear Kate Luther, at Witten- 
berg. For her own hands, &c. 
Grace and Peace in the Lord ! Dear Kate, 
we arrived to-day, at 8 o'clock, in Halle ; but 
could not proceed to Eisleben, for there met us 
a great Anabaptist with billows of water and 
cakes of ice, covering the country, and threaten 
ing us with baptism. For the same cause we 
could not return again, on account of the Mulda; 
but were forced to lie still at Halle, between 
the waters. Not that we thirsted to drink of 
them. We took, instead, good Torgau beer and 
good Rhenish wine, and comforted and refreshed 
ourselves with the same, while we waited till 
the Saale should have spent her wrath. For, 
since the people and the coachmen and we 
ourselves, were fearful, we did not wish to 
venture into the water and tempt God. Fo? 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



27 



llie Devil is our enemy and dwelleth in the 
water, and prevention is better than complain- 
ing, and there is no need to give the Pope and 
his officers occasion for a foolish joy. » • • 
For the present, nothing more, except to bid thee 
pray for us and be good. I think if thou hadst 
been with us, thou wouldst also have counselled 
us to do as we have done. Then, for once, we 
bad followed thy counsel. Herewith be com- 
mended to God. Amen. Halle, on the day of 
Pauls conversion, anno 1 546. 

Martinus Lutber, Doct. 



TO HIS FATHER. 

A LETTER OF CONSOLATION IN SICKNESS. 

To my dear Father, Hans Luther, citizen at 
Mansfeld in the valley. — Grace and Peace in 
Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour ! Amen. 
Dear Father, Jacob, my brother, has written 
me that you are dangerously sick. Seeing then 
that the air is now bad, and that otherwise 
there is danger from all quarters, — also in regard 
of the times, I am moved with anxiety on your 
account. For although God has hitherto given 
and preserved to you a firm and hardy body, 
yet (loth your age, at this time, cause me anxious 
thoughts. Albeit, without that, we are none of 
us secure of our life a single hour, neither ought 
we to be. Wherefore, I had been beyond mea- 
sure delighted to come to you bodily, but my 
good friends have dissuaded me therefrom, and 
I myself must think that I ought not to tempt 
God by venturing upon danger, for you know 
with what favour lords and peasants regard 
me. 

But great joy would it be to me, — so it were 
possible — that you, together with the mother, 
would suffer yourselves to be Vjrought hither to 
us; which my Kate also with tears desireth, 
and we all. 1 hope it; we would wait upon 
you after the best manner. To this end have I 
despatched Cyriac to you, to see if your weak- 
ness might allow of it. For whether, according 
to the will of God, you are destined for longer 
life here, or for life hereafter, I would, from my 
heart, as is fitting, be bodily near you, and, 
according to the fourth* commandment, with 
cliildlike faith and service, prove myself grate- 
ful toward God antl you. 

iVIeanwhile, I pray the Father, — who hath 
created and given you for a father to me, — from 
my hearts ground, that he would strengthen 
you according to his groundless love, and en- 
lighten and preserve you by his Spirit, that you 
may know, with joy and thanksgiving, the 
blessed doctrine of his Son, our Lord Jesus 
Christ, to which you have now, by his grace, 
been called, and have come out of the horrible 
lormer darkness and errors. And I hope that 

* According to llie Lutheran Catechism, which adopts 
the H(iman Catholic arrangement of the Decalogue. 



his Grace which hath given you this knowledge, 
and therewith hath begun his work in you, will 
preserve and continue it to the end, into yonder 
life and the joytul future of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Amen ! 

For he hath already sealed this doctrine and 
faith in you, and confirmed it with tokens, to 
wit: that you have suffered, for my name's 
sake, much reviling, contumely, scorn, mockery, 
contempt, hatred, enmity, and danger, together 
with us all. But these are the true signs wherein 
we must be like unto our Lord Christ, as St. 
Paul saith, Rom. viii. 17, that we may be glori 
fied together with him. 

Wherefore let your heart be refreshed and 
comforted now in your weakness, for we have, 
in yonder life with God, a sure and faithful 
helper, Jesus Christ, who, for us, hath destroyed 
death together with sin, and now sitteth there 
for us, and, together with all the angels, looketh 
down upon us and tendeth us, when we go out. 
that we need not care, nor fear to sink, nor fall 
into ruin. For he hath said it and promised, 
he will and cannot lie nor deceive us. Thereof 
there can be no doubt. Ask! saith he, and ye 
shall receive, seek and ye shall find! Knock 
and it shall be opened unto you! And the 
whole psalter is full of such comfortable assu- 
rances, especially the 91st psalm, which is par- 
ticularly good to be read by all that are sick. 
• • • But, if it be his will that you be still 
withheld from that better life, and continue to 
suffer with us in this troubled and unblest vale 
of sorrows, and to see and hear our misery, and, 
together with all Christians, help to bear and 
overcome it, he will also give you grace to ac- 
cept all this with willing obedience. For this 
cursed life is nothing else but a right vale of 
sorrows. The longer one remainetli in it, the 
more sin, wickedness, plague and misery one 
sees and experiences, and there is no cessation 
nor diminution of the same until we are beaten 
upon with the spade. Then, at last, it must 
cease and suffer us to sleep contentedly, in the 
peace of Christ, until he shall come and wake 
us again with gladness. Amen! 

Herewith I commend you to Hiin who loveth 
you better than you love yoiuself, and hath 
proved his love in that he hath taken your sins 
upon himself, and paid with his blood, and hath 
given you to know the same by his gospel and 
to believe it by his Spirit. * » * The same, 
our dear Lord and Saviour be with you and by 
you, until — God grant it may come to pass here 
or yonder — we see each other again in joy. 
For our faith is sure, and we doubt not that we 
shall shortly see each other again with Christ; 
seeing the departure from this life to God is 
much less than if I should come hither from you 
at Mansfeld, or you should go hence from me 
at Wittenberg. That is true, of a certainty. It 
is but an hour of sleep, and then all shall be 
changed. 

Howbeit. I hope that your pastor and preacher 
will show you richly a true service in these 



28 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



things, so that you scarce shall need my gossip, 
— yet could I not omit to excuse my bodily ab- 
sence, whicli, God knows, grievelb me from the 
heart. 

My Kate, Hanschen, Lenichen, Aunt Lehne 
and the whole house greet you and pray for 
you faithfully. Greet my dear mother and all 
our friends! God's Grace and Power be and 
remain with you forever! Amen. 
Your dear son, 

Martinus Lutheh. 
Wittenberg, 15th February, anno 1530. 



TO HIS SON JOHN. 

Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little 
son. I see with pleasure that tliou learnest 
well and prayest diligently. Do so, my son, and 
contiiRie. When I come home I will bring thee 
a pretty fairing. 

I know a pretty, merry garden wherein there 
are many children. They have little golden 
coats, and they gather beautiful apples under 
the trees, and pears, cherries, plums and wheat- 
plums; — they sing and jump and are merry. 
They have beautiful little horses, too, with gold 
bits and silver saddles. And I asked the man 
to whom the garden belongs, whose children 
they were? And he said. They are the children 
that love to pray and to learn, and are good. 
Then I said, Dear man, I have a son too, his 
name is Johnny Luther. May he not also come 
into this garden and eat these beautiful apples 
and pears, and ride these fine horses? Then 
the man said. If he loves to pray and to learn, 
and is good, he shall come into this garden, and 
Lippus and Jost too, and when they all come 
together they shall have fifes and trumpets, 
lutes, and all sortsof music, and they shall dance, 
and shoot with little cross-bows. 

An<l he showed me a fine meadow there in 
the garden, made for dancing. There hung 
nothing but golden fifes, trumpets, and fine silver 
cross-bows. But it was early, and the children 
had not yet eaten; therefore I could not wait 
the dance, and I said to the man : Ah ! dear sir! 
1 will immediately go and write all this to my 
little son Johnny, and tell him to pray diligently, 
and to learn well, and to be good, so that he 
may also come to this garden. But he has an 
aunt Lehne, he must bring her witli him. Then 
the man said. It shall be so; go and write him 
so. 

Therefore, my dear little son Johnny, learn 
and pray away! and tell Lippus and Jost too, 
that they must learn and pray. And then you 
shall come to the garden together. Herewith I 
commend thee to Almighty God. And greet 
aunt Lehne, and give her a kiss for my sake. 
Thy dear Father, 

Martinus Luther. 
Anno 1530. 



TO JONAS VON STOCKHAUSEN. 

A LETTER OF ADVICE INSTRUCTING HIM HOW TO CONTEND WITH 
HIS WEARIMESS OF UFE. WRITTEN THE 37th KOV., 1632. 

To the severe and firm Jonas von Stookhausen^ 

Captain at Nordhausen, my Gracious Master 

and good friend. 

Grace and peace in Christ! Severe, firm, 
dear Master and friend. It hath been made 
known to me by good friends how hardly the 
foul Fiend assaileth you with weariness of life 
and desire of death. O! my dear friend, here 
is high time not to trust, by any means, nor to 
follow your own thoughts, but to hear other 
j)eople who are free from such buffetings. Yea! 
bind your ear firmly to our mouth, and let our 
word enter your heart; so shall God through 
our word comfort and strengthen you. 

In the first place, you know that man shall 
and must obey God, and diligently guard him, 
self against disobedience to his will. Since 
then you are sure and must comprehend that 
God gives you life, and will not yet have you 
dead, your thoughts should yield to his Divine 
will, and you should obey him cheerfully, and 
have no doubt that such thoughts, as disobedient 
to the will of God, are, of a certainty, shot and 
thrust with force into your heart by the Devil. 
Wherefore you behove to resist them firmly, 
and forcibly bear, or tear them out again. 

To our Lord Christ, also, life was sore and 
bitter, yet would he not die without his Father's 
will, and he fled death, and preserved life 
while he could, and said, My hour is not yet 
come. And Elias and Jonas, and other pro- 
phets, called and cried for death, by reason of 
great sorrow and impatience of life, and, more- 
over, cursed their birth, their day and life. Yet 
were they constrained to live and to bear their 
weariness with all their might, until their hour 
came. 

Truly, you behove to follow these words and 
examples, as the words and admonitions of the 
Holy Spirit, and to spue out and throw from 
you the thoughts which drive you the contrary 
way. And, though it may be sore and difficult 
to do, let it seem to you as if you were bound 
and fettered with chains, out of which you must 
twist and work yourself loose, till the sweat 
breaks from you. For the Devil's darts, when 
they stick so deep, may not be drawn forth 
with laughter, nor without labour; but with 
force must they be torn out. 

Wherefore it is needful that you take heart 
and comfort against yourself, and speak with 
indignation against yourself: "Nay, fellow! be 
thou never so unwilling to live, yet shalt thou 
and must thou live; for my God will have it 
so, and I will have it so. Get you gone! ye 
devil's thoughts of dying and deatli, into the 
abyss of hell. Ye have nothing to do here," 
&c. And grind your teetli together against such 
thoughts, and set up such a ha.-d head for Gods 
will, and make yourself more obstinate and stiff" 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



29 



necked than any curst boor or shrew, yea, harder 
than any anvil of iron. 

If you shall so attack yourself and contend 
against yourself, God will surely help you. 
But if you do not struggle nor defend yourself, 
but leave such thoughts free to plague you at 
their leisure, you will soon be lost. 

But the best of all advice is, not to fight with 
them always, but, if you can, to despise them, — 
to act as though you felt them not, to think of 
something else, and to speak in this wise : 
Come! Devil, do not teaze me! I cannot now 
attend to thy thoughts ; I must ride, drive, eat, 
drink, do this or that ; — also, I must be merry 
now. Come again to-morrow ! &c. And take 
in hand whatever else you can, play and the 
like, that you may be able, freely and easily, to 
despise such thoughts, and send them from you, 
even with coarse, uncivil words, as: Dear Devil, 
if thou canst come no nearer to me, then — — ^ 
-, &c., I cannot wait for thee now. 



Let them read you, as touching such matters, 
the example of the " Louse-cracker," of the 
" Goose-fife," and the like, in Gerson, de cogita- 
tionibus blasphemia. This is the best counsel ; 
and our prayer, and the prayers of all good 
Christians, shall help you. Herewith I com- 
mend you to our dear Lord, the only Saviour, 
and true conqueror, Jesus Christ. May he 
maintain his victory and triumph against the 
Devil in your heart, and rejoice us all by his aid 
and his wonders in you ; which we comfortably 
hope and pray, according as he hath bidden 
and assured us. Amen ! 

Doctor Mabtinus Ltjtheb. 
Wittenberg, Wednesday after Catharinse. 



TO THE LADY VON STOCKHAUSEN. 

tUTHEK COUNSELS HER Ili KELATION TO THE MELANCHOLY OF HEB 
HUSBAND. 

To the honourable and virtuous Lady N. von 
Stockhausen, Captain's lady at Nordhausen, 
— my gracious and kind friend. 
Grace and peace in Christ! Honourable and 
virtuous Lady! I have written, in haste, a 
brief letter of consolation to your dear Lord. 
Well! the Devil is hostile to you both, for that 
you love his enemy, Christ. You must pay the 
price of that, as he himself saith : " Because I 
have chosen you, therefore the world hateth 
you and the prince thereof; but be of good 
cheer." Precious, in the sight of God, are the 
sufferings of his saints. But now, in haste, I 
can write but little. Take heed, before all 
things, that you leave not your husband one 
moment alone ; and let him have nothing where- 
with he might do injury to himself. Solitude, 
to him, is pure poison, and therefore the Devil 
himself driveth him to it. But it were well to 
tell or to have read in his presence, many 
stories, new tidings, and strange matters. It 
will not be amiss, if, at times, they are idle and 



false tidings, and tales of Turks, Tartars, and 
the like ; — if haply he may be incited thereby, 
to laugh and to jest. And then, down upon 
him with comfortable words of Scripture. 
Whatsoever you do, let it not be lonesome or 
still about him ; that he may not sink into 
thought. It shall do no harm, if he should be 
made angry on account thereof. Pretend as if 
you were sorry for it, and scold, &c. But still 
do it the more. Take this in haste, for want of 
better. Christ, who is the cause of such sorrow, 
will help him, as he hath lately conferred help 
on yourself. Only hold fast ! you are the apple 
of his eye. Whoever toucheth that, toucheth 
him. Amen ! 

Doctor Martisus Ltitheh. 
Wittenberg, Wednesday after Catharinse, 1532. 



TO CHANCELLOR BRUCK. 

a lbtter of encouragement in relation to the cause op 
the reformers. 

To the estimable right learned Master Gregory 
Bruck, Doctor of Laws, thj Elector of Saxony 
his Chancellor and Counsellor, my gracious 
Master and friendly, dear Gossip. 
Grace and peace in Christ ! Estimable, right 
learned, dear Master and dear Gossip. I have 
written now several times to my most gracious 
Lord and to our friends, so that I think I have 
overdone the matter, — especially, as concerneth 
my most gracious Lord ; — as if I doubted that 
the aid and grace of God were more abundant 
and more powerful with his Electoral Princely 
Grace than with me. I have done it at the in- 
stigation of our people, of whom some are so 
careful and cast down, as if God had forgotten 
us, — who cannot forget us except he first forget 
himself. Then were our cause not his cause, 
nor our doctrine his Word. Otherwise, if we 
be assured and doubt not that it is his cause and 
Word, then is our prayer certainly heard, and 
aid is already decreed and prepared, and we 
shall be helped. It cannot fail. For he saith : 
"Can a woman forget her child, that she should 
not have compassion on the fruit of her womb? 
And though she should forget, yet will not I for- 
get thee," &c. 

I saw lately two miracles. First, as I looked 
out at the window, I saw the stars in the hea- 
vens and the whole fai/ dome of God ; yet did 
I see no pillars on which the Master had placed 
this dome. Nevertheless, the heavens fell not, 
and the dome stands yet fast. Now there are 
some that seek for such pillars. They would 
fain lay hold of and feel them. And because 
they cannot do this, they struggle and tremble 
as though the heaven must certainly fall, for no 
other reason than because they cannot seize or 
see the jjillars. Could they but lay hold of these, 
the heaven would stand firm. 

Next, I saw also great thick clouds hover over 
us with such weight that they might be likened 
3* 



30 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



to a great sea. Yet saw I no floor upon which 
they rested or found footing, nor any vessels in 
which tlioy were contained. Still they fell not 
down upon us, but greeted us with a sour face 
and flew away. When they were gone, then 
shone forth botli the floor and our roof which 
had lield them, — the rainbow. That was a 
weak, thin, small floor and roof; and it va- 
nished in the clouds; and, in appearance, was 
more like an image, such as is seen through a 
painted glass, than a strong floor. So that one 
might despair on account of the floor, as well 
as on account of the great weight of water. 
Nevertheless, it was found in truth, that this 
almighty image (such it seemed) bore the bur- 
den of the waters and protected us. Yet there 
be some who consider, regard and fear the 
water and the thickness of the clouds and the 
heavy burden of them, more than this thin, nar- 
row and light image. For they would fain feel 
the strength of the image, and because they can- 
not do this, they fear that the clouds will occa- 
sion an everlasting sin-flood. 

Thus, in friendly wise, must I jest with your 
Honour, and yet write without jesting ; for I 
have had special joy, in that I learned that your 
Honour hath had, before all others, good courage 
and a cheerful heart in this, our butieting. I 
had hoped that, at the least, a pax poUtica might 
have been obtained, but God's thoughts are far 
above our thoughts. And it is even right, for 
He, as St. Paul saith, heareth and doth supra 
quam intelligimus aut petimus. " For we know 
not how to pray as we ought." (Rom. viii. 26.) 
If he should hear us now, after the same man- 
ner in which we pray, — that the emperor may 
give us peace, — it might be infra, not supra 
quam intelligimus, and the emperor, not God, 
should have the glory. » • • But this work 
which God hath vouchsafed to us by his Grace, 
he will also bless and further by his Spirit. He 
will find way, time and place to help us, and 
will neither forget nor delay. They have not 
yet accomplished the half of what they under- 
take, the viri sanguinis. Nor have they yet all 
returned to their homes, or whither they would 
go. Our rainbow is weak, their clouds are 
mighty, but in fine vidcbitur cujus toni. Your 
Honour v/ill pardon my gossip, and comfort 
Magister Philip and all the rest. Christ shall 
also comfort and preserve me our most gracious 
Lord. To Him be praise and thanks in eter- 
nity! Amen! To His Grace I also faithfully 
commend your Honour. 

Martinus Luther, Doct. 
Ex Eremo, 5 Aug. anno mdxxx. 



TO JOSEPH LEVIN METZSCH AT MILA. 

4NSWEB TO THE QUESTION WHETHER INHERITED DEBTS ARE TO 
BE CONSIDERED A3 A PART OF THE CROSS LAID UPON US BY GOD, 

To the severe and firm Joseph Levin Metzsch, 
at Mi la, my kind, good Master and friend. 



Grace and peace in Christ ! Severe, firm, 
dear master and friend. Whereas you are 
moved to know if pecuniary debt, inherited 
from parents, be also a cross imposed by God, — 
you may suppose that every scourge wherewith 
God scourgeth his children is a portion of the 
holy cross. Seeing then that debts, or need, or 
poverty are no light scourge, for him who knows 
not how to bear them, they are also, without 
doubt, a perceptible particle of the holy cross, 
with the children of God who know how to bear 
and to use it. But, like every other chastise- 
ment of the dear Father, it ought not to terrify 
the conscience, as a serious disfavour, but to 
comfort and strengthen it, as a fatherly rod or 
fox-tail.* For whether one fall into debt wan- 
tonly or carelessly, or whether one innocently 
inherit it, it is nevertheless appointed by God, 
and the rod is laid upon us through our own 
carelessness and wantonness. Herewith be 
commended to God ! Amen. 

Martinus Luther. 
1 2th March, 1520. 



TO THE POPE, LEO X. 

EXTRACTS. 

Luther, in this letter, derends liimseirrrom the charge of hav- 
ing attacked the persun of the Fopo ; expresses his willingness 
tu du all that is required of him, e.\cept tu recant or renounce 
the right of private interpretation, and admonishes the Pope 
not to listen to flatterers, but to those who speak the truth — 
This letter was originally written in Latin, and afterwards 
translated by Luther himself into German. 

To the most Holy Father in God, Leo the tenth, 
Pope at Rome, all blessedness in Christ Jesus 
our Lord ! Amen. 

Most holy Father in God, the troubles and the 
controversy in which I have been entangled 
now, these three years, with certain wild inen, 
compel me, from tiine to time, to look toward 
thee, and to think of thee. Yea! seeing it is 
believed that thou art the only principal cause 
of this controversy, I cannot avoid to think of 
thee without cessation. For though I am com 
pelled by some of thy unchristian flatterers, who, 
without all reason, are incensed against me, — 
to appeal from thy chair and judgment to a free 
Christian council in my cause ; yet have I never 
so estranged my mind from thee, as not, with all 
my powers, to wish the best at all times to thee 
and thy Romish Chair, and, with diligent, hearty 
prayer, as much as I was able, to implore the 
same from God, True it is, that I have taken 
upon inyself greatly to despise and to overcome 
them that hitherto have been at pains to threaten 
me with the loftiness and greatness of thy name 
and power. But there is now one thing which 
I may not despise, which also is the reason that 
I write to thee again ; and that js, that I per- 
ceive that I am maligned and misinterpreted, 
and ain said not even to have spared thy perse n. 

* A kitid of whip. 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



31 



But I will freely and openly confess that, so 
far as I am conscious, as oft as I have made 
mention of thy person, I have ever said the best 
and most honourable things concerning thee. 
And if, at any time, I have not done so, I can, 
myself, in no wise commend it, and must con- 
firm the judgment of my accusers with full con- 
fession, and wish for nothing more dearly, than 
to sing the counterpart of this my insolence and 
wickedness, and to retract my faulty word. I 
bave called thee a Daniel in Babylon ; and how 
diligently I have defended thy innocence against 
the slanderer Sylvester, every one who reads it 
may superabundantly understand. • • » 

* * • But this is true, I have freely at- 
tacked the Romish Chair, which they name the 
Roman Court, concerning which thou thyself 
must confess, — and no one upon earth can con- 
fess otherwise, — that it is viler and more shame- 
ful than ever was Sodom or Gomoriah or Baby- 
lon. And, as far as I perceive, its wickedness 
henceforth is neither to be counselled nor helped. 
Everything there has become altogether despe- 
rate and bottomless. Wherefore it hath vexed 
me, that under thy name and the semblance of 
the Romish Church, the poor people, in all the 
world, bave been cheated and injured. Against 
which I have contended and will yet contend, 
while my Christian spirit liveth within me. * * 

* * • Meanwhile thou sittest, holy Father 
Leo, like a sheep among the wolves, and like 
Daniel among the lions, and like Ezekiel among 
the scorpions. What canst thou alone do among 
50 many wild monsters ? And though three or 
four learned and pious Cardinals should fall to 
ihy lot, what were they among such a multi- 
tude? Ye should sooner perish with poison ere 
ye could undertake to help the matter. It is 
over with the Romish Chair. God's wrath, 
without cessation, hath overtaken it. It is op- 
posed to the general Councils. It will not suffer 
tself to be instructed ncr reformed. Yet shall 

not its raging and unchristian manners hinder 
it from fulfilling that which is said of its mother, 
the ancient Babylon, "We would have healed 
Babylon and she is not healed, — we will let her 
go. " Jer. li. 9. 

Haply, it were thy task and that of the Car- 
dinals to prevent this misery; but the sickness 
mocks medicine; — horse and carriage obey not 
the coachman. This is the cause why I have 
ever so grieved, thou good Leo, that thou hast 
been made a pope at this time, who wert well 
worthy to have been pope in better times. The 
Roman Chair is not worthy of thee and the like 
of thee ; rather the evil Spirit ought to be pope, 
who also surely doth reign in Babylon, more 
than thou. 

O ! would to God thou wert rid of the honour, 
as they call it, — thy most mischievous friends, — 
and mightest maintain thyself with some pre- 
bend, or with thy paternal inheritance! Truly, 
none but Judas Iscariot and his like, whom 
God hath rejected, should be honoured with 
such honour. For tell me, whereunto art thou 



yet of use in Popedom ? Save, that the worse 
and more desperate it grows, the more vehe 
mently it abusetli thy power and title -o injure 
the people in body and soul, to increase s'n and 
shame, and to quench faith and truth. O! thou 
most unhappy Leo ! thou sittest in the most 
dangerous of all chairs. Verily! I tell thee the 
truth, for I bear thee good-will. • * » 

* * * I will speak yet farther. It had 
never entered my heart to storm against the 
Roman Court nor to dispute concerning it. For 
since I saw that there was no help, — that cost 
and pains were lost, I treated it with contempt, 
gave it a letter of dismission, and said : Adieu 
dear Rome! That which stinketh, let it stink 
on ! and that which is filthy, let it be filthy still ! 
(Revel. XX. 11.) And so I betook myself to the 
silent, quiet study of the Holy Scriptures, that I 
might become profitable to them among whoin 
I dwelt. And, when now I laboured not un- 
fruitfully in this matter, the evil Spirit opened 
his eyes and became aware of the same. 
Straightway he stirred up, with a mad ainbition, 
his servant John Eck, — a special enemy of 
Christ and the truth, — and bade him drag me, 
unawares, into a disputatioii ; — seizing upon a 
word touching the popedom that had escaped 
me by chance. ••»••• 

• • * So now I come, holy Father Leo, 
and laying myself at thy feet, entreat thee, if it 
be possible, to put forth thine hand, and to place 
a bridle upon those flatterers who are enemies 
of peace, and yet pretend peace. But, as to 
retracting my doctrine, of that nothing will come. 
And let no one take it upon himself, except he 
wish to entangle the matter in still greater con- 
fusion. Moreover, I may not suffer rule or 
measure in the interpretation of the Scripture, 
seeing that the word of God, which teacheth all 
freedom, must not and shall not be bound. If 
these two articles be allowed me, nothing else 
shall be laid upon me, that I will not do and 
suffer with all willingness. I am an eneiny to 
strife and will incense or provoke no one, but 
neither will I be provoked. And if I be pro- 
voked I will not be without a word, spoken or 
written, God willing. Thy Holiness may with 
short and easy words take it upon thyself, and 
extinguish all this controversy, and thereupon 
be silent and command peace, which I have, 
alway, been altogether eager to hear. 

Wherefore, iny Holy Father, do not listen to 
thy sweet ear-singers, who say that thou art not 
mere man, but united with God, and hast all 
things to command and to require. It may not 
be, and thou wilt not effect it. Thou art the 
servant of all the servants of God, and art in a 
more dangerous and miserable condition than 
any man upon the earth. Let them not deceive 
thee, who lie to thee and pretend that thou art 
lord of the world; and who will not suffer any 
one to be a Christian except he be subject tr, 
thee; — who babble that thou hast power if 
heaven, in hell, and in purgatory. They arn 
thy enemies, and seek to destroy thy sou' 



32 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



* * * They err all, who say thou art above 
the Council and universal Christendom. They 
err who give to thee alone the power to inter- 
pret Scripture. Tliey, all of them, seek nothing 
else than how they may sanction their unchris- 
tian doings in Christendom by means of thy 
name; as the evil Spirit, alas! hath done through 
many of thy predecessors. In brief, believe 
none who exalt thee, but only them who humble 
thee. That is God's judgment, as it is written : 
"He hath put down the mighty from their seats, 
and exalted them of low degree." Luke i. 52. 

See how unlike are Christ and his vicege- 
rents ! For they would all fain be his vicege- 
rents, and, verily, I fear, they are too truly his 
vicegerents. For a vicegerent is so in the ab- 
sence of his lord. If then a pope reigneth in 
the absence of Christ, who dwelleth not in his 
heart, is he not too truly the vicegerent of Christ? 

* * * But what may such a pope be except 
an antichrist and an idol? How much better 
did the apostles, who called themselves, and 
suffered themselves to be called, only servants 
of Christ, who dwelt in them, and not vicege- 
rents of an absent Christ. 

Peradventure I am impudent, in that I seem 
to instruct so great a height, from which every 
one should receive instruction, — and as some 
of thy poisonous flatterers represent thee, — from 
which all kings and judgment-seats receive 
judgment. But I follow in this St. Bernard, in 
his book addressed to pope Eugene, which all 
popes ought to know by heart. I do it, not 
with the design to instruct thee, but from a pure 
fidelity of care and duty which, of right, con- 
straineth every man to take thought for his 
neighbour even in those things which are secure, 
and suifereth us to regard neither honour nor 
dishonour, so diligently doth it consider a neigh- 
boor's danger and mishap. Wherefore, since I 
know that thy Holiness floateth and hovereth 
at Rome, — that is, upon the highest seas, — with 
countless dangers raging on all sides, and liveth 
and worketh in such misery that, haply, thou 
hast need of the help, even of the meanest 
Christian, I have thought it not unmeet that I 
should forget thy majesty until I had fulfilled 
the duty of brotherly love. I may not flatter in 
so serious and dangerous a matter, in which, — 
if there be some who will not understand that 
I am thy friend and more than subject, — there 
shall yet be found one who understandeth it. 

In conclusion, that I may not appear empty 
before thy Holine.-;s, I bring with me a little 
book,* which /.as gone forth under thy name; 
for a good wish and a beginning of peace and 
good hope; fiom which thy Holiness may taste 
with what kind of business I would fain occupy 
myself, and not unprofitably, if thy unchristian 
flatterers would let me. It is a little book, if 
thou regardest the paper ; but yet the whole 
sum of a Christian life is comprehended in it, 
if the sense be understood. I am poor and 

* Liber de Libertate Christiana. 



have nothing else wherewith I may make 
proof of my service ; neither canst thou be 
benefited more than with spiritual benefits. 
Herewith I commend myself to thy Holiness, 
whom may Jesus Christ preserve forevermore ' 
Amen. 

Wittenberg, 6th September, 1520. 



TO BARBARA LISCHNERIN. 



LCTHER SEEKS TO PACIFY HER IN REOABD TO HER DOUBTS OF 
FUTURE BLESSEDNESS. 

Grace and peace in Christ! Virtuous, dear 
Lady ! Your dear brotlrer, Jerome Waller, hath 
made known to me that you are greatly troubled 
with doubts respecting the eternal Providence. 
For which I am heartily sorry. May Christ, 
our Lord, deliver you therefrom ! Amen. 

For I know the sickness well, and have lain 
in the hospital with it, even unto eternal death. 
Now would I fain, over and above my prayers, 
counsel and comfort you. But writing in such 
matters is a feeble thing; yet, as much as in ine 
lies, will I not refrain therefrom, if God will 
give me grace for the work. And I will make 
known to you how God hath helped me to es- 
cape such buffetings, and with what art I yet 
preserve myself from them day by day. 

First, you must fix it firmly in your heart, 
that such thoughts are assuredly the inflation 
and the fiery darts of the Devil. So saith the 
Scripture, Prov. xxv. 27, " He that searoheth the 
height of majesty shall be cast down.''* Now 
are such thoughts nothing but a searching of the 
Divine Majesty; they would fain search his 
high Providence. And Jesus Sirach saith: 
^'■Alliora nc qtuBsieris" "Thou shalt not inquire 
after that which is too high for thee ;" but what 
God hath commanded thee, that look after. For 
it proftteth thee nothing to gaze after that which 
is not commanded thee. And David also com- 
plaineth that he had brought evil upon himself, 
when he would inquire after things that were 
too high for him. 

Wherefore it is certain, that this cometh not 
from God but from the Devil. He plagues the 
heart therewith ; that men may become enemies 
of God and despair ; which, notwithstanding, 
God hath strictly forbidden in the first com- 
mandment; and he willeth that men shall trust 
and love and praise Him by whoin we live. 

Secondly, when such thoughts occur, you shall 
learn to ask yourself: " Friend, in what com- 
mandment is it written that I should think of 
these things or handle them?'' And if no such 
commandment is found, then learn to say ; " So 
get thee gone, thou ugly Devil ! Thou wouldst 
fain drive me to care for myself; whereas God. 
everywhere speaketh: "I care for thee; look 

* English version : For men to search their ov/n gloiy 
is not glory. 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



33 



unto me and wait that which I shall appoint, 
and let me care," — as St. Peter teacheth, — 1 
Pet. V. 7 : " Cast all your care upon him for he 
careth for you;" and David, Ps. Iv. 22: "Cast 
thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain 
thee." 

Thirdly, albeit, such thoughts do not imme- 
diately cease, (for the Devil doth not willingly 
desist,) you likewise, on your part, must not 
cease, but must still turn your heart away from 
them, and say: " Hearest thou not, Devil, that I 
will not have such thoughts? And God hath 
forbidden them. Get thee gone, I must now 
be thinking of his commandments, and let him 
care for me himself the while. If thou art so 
exceeding wise in such matters, then get thee to 
neaven, and dispute with God himself. He 
can sufficiently answer thee. ' And, in this 
way, you must still send him from you, and 
turn your heart toward the commandments of 
God. 



FROM A LETTER 

TO THE CHRISTIANS AT ANTWERP, IN WHICH LUTHER CAUTIONS 
THEM AGAISST FALSE TEACHERS. 

Grace and peace from God our Father and 
the Lord Jesus Christ! My very dear masters 
and friends in Christ ! I am moved by Chris- 
tian love and carefulness to send this writing 
unto you. For I have learned how that Spirits 
of error are bestirring themselves among you, 
which have the boldness to hinder and defile 
the Christian doctrine, as happeneth in various 
places. ••*•»»• 

* * * This one will have no baptism, 
that one denies the sacrament, another supposes 
a world between this and the last day. Some 
teach that Christ is not God ; some say this and 
some say that; and there are almost as many 
sects and creeds as there are heads. There is 
no simpleton now so rude, but if he dream or 
imagine somewhat, the Holy Spirit must have 
inspired it, and he claims to be a prophet. * 

* * * So then, dear friends, there hath 
come among you also a Spirit of disorder, in 
bodily shape, who would fain cause you to err, 
and leail you astray from the right under- 
standing, into his conceits. Therefore take heed 
and be warned I But that you may the better 
avoid his tricks, I will here relate some of them. 

One article is : he holds that every man hath 
the Holy Spirit. 

The second: The Holy Spirit is nothing else 
,han our own reason and understanding. 

The tliird : Every man believes. 

The fourth: There is no hell or damnation, 
but only tlie flesh is damned. 

The fifth : Every soul will have eternal life. 

The sixth : Nature teaches that I should do 
nnto tny neighbour as I would that he should 
do to me ; and to will this is faith, 
E 



The seventh : The Law is not violated by 
evil lust, so I do not gratify the lust. 

The eighth : He who hath not the Holy Spirit, 
hath also no sin, for he hath no reason. 

All these are mere wanton articles of folly, 
and excepting the seventh, not worth answering 
And your love shall do right to desjiise this 
Spirit. For he is as many others are now, here 
and there, who care not much what they teach, 
and only desire that men may speak of them, 
and have to do with them. And the Devil also 
seeketh this uneasiness, that he may wrestle 
with us, and the while hinder us, so that we 
forget the true doctrine, or converse not with it. 
Even so he useth to deceive the people with 
other hobgoblins, that they may miss their way, 
&c. And he setteth their mouth agape, that 
they cannot attend to their business the while. 
Just so this Spirit does with you, in these arti- 
cles. 

Wherefore, be warned, for God's sake, and 
take heed that ye despise and let go all that 
presenteth itself as new and strange, and v\ liich 
it is not necessary to the salvation of the soul to 
know. For, with such goblins, he seeketh to 
catch the idle. * * *■ * * * 

We have all enough to do, our whole life 
long, to learn the commandments of God and 
his Son Christ. When we are well instructed 
in these, we will further inquire into these 
secret articles, which this Spirit stirreth up 
without cause, only that he may obtain honour 
anil fame. So then continue in the way, and 
learn what Paul teacheth the Romans, and look 
at my preface there, that you may know which 
is the right method of learning in the Scriptures; 
and withdraw yourselves from useless prattlers 
Herewith I commend you to God. And pray 
for me ! Amen. 



TO HIS MESSMATES. 

HE COMPARES THE ACTIONS OF THE BIRDS ABOUT HIM TO A DIET 

Grace and peace in Christ, dear Masters and 
friends ! I have received the letters written 
by you all, and have learned how it fareth on 
every hand. That you, on your part, may lean, 
how it fareth here, I give you to know that we, 
namely I, Master Veit and Cyriac, go not to the 
Diet at Augsburg, but we have come to a diet 
of a different sort, elsewhere. 

There is a !OoA;cr!/jiist beneath our window like 
to a little forest. There the jackdaws and the 
crows have established a diet. There is such 
a riding to and fro, — such a screaming day and 
night without cessation, as if they were all 
drunk, full and mad. Young and old chatter 
together, so that I wonder how voice and breath 
can hold out so long. And I would like to know 
if any of this nobility and military gentry are 
left with you ; for methinks they have assembled 
together here, from all the world. I have no* 
yet seen their emperor, but the nobility and the 



34 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



great fellows hover and wriggle constantly be- 
fore our eyes. They are not very splendidly 
2lad, but simply, in uniform colour, all alike 
black, all alike gray-eyed, and all alike sing one 
song; yet with a pleasant difference of young 
and old, great and small. They care not for 
great palaces and halls; for their hall is arched 
with the fair wide heaven ; their floor is the 
field, wainscotted with beautiful green bows ; 
and the walls are as wide as the ends of the 
world. Neither do they care for steed or har- 
ness. They have feathered wheels with which 
they can fly from the firelocks and escape from 
tvrath. They are grand, mighty lords ; but what 
:hey will decree, I know not yet. 

But so far as I have learned from their inter- 
preter, they intend a mighty expedition and 
warfare against wheat, rye, oats, malt, and all 
kinds of grain ; and there will be many a knight 
made in this cause, and great deeds will be 
done. 

Thus do we sit here at the diet, and hear and 
see with great joy and love how the princes and 
lords, together with the other estates of the em- 



pire, sing and luxuriate so joyfully together 
But a special joy have we when we see in what 
a knightly fashion they wriggle, wipe their bills, 
and overthrow the defence, that they may con- 
quer and acquire glory against corn and malt. 
We wish them joy and weal, and especially 
that they may be spitted upon a hedge-stake. 
But I hold that they are nothing else but sophists 
and papists, with their preaching and writing; 
whom I must needs have before me in a heap, 
that I may hear their lovely voice and discourse, 
and see how useful a gentry it is, to devour all 
that is on the earth, and, in return, to chatter 
for pastime. 

To day we have heard the first nightingale, 
for they have not been willing to trust April. 
Hitherto we have had only splendid weather. 
It hath not rained once, except yesterday, a 
little. With you peradventure it may be other- 
wise. Herewith be commended to God, and 
keep house well ! 

Martinus Luthkh, Doct 
From the Diet of the Malt-Turks, 28th April, 

anno 1530. 



JACOB BOEHME.* 



Boni 1575. Ditd 1624. 



This celebrated mystic, whose speculations 
procured for him, in his own age, the significant 
title of ^'■Phihisophus Teutonicus," appears in 
strong contrast with the great Reformer by 
whose side he is placed in these pages.f He 
may be regarded as the antipodes of Luther in 
all the leading tendencies of his mind. Lu- 
ther's fame rests on his character, — that of 
Boehnie is derived from his thought The one 
was a man of action, with an eye to practical 
effect in all that he wrote and did ; the other 
was a quietist, whose spirit reposed with intense 
inwardness on itself, and who knew no world 
but that of his own dreams. Luther sought to 
ground a popular theology, Boehme strove to 
penetrate the deepest mysteries of Being. Lu- 
ther aimed at what was needful or profitable 
for the daily use and conduct of life, Boehme 
aspired to the highest truth. The one laboured 
to instruct the masses, the other to instruct 
himself. The former had his sphere in the 
actual, the other in the absolute. They relate 
to each other as Paul and John. 

Boehme, like Luther, was a son of the people. 
His birthplace was Alt Seidenberg, in Lower 
Lusatia, near Gorlitz. where he afterward 
practised his craft. His parents were peasants 
of the poorest sort ; his calling that of shoe- 
maker. Born to narrow fortunes and humble 
hopes, the shoemaker of Gorlitz, like his Eng- 
lish fellow-craftsman, the slioemaker of Leices- 
ter, was " one of those to whom under ruder or 
purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is 
pleased to manifest itself, and across all the 
hulls of ignorance and earthly degradation, 
shine through, in unspeakable awfulness, in 
unspeakable beauty, on their souls."]; He re- 

* Called by English writers, Behmen. This corruption 
seems past recovery. 

t Although placed hy his side, in accordance with the 
plan of this work, Bouhme is more than half a century 
removed from Luther in chronological order. The in- 
terval hetiveon them is far from being a blank in the 
literary history of Germany. It contains many names of 
note;— among which those of ZwiiiL'li. Ulrich von Hutten, 
Sehasiiaii Frank, and Johann Fischart, would claim a 
distinguished jilace in a complete survey rif German lite- 
rature,— hut none which properly come within the scope 
of this Collection. 
J Carlyle. 



ceived no instruction from books until his 
eleventh year, and then, from no other but 
the bible, the ability to read which, was the 
extent of his schooling. But, before this, he 
had received instruction of a different sort, 
while tending cattle in the fields. 

"His daily teachers had been woods and riila. 
The silence that is in the starry sky. 
The sleep that is among the lonely hills." 

And there the God who delights to pour out 
his Spirit in vessels of this quality, — " Ber slets 
den Schafern gnddig sich bewies," — drew 
near to his soul in the eternal melodies of 
Nature. Established in his calling at Gorlitz, 
"sitting in his stall, workii.g on tanned hides, 
amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, 
and a nameless heap of rubbish," he continued 
to see visions and to dream dreams, and be- 
lieved himself the recipient and medium of 
Divine revelations. At three different times, 
according to his own account, lie was environed 
with supernatural light, which attended him, 
in one instance, for seven successive days. 
" Replenished with heavenly knowledge," he 
went out into the fields, and "viewing the 
herbs and the grass, he saw into their essences 
and properties, which were discovered to him 
by their lineaments, figures, and signatures."* 
The first reflection of this illumination was the 
"Aurora," or " The Morning-redness in the 
East," which he wrote with no view to publi- 
cation, but merely by way of record and mem- 
orandum, — "that the mysteries revealed to him 
might not pass through him as a stream." It 
became public without his consent, and was 
seized and condemned as heretical by the 
Senate of Gorlitz, at the instigation of a clerical 
persecutor. The author was admonished to 
write no more books, but to confine himself to 
his proper calling. As if the proverb, " Ne 
sulor" die, had been made expressly for him, 
Boehme meekly promised obedience, not doubt- 
ing, in his simplicity, that he had committed 

* See "Jacob Behmen's Theosophick Philosophy, un- 
folded in divers Considerations and Demonstrations, by 
Edward Taylor. With a short account oi the life of Jac. t> 
Behmen." London, 1691. 



36 



JACOB BOEHME, 



an error. A silence of seven years ensued. At 
the expiration of this term, having meanwhile 
removed from Gorlitz to Dresden, and expe- 
riencing new motions of the Spirit, he no longer 
hesitated to write and to publish. He composed, 
in rapid succession, a large number of works, 
in which he endeavors to communicate his 
revelations; struggling painfully with want of 
culture and of language, in his attempts to 
express ideas so far beyond the range of that 
experience which had furnished the only dialect 
he knew. Latin words and scientific terms, 
picked up in conversation with scholars, without 
any clear understanding of their import, are 
brought in to eke out his slender vocabulary ; 
and serve only to enhance the obscurity, by the 
unusual and illegitimate sense in which they 
are employed. "Art," he says, "hath not 
written here, neither was there any time to 
consider how to set it punctually down, accord- 
ing to the right understanding of the letters, 
but all was ordered according to the direction 
of the Spirit, which often went in haste. And 
though I could have written in a more accurate, 
fair, and plain maimer, yet the reason was this, 
that the burning fire did often force forward 
with speed, and the hand and pen must hasten 
directly after it, for it cometh and goeth as a 
sudden shower." — "I can write nothing of my- 
self, but as a child which neither knoweth nor 
understandeth, but only that which the Lord 
vouchsafeth to know in me." 

Never, since the days of the Apostles, has 
such defective scholarship been united with 
such intellectual fecundity and such important 
results. Jacob Boehme has been a guide and a 
prophet to men of the profoundest intellect, of 
the most exalted station, and the most distin- 
guished piety. Religious sects have been 
founded on his doctrine, and called by his name. 
William Law, the most devout of English 
mystics, was his disciple, and published an 
English edition of his works. Schelling, the 
most cultivated of German Transccndenlalists, 
author of the " Philosophy of Identity," bears 
witness to the depth and wealth of his intuitive 
wisdom, and reflects it in his Ontology. Goethe, 
in his youthful speculations, seems to have 
norrowed from him the leading idea of his cos- 
mogony.* King Charles I. of England rs said 

* Thp idea that Ihe matprial universe was created out 
of the ruins of a fallen, spiritual world. See "Aus mei- 
nem Leben," Book VIII. 



to have sent a special messenger to Gorlitz to 
learn of Boehme, and, after reading, in the 
English, the "Answers to the forty questions of 
the soul," to have declared, that " if, as he had 
been informed, the author was no scholar, it 
was evident that the Holy Ghost yet dwelled 
in men." 

It is not easy to collect the true form of 
Boehme's philosophy out of the thick obscurity 
of his writings. And it is more difficult still, 
to separate the pure idea from the form, in a 
system so complicated with Christian mythology 
and Christian dogmatics. One knows not how 
much or how little may be intended by the 
theological phraseology in which the author has 
clothed his speculations, where biblicai terms 
are often so warped from their literal import. 
But if we divide the various systems of philoso- 
phy, according to their ontological characteris- 
tics, into three classes; viz: the Magian or 
Dualistic, — the Unitarian, with its numberless 
varieties, theistic, atheistic, and pantheistic, 
from Anaximander to Spinoza, — and, thirdly, 
the Platonic or Trinitarian ; — the speculations 
of Boehme will be found in the last of these 
divisions. He belongs to the Platonic family 
of philosophers, by virtue of the triune nature 
which he ascribes to Being. His system* 
supposes three Principles, in which all Being 
is comprised. The first Principle, or the Fa- 
ther, — " the eternal Darkness," like the to ev of 
the Platonic Trinity, is destitute of intelligence 
in itself (axoyoj), although the Father of intelli- 
gence. It is not so much God as the source of 
God. " Fans deitnlis." From this first Prin- 
ciple proceeds, by eternal generation, the second 
Principle, the Son, "the eternal Light." And 
from these two proceeds, by eternal generation, 
the third, "the Outbirth," which is the imme- 
diate cause of the material creation. These 
three Principles are undivided in God; but, 
through the fall of Lucifer and his angels, they 
have become separated in Nature and in man. 
Man, in his natural state, partakes of the first 
Principle, and of the life which proceeds from 
the third. He becomes possessed of the second 
only by regeneration in Christ. Furthermore, 
these three Principles are manifested in seven 
elements or " Fountain Spirits," as they are 
denominated by Boehme. The first is called 

* For an account of this system, see "A Compendious 
View of the Grounds of the Teutonic Philosophy, pub- 
lished by a gentleman retired from business." London, 
1770. 



JACOB BOEHME. 



37 



Astringency ; the second, Attraction ; the third, 
Anguish ; the fourth. Heat. These four con- 
stitute the first Principle. The fifth is Light ; 
the sixth, Sound. These two constitute the 
second Principle. The seventh is the Body 
generated by the other six, in which they live 
and work, and which represents the third 
Principle. 

A full account of this system would far 
exceed the limits and design of this sketch. 
The points which have been mentioned are 
those which seemed to be most characteristic 
and fundamental, as well as most neces.^ary for 
the right understanding of the extracts given 



below. As to the practical part of Boehme's 
doctrine, it may be summed up in his own 
words, — said to have been written in an album 
— which contain, in fact, the substance of all 
practical philosophy. 

*' Wem Zeit ist wie die Ewitjkeit 
Und Ewiekeil is wie die Zeit 
Der ist belVeil von allem Streit,"* 

When he felt himself seized with what he 
supposed to be his last sickness, he caused 
himself to be removed to his old residence, 
Gorlitz, and having, as it is said, predicted the 
hour of his death, departed, saying, "Now I go 
hence into Paradise." 



TO THE 

READER OF THESE WRITINGS.* 

It is written, "The natural man understand- 
eth not the things of the Spirit, nor the mysteries 
of the kingdom of God, they are foolishness unto 
him, neither can he know them :" therefore I 
admonish and exhort the Christian lover of 
mysteries, if he will study these high writings, 
and read, search, and understand them, that he 
do not read them outwardly only, with sharp 
speculation and reasoning; for in so doing, he 
shall remain in the outward, imaginary ground 
only, and obtain no more than a counterfeited 
colour or feigned shadow of them. 

For a man's own reason, without the light of 
God, cannot come into the ground of them, it is 
impossible; for let his wit be never so subtil, it 
apprehends spiritual things but, as it were, the 
shadow in a glass. • » * » » 

Now if any would search the divine ground, 
that is, the divine Revelation, or manifestation, 
that God has been pleased to make of himself, 
he must first consider with himself, for what 
end he desires to know such things, whether he 
desires to practise that which he might obtain, 
and bestow it to the glory of God, and the wel- 
fare of his neighbour; also whether he desires 
to die to earthliness, and to his own will, and 
to live in that which he seeks and desires, and 
to be one spirit with it. 

If he have not a purpose, that, if God should 
reveal himself and his mysteries to him, he 
would be one spirit and have one will with 
God, and wholly resign and yield himself up to 
liim, that Gods Spirit may do what he pleases 
with him, and by him, and that God may be his 
knowledge, will and working; he is not yet fit 
for such knowledge and understanding. 

For there are many that seek mysteries and 
hidden knowledge, merely that they may be 
respected and highly esteemed by the world, 

* From the "Compendious View of the grounds of the 
Tpiitoiiir, Philosophy." 



and for their own gain and profit; but they at- 
tain not this ground, "where the Spirit searches 
all things, even the deep things of God." 

It must be a totally resigned and yielded 
will, in which God himself searches and works, 
and which continually pierces into God, in 
yielding and resigned humility, seeking nothing 
but his eternal native country, and to do his 
neighbour service ; and then it may be attained. 
He must begin with effectual repentance and 
amendment, and with prayer that his under- 
standing may be opened from within; for then 
the inward spirit will bring itself into the out- 
ward understanding. 

But when he reads such writings and yet 
cannot understand them, he must not presently 
throw them away, and think it is impossible to 
understand them ; no, but he must turn his inind 
to God, beseeching him for grace and under- 
standing, and read again, and then he shall see 
more and more in them, till at length he be 
drawn, by the power of God. into the very depth 
itself, and so come into the supernatural and 
supersensual ground, namely, into the eternal 
unity of God, where he shall hear unspeakable 
and effectual words of God, which will bring 
him back and outward again (by the divine ef- 
fluence) to the very grossest and meanest natter 
of the earth, and afterward back and inivards 
to God again ; then it is that the Spirit of God 
searches all things with him, and by him, and 
so he is rightly taught and driven by God. 



Of God and the Divine Nature. 



The soul, which has its original out of God's 
first principle in creation, and was breathed 
from God into man in the third principle, (that 
is, into the sidereal and elementary birth,) is 



* To whom time is as eternity, 
And eternity as time, 
He is freed from all strife. 



38 



JACOB BOEHME. 



capable of seeing further than any other crea- 
ture into the first principle of God, out of and 
in anil from the essence of which it proceeded. 
And this is not marvellous, for it does but be- 
hold itself in the rising of its birth, out of which 
it came orii^inally, and, by the power of its light, 
can see the whole depth of the Father in the 
first principle, by which he manifested himself 
in creation. 

This the devils also see in a degree ; for they 
also are out of the same first principle, they also 
wish that they might not see nor feel it : but it 
is their own fault that they separated themselves 
from the second principle, which is called, and 
is God, one in essence and threefold in personal 
distinction, which is shut up to them. 



When I consider what God is. then I say. He 
is the One! in reference to the creature, as an 
eternal nothing. He has neither foundation, be- 
ginning nor abode; he needs not either space or 
place ; he begetteth himself in himself, from eter- 
nity to eternity ; and the outgoing out of the will 
in itself is God. 

He is neither like or resembleth any thing, 
and has no peculiar place where he dwells; 
the true heaven where God dwells is all over and in 
all places, for wheresoever lie was before the creation, 
there he is still, namely, in himself the Essence of 
all essences; all is generated from him, and is 
originally from him. 
******** 

God, without nature and creature, has no 
name, but is called only the eternal Good, that 
is, the eternal One! the Profundity of all beings! 
There is no place found for him, therefore can 
no creature rightly name him: for all names 
stand in the formed word of power, but God is, 
himself, the root of all power, ivithout beginning 
and name ; therefore said he to Jacob, " Where- 
fore askest thou what is my name ?" 
* * * * * *#» 

Of God's FIUST MANtFESTATION OF HIMSELF IN 

THE Trinity. 

God is the will of the wisdom; the wisdom 
is his manifestation. 

In this eternal generation we are to under- 
stand three things; namely, 1. An eternal, will. 
2. An eternal mind of the will. 3. The egress, 
efflux, or effluence from the will and mind, 
which is a spirit of the will and mind. 

The will is the Father : the mind is the con- 
ceived comprehension, or receptacle of the will, 
or the centre to something; and it is the will's 
heart, that is the Son of God ; and the egress of 
the will and mind is the power and spirit. 
******** 

And as we perceive that in this world there 
is fire, air, water, and earth, also the sun and 
the stars, and therein consist all the things of 
this world; so you may conceive, by way of 
similitude, that the Father is the fire of the 
Ivhole, holy, constellations, and that the Son, 



namely, his heart, is the sun which sets all the 
constellations in a light, pleasant habitation ; 
and that the Holy Gliost is the air of the life, 
without which neither sun nor constellation 
would subsist. 
***** * ** 

Of ETEHNAt NATURE AFTER THE FAIL OF LuCI- 
FER, AND OF THE CREATION OF TlltlS WORLD, 
AND OF MAN. 

Reader, understand and consider my writings 
aright. We have no power or ability to speak 
of the birth of the Deity, for it never had any 
beginning from all eternity; but we have power 
to speak of God our Father, what he is, and how 
the eternal geniture is, and of the nativity, birth, 
and working of nature. 

And though it is not very good for us to know 
the austere, earnest, strong, fierce, severe, and 
original birth of nature, as it came to be sepa- 
rated, and first manifested by the apostasy of 
Lucifer, and into the knowledge, feeling, and 
comprehensibility of which our first parents 
brought upon themselves, and upon us their 
posterity, through the poisoning venom and in 
feclion they received, by the instigation and de- 
ceit of the devil; yet we have very great need 
of this knowledge, that we thereby may learn 
to know the devil, who dwells in the most 
strong, severe, and cruel birth of all, and to 
know our own enemy, SELF, which our first 
parents awakened and roused up, and we carry 
within us, and which we ourselves now are. 
*•••*• •• 

I know very well, and my spirit and mind 
shows me, that many will be offended at the 
simplicity and meanness of the author, for offer- 
ing to write of such high things,. and will think 
he has no authority to do it, and that he sins, 
and runs contrary to God and His will, in pre- 
suming, being but a man, to go about to speak 
and say what God is. For it is lamentable, 
that, since the fall of Adam, we should be so 
continually cheated by the devil, as to think 
that we are not the children of God, nor of liis 
essence, or oflfspring. 

Your monstrous, outward, bestial form or 
shape indeed is not God, nor of his essence; but 
the hidden man, which is the soul, is the proper 
essence of God, forasmuch as the love in the 
light of God, is sprung up in your centre, out of 
which the Holy Ghost proceeds, and v/herein 
the second principle of God consists. How 
then should you not have power and authority 
to speak of God, who is your Father, of whose 
essence you (the regenerated) are, as a child is 
the Father's own substance? The Father is 
the eternal power, or virtue ; the Son is the 
heart and light continuing eternally in the Fa- 
ther; and all regenerated souls continue in the 
Father and the Son ; and now seeing the Holy 
Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, 
the eternal power of the Father is in you, and 
the eternal light of the Son shines in you. 



JACOB BOEHME. 



39 



If you lift up your thoughts and minds, and 
ride upon the chariot of the soul, (as is before- 
mentioned,)' and look upon yourself, and all 
creatures, and consider how the birth of life in 
you takes its original, and what the light of your 
life is, whereby you can behold the sun, and 
also look with your imagination beyond the sun 
into a vast space to which the eyes of your 
body cannot reach, and then consider what the 
cause might be that you are more rational than 
the other creatures, seeing you can, by the ope- 
rations of your mind, search into every thing; 
you will, if you be born of God, attain to what 
God and the eternal birth is; for you will see, 
feel, and find, that all creation must yet have a 
higher root, from whence it proceeded, which 
is not visible, but hidden. Now if you farther 
consider what preserveth all thus, and whence 
it is, then you will find the Eternal that has 
no beginning, the Original of the eternal princi- 
ple, namely, the eternal, indissoluble band of 
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And then, secondly, 
you will see the separation; in that the mate- 
rial world, with the stars and elements, are out 
of the first principle of creation, which contains 
the outward and third principle of this world. 
For you will find in the elementary kingdom 
or lominion, a cause in every thing wherefore 
it generates and moves as it does; but you 
will not find the first cause whence it is so; 
and that therefore there must be two several 
principles, for you find in the visible things a 
corruptibility, and perceive that they must have 
a beginning, because they have an end, and 
these two principles are the first and third. 

You find in all things a glorious power and 
virtue, which is the life growing and springing 
of every thing, and that therein lies its beauty 
and pleasant welfare. Now look upon an herb 
or plant, atjd consider what is its life which 
makes it grow, and you shall find in the ori- 
ginal, harshness, bitterness, fire, and water, 
whence proceeds the pleasant sinell and colours, 
for if it be severed from its own mother that gene- 
rated it at the beginning, then it remains dead. 

Thus you see that there is an eternal root 
which affords this, and must be a principle, 
whi^h the stock itself is not, and that principle 
has its original froin the light of nature. * * 
******** 

But what do you think was before the times 
of the creating of this world ? For out of that 
proceeded the root of this earth and stones, as 
also the stars and elements. But of what con- 
sists the root? You will find therein nothing 
else but bitterness, harshness, astringent sour- 
ness and fire, and these are but one thing, 
namely, the pure, eternal element, and from 
which all outward, natural things were gene- 
rated after the fall of Lucifer; for, before his 
fall, there was but one pure element. Now in 
these forms you cannot find God ; the pure Deity 
being incomprehensible, unperceivable, al- 
mighty, and all powerful. Where is it then 
men may find God ■? 



Here open your noble mind, and search fur- 
ther. For seeing God is only good, whence 
comes the evil 1 And seeing also that he alone 
is the life, and the light, and the holy power, 
as is undeniably true, whence comes the anger 
of God ■? Whence comes the devil, and his 
evil will? And whence has hell-fire its ori- 
ginal? Seeing there was nothing before God 
manifested himself in creation, but only God, 
who was, and is a Spirit, and continues so in 
eternity. Whence then is the first matter of 
evil? Here blind reason gives this judgment, 
that there must needs have been in the spirit 
of God, a will to generate the source and foun- 
tain of anger and evil. 

But the Scripture says, the devil was created 
a holy angel; and it further says, " Thou art not 
a God that wills evil;'' and, by Ezekiel, God 
declares, "that as sure as he lives, he wills not 
the death of a sinner ;" and this is testified by 
God's earnest and severe punishing of the devil, 
and of all sinners, that he is not pleased with 
death. 

What then is the first matter of evil in the 
devil? And what moved him to anger, seeing 
he was created out of the original, eternal Spirit 
of God ? Or whence is the original of evil, 
and of hell, wherein the devils shall remain 
forever, when this world, with the stars, ele- 
ments, earth, and stones, shall perish in the end 
of time? 

Beloved Reader, open the eyes of your mind 
here, and know, that no other anguish or source 
of punishment will spring up in Lucifer than 
his own quality, or working property; for that 
is his hell which he himself formed; and be- 
cause the light of God is his eternal shame, 
tlierefore is he God's enemy, because he is no 
more in the light of God. 

Now, nothing can be here produced by rea- 
son, that God should ever have used any matter 
out of which to create the devil, for then the 
devil might justify himself, that he was made 
evil, and created of evil matter. But God cre- 
ated him out of nothing but merely and entirely 
out of his own divine essence, as well as the 
other angels; as it is written, "Through him 
and in him are all things." And his only is the 
kingdom, the power and the glory; and all is 
in him, as the Holy Scriptures witness. And 
if it were not thus, no sin could be imputed to 
the devil, nor to men, if they were not eternal, 
and had their being out of God himself 

****** :(:% 

If, therefore, you will speak or think of God, 
you must consider that he is All. * * 

**** :it**:jr 

And seeing that he himself witnesses, tliat 
his is the kingdom and the power, from eternity 
to eternity; and that he calls himself Father, 
(and the Son, the Second Person in the Trinity, 
begotten of his Father,) therefore we must seek 
for him in the original of his manifesting him 
self in the tri-une One; namely, Father, Son, 
and Spirit; from whom all creation proceeded, 



40 



JACOB BOEHME. 



and we can say no otherwise, but that the first 
principle in creation is God the Father himself, 
as the source, or fountain of life. 

Yet there is found in the original of life the 
most fierce and strong birth, namely, harshness, 
bitterness, anguish, and fire ; of which we can- 
not say that it is God ; and yet is the most in- 
ward first source of all light, and that is in God 
the Father; according to which he calls him- 
self an angry, zealous, or jealous God, and a 
consuming fire. And this source is the first 
principle, and that is God the Father in the ori- 
ginality, or first manifestation of himself, at the 
beginning in creation. 
******** 

And in this first principle, prince Lucifer, 
at the extinguishing in himself the light of the 
second principle, continued ; and is ever the 
same abyss of hell; wherein the soul also con- 
tinues which extinguishes that light which shines 
from the heart of God, (into every man that 
cometh into the world,) being then separated 
from the second principle. For which cause 
also, at the end of time, there will be a separa- 
tion or parting asunder of the saints of light 
from the damned, whose source of life willVje 
without the light of God, and the working foun- 
tain of their condition as a boiling, springing 
torment. 

I will now write of the second principle, of 
the clear, pure Deity ; namely, of the heart of 
God, that is, the power, glory, or lustre of God 
the Father, in the Son. In the first principle, I 
have mentioned harshness, bitterness, anguish, 
and fire, yet they are not separate but one only 
thing, and they generate one another in the first 
source of all creation. And if now the second 
principle did not break forth, and spring up in 
the birth of the Son, then the Father would be 
a dark valley ; and the Son, who is the heart, 
the love, the brightness, and the sweet rejoicing 
of the Father (in whom the Father is well 
pleased) opens another principle. 

This is now what the evangelist John says, 
chap. 1, "In the beginning was the word; and 
the word was with God ; and the word was 
God. The same was in the beginning with 
God. All things were made by him, and with- 
out him was not anything made. In him was 
life." And he is another person than the Fa- 
ther, for in his centre there is nothing else but 
mere joy, love and pleasure. * * * 

The evangelist says further, "And the life 
was the light of men." Here, man, take now 
this light of life, which was in the word and is 
eternal ; and behold the Being of all beings, and 
especially thyself; seeing thou art an image, 
life, and derive thy being of the unsearchable 
God; and a likeness as to him. Here consider 
time and eternity; heaven and hell; this world; 
light and darkness; pain, and the source; life 
and death. Here examine thyself, whether 
thou hast the light and life of the Word in thee ; 
80 shalt thou be able to see and understand all 



things : for thy life was in the word, and was 
made manifest in the image which God created ; 
it was breathed into it from the Spirit of the 
Word. Now lift up thy understanding in the 
light of thy life; and behold the formed Word! 
Consider its generation, for all is manifest in the 
light of life. 

Although here the tongue of man cannot utter, 
declare, express nor fathom this great depth, 
^vhere there is neither number nor end ; yet we 
have power to speak thereof, as children talk 
of their father. 

Now being to speak of the holy Trinity, w^e 
must, first, say that there is one God, and he is 
called God the Father and Creator of all things, 
who is almighty, and all in all; whose are all 
things, and in whom and from whom all tilings 
proceed, and in whom they remain eternally. 
And then we say, that he is three in persons, 
and has, from eternity, generated his Son out 
of himself who is his heart, light and love: and 
yet they are not two, but one eternal essence. 
And further we say, the Scripture tells us that 
there is a Holy Ghost, which proceeds from the 
Father and the Son, and there is but one es- 
sence in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 
******** 

But the Holy Ghost is not known or mani- 
fested in the original of the Father before the 
light, or son [break forth] but when the soft 
fountain springs up in the light, then he goes 
forth as a strong almighty spirit in great joy 
from the pleasant source of water and of the 
light; and he makes the forming [shaping, 
figuring] and images [or species], and he is the 
centre in all created essences; in which centre 
the light of life, in the light of the son or heart 
of the father, takes its original. And the Holy 
Ghost is a several person, because he proceeds 
[as a living power and virtue] from the Father 
and the Son; and confirms the birth, generating 
or working of the holy Trinity. 

Thus God is one only undivided essence, and 
yet threefold in personal distinction, one God, 
one Will, one heart, one desire, one pleasure, 
one beauty, one ahnightiness, one fulness of all 
things, neither beginning nor ending: for if I 
should go about to seek for the beginning or 
ending of a small dot, or punctum, or of a per- 
fect circle, I should be confounded. 

And although I have written here of the 
springing of the second principle, and the birth 
of the divine essence in the Trinity, as if it took 
a beginning, yet you must not understand it as 
having any beginning, for the eternal manifes- 
tation of the pure Deity is thus, without begin- 
ning or end ; and that in the originalness in 
creation : for I am permitted to w^rite as far as 
of the originalness, to the end that man might 
learn to know himself, what he is, and wha' 
God in the Triune One, heaven, angels, devils, 
and hell are. And also what the wrath of God 
and hell fire is, by the extinguishment of the 
divine light. 



JACOB BGEHME. 



41 



Of the CHEATioir of Angeis, and of Lucifer ; 

DESCRIBING HOW HE WAS IN THE ANGELI- 
CAL FORM, AND HOW HE IS NOW IN HIS OWN 
PROPER FORM, BT HIS REJECTING, AND THERE- 
BT EXTINGUISHING, THE DIVINE LIGHT OF 
THE SECOND PRINCIPLE IN HIMSELF. 

Behold, O child of man, all the angels were 
created in the first principle, and by the flowing 
forth of the Holy Spirit were formed, and bodied 
in a true angelical and spiritual manner, and 
enlightened from the light of God, that they 
might increase the paradisical joy, and abide 
therein eternally; 'but being they were to abide 
eternally, they must be formed out of the first 
principle which is an indissoluble band ;' and 
they were to look upon the heart or Son of God, 
to receive his light, and to feed upon the word, 
which food was to be their holy preservation, 
and to keep their image clear and light; even 
as the heart or Son of God in the second prin- 
ciple, manifests and enlightens the Father, 
namely, the first principle ; and in those two 
principles the divine power, the pure elements, 
paradise, and kingdom of heaven spring up. 

Thus it is with those angels that continued 
in the kingdom of heaven in the first paradise; 
they stand in the first principle in the indisso- 
luble band, enlightened by the Son in the second 
principle; their food is the divine word ; and 
their thoughts and mind is in the will of the 
Trinity in the Deity. The confirming and es- 
tablishing of their life, will, and doings, is the 
power of the Holy Ghost: whatever the Holy 
Spirit does in the regenerating of paradise, and 
the holy wonders, the angels rejoice at, and sing 
the joyful Hallelujaiis of Paradise concerning 
the pleasant saving and eternal birth. All they 
do is an increase of their heavenly joy, delight, 
and pleasure in the heart or Son of God; and 
they sport in holy obedience in the will of the 
eternal Father; and to this end their God cre- 
ated them: that he might be manifested, and 
rejoice in his creatures, and his creatures in him ; 
so that there might be an eternal sport of love, 
in the centre of the multiplying of the pure 
eternal nature in the indissoluble eternal band. 

But this sport of love was spoiled by Lucifer 
himself, who is so called, because of the extin- 
guishment of the light of the Son of God in him, 
and his being cast out of his throne. 

DESCRIBING WHAT HE THEN WAS, AND ALSO 
WHAT HE NOW IS. 

He was the most glorious prince in heaven, 
and king over many legions of angels, and had 
he introduced his will into the divine meekness, 
and the light of the Son of God, and continued 
in the harmony wherein God had created him, 
then he would have stood, and nothing could 
have cast him out of the light. For he, as well 
IS the other angels, was created of the pure 
eternal nature, out of the indissoluble band, and 
stood in the first Paradise. He felt and saw 
tl.e generation of the holy Deity in the birth of 



the second principle, namely, of the heart or Son 
of God, and the outflowing of the Holy Ghost; 
his food was of the word of the Lord, and therein 
he should have continued an angel of light. 

But he saw his own great beautv and glory, 
and that he was a prince standing in the first 
principle, and in his own desire went into the 
centre, and would himself be God. He despised 
the birth of the Son and heart of God, and the 
soft and very lovely influence, working, and 
qualification thereof He entered with his will 
into SELF, and meant to be a very potent and 
terrible Lord in the first principle, and would 
work in the strength of the fire, in the centre of 
nature ; he therefore could no longer be fed from 
the word of the Lord, and so his light went out 
by the heart or Son of God departing from him ; 
for thereby the second principle was shut up to 
him; and presently he became loathsome in 
Paradise, and was cast out with all his legions 
that stuck to and depended upon him. 

And so he lost God, the kingdom of heaven, 
and all paradisical knowledge, pleasure and 
joy; he also presently lost the image of God, 
and the confirmation of the Holy Ghost; for be- 
cause he despised the second principle, wherein 
he was an angel and image of God, all heavenly 
things departed from him, and he fell into the 
dark vale, or valley of darkness, and could no 
more raise his imagination up into God, but re- 
mained in the anguishes of the first four forms 
of the original of nature. 

For he is always shut up in the first principle, 
(as in the eternal death,) and yet he raises him- 
self up continually, thinking to reach the heart 
of God, and to domineer over it; for his bitter 
sting climbs up eternally in the source or root 
of the fire, and affords him a proud will to have 
all at his pleasure, but he attains nothing. His 
food is the source or fountain of poison, namely, 
the brimstone spirit: his refreshing is the eternal 
cold fire : he has an eternal hunger in the bit- 
terness ; an eternal thirst in the source of the 
fire. His climbing up is his fall, and the more 
he climbs up in his will the greater is his fall : 
as one standing upon a high clift would cast 
himself down into a bottomless pit, he looks still 
further, and he falls in further and further, and 
yet can find no ground. 

Thus he is an eternal enemy to the heart or 
Son of God, and to all the holy angels, and he 
cannot now frame any other will in himself 

His angels or devils aie of very many several 
sorts; for, at the time of Lucifer's creation, he 
stood in the kingdom of heaven in the point, 
locus, or place, where the Holy Ghost in the 
birth of the heart of God in Paradise, did open 
infinite and innumerable centres in the eternal 
birth of pure eternal nature; and therefore their 
quality was also manifold, and all should have 
been and continued angels of God, if Lucifer 
had not corrupted and thereby destroyed them • 
and so now every one in his fall continues in 
his own essences, excluded from the light of the 
second principle, which they extinguished it: 



42 



JACOB BOEHME. 



themselves : and so it is with the soul of man, 
when it rejects the liglit of God, and it goes out 
of that soul. 

Of thk THino principle, or cueatioit of the 

MATERIAL WORLD, WITH THE STARS AND ELE- 
MENTS ; WHEREIN THE FIRST AND SECOND 
PRINCIPLE IS MORE CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD. 

The eternal and indissoluble band, which is 
the first principle wherein the essence of all 
essences stands, is not easily nor in haste to be 
undetstood; therefore it is necessary that the 
desirous reader should the more earnestly con- 
sider liimself what he is, and whence his rea- 
son, his inward senses, and thoughts do pro- 
ceed, for therein he finds the similitude of God, 
especially if he considers and meditates what 
his soul is, which is an eternal, incorruptible 
spirit. 

For if the reader be born of God in true re- 
signation, there is no nearer way for him to 
come to the knowledge of the third principle, 
than by considering the new birth, how the 
soul is new born by the love of God in the light, 
and how it is translated out of darkness into the 
light by a second birth. And now every one 
finds by experience, that falls into the wrath of 
God, and whereof there are terrible examples, 
that the soul must endure uneasiness and tor- 
ment in itself, in the birth of its own life, so 
long as it is in the wrath of God ; and then if it 
be born again, there is great exulting joy arises 
in it; and thus there is found very clearly and 
plainly two principles; also God, Paradise and 
the kingdom of heaven. 

For you find in the root of the original of the 
spirit of the soul, the most inimicitious, irksome 
source, torment, or working property, wherein 
the soul without the light of God is like all de- 
vils, being an enmity in itself, striving against 
God and goodness, and climbing up with pride 
in the strength of the fire, in a bitter, fierce, ma- 
licious wrathfulness against God, against heaven, 
against all creatures in the light of the second 
principle, and also against all creatures in the 
third principle of this world, setting up them- 
selves alone. 

Now the Scripture witnesses throughout, and 
the new-born man finds it so, that when the 
soul is new born in the light of God, then it is 
quite otherwise, and contrary to what it was 
before. It finds itself very humble, meek, cour- 
teous, and pleasant; it readily bears all manner 
of crosses and persecution; it turns the outward 
body from out of the way of the wicked ; it re- 
gards no reproach, disgrace or scorn, put upon 
it from the devil or man; it places its confi- 
dence, refuge and love in the heart or Son of 
God ; it is fed by the word of God, and cannot 
be hurt or so much as touched by the devil ; for 
although it is in its own substance, and stands 
in the first principle in die indissoluble band, 
it is enlightened with the light of God in the 
Son or second principle, and the Holy Ghost 
(who goes forth out of the eternal birth or gene- 



ration of the Father, in the light of the heart or 
Son of God) goes in it, and establishes it the 
child of God ; therefore all that it does, livii.g 
in the light of God, is done in the love of Go^* ; 
and the devil cannot see that soul, for the second 
principle, in which it then lives, and in which 
God, and the kingdom of heaven is, as also the 
angels and Paradise, is shut up from him, and 
he cannot get to it. * • • * • 

• • • * » • •.• 

Therefore, O man, consider with thyself, 
where thou art; namely, on one part, [that is, 
thy body and outward carcass of clay, thou art 
a guest for awhile in this outward world, travel- 
ling in the vanity of time] under the influence 
of the stars, and four elements ; one other part, 
[namely, thy soul in its own self and creatureiy 
being, that is, in its fallen state, without the 
divine light or regeneration] in the dark world 
among the devils; and as to the third part,, 
[namely, thy divine image and spirit of love, in 
the eternal light] in the divine power in heaven : 
that property which is master in thee, its servant 
thou art; prank and vapour as stately and glo- 
riously as thou wilt in the sun's light, yet thy 
fountain shall be made manifest to thee. 

Of Paradise. 

Moses says, that, when God had made man, 
he planted a garden in Eden, and there he 
put man, to till and keep the same ; and caused 
all manner of fruits to grow, pleasant for the 
sight and good for food ; and planted the tree 
of life also, and the tree of knowledge of good 
and evil in the midst. 

Here lies the veil before the face of Moses, 
in that he had a bright shining countenance, 
that sinful Israel cannot look him in the face ; 
for the man of vanity is not worthy to know 
what Paradise is; and albeit it be given ns to 
know it according to the inward, hidden man, 
yet by this description we shall remain as dumb 
to the beast, but yet be sufficiently understood 
by our fellow scholars in the school of the great 
master. 

Poor reason, which is gone forth with Adam 
out of Paradise, asks where is Paradise to be 
had or found? Is it far off or near? Or, when 
the souls go into Paradise, whither do they go ? 
Is it in the place of this world, or without the 
place of this world above the stars ? where is 
it that God dwells with the angels? and where 
is that desirable native country where there is 
no death ? Being there is no sun nor stars in 
it, therefore it cannot be in this world, or else 
it would have been found long ago. 

Beloved reason ; one cannot lend a key to 
another to imlock this withal; and if any have 
a key, he cannot open it to another, as antichrist 
boasts that he has the keys of heaven and hell ; 
it is true, a man may have the keys of both in 
this life time, but he cannot open with them for 
any body else ; every one must unlock it with 
his own key, or else he cannot enter therein ; 
for the Holy Ghost is the key, and when any 



JACOB BOEHME. 



43 



one has that key, then he may go both in and 
out. 

Paradise was the heavenly essentiality of the 
second principle. It budded in the beginning 
of the world through the earthly essentiality, as 
the eternity is in the time, and the divine power 
is through all things; and yet is neither com- 
prehended or understood of any earthly thing 
in selfhood. 

In Paradise the essence of the divine world 
penetrated the essence of time, as the sun pene- 
trates the fruit upon a tree, and effectually works 
in it into a pleasantness, that it is lovely to look 
upon and good to eat; the like we are to un- 
derstand of the garden of Eden. 

The garden Eden was a place upon the earth 
where man was tempted ; and the Paradise 
was in heaven, and yet was in the garden Eden ; 
for as Adam before his sleep, and before his 
Eve was made out of him, was, as to his inward 
man, in heaven, and, as to the outward, upon 
the earth ; and as the inward, holy man jiene- 
trated the outward, as a fire through heats an 
iron, so also the heavenly power out of the pure, 
eternal element penetrated the four elements, 
and sprang through the earth, and bare fruits, 
which were heavenly and earthly, and were 
qualified, sweetly tempered of the divine power, 
and the vanity in the fruit was held as it were 
swallowed up, as the day hides the night, and 
holds it captive in itself, that it is not known 
and manifest. 

The whole world would have been a mere 
Paradise if Lucifer had not corrupted it, who 
was in the beginning of his creation an hierarch 
in the place of this world ; but seeing God knew 
that Adam would fall, therefore Paradise sprang 
forth and budded only in one certain place, to 
introduce and confirm man in his obedience 
therein. God nevertheless saw he would de- 
part thence, whom he would again introduce 
thereinto by Christ, and establish him anew in 
Christ to eternity in Paradise, therefore God 
promised to regenerate it anew in Christ, in the 
Spirit of Christ in the human property. 

There is nothing that is nearer you, than hea- 
ven, Paradise, and hell; unto which of them you 
are inclined, and to which of tiiem you tend or 
walk, to that in this life-time you are most near. 
You are between both ; and there is a birth between 
each of them. You stand in this world between 
both the gates, and you have both the births in 
you. God beckons to you in one gale, and calls 
you ; the devil beckons you in the other gate and 
calls you ; with whom you go, with him you enter 
in. The devil has in his hand, power, honour, 
pleasure, and worldly joy ; and the root of these 
is death and hell -fire. On the contrary, God 
has in his hand, crosses, persecution, misery, 
poverty, ignominy, and sorrow; and the root of 
these is a fire also, but in the fire there is a light, 
and in the light the virtue, and in the virtue the 
Paradise; and in the Paradise are the angels, 
and among the angels, joy. The gross fleshly 
eyes cannot behold it, because they are from the 



third principle, and see only by the splendour 
of the sun ; but when the Holy Ghost comes 
into the soul, then he regenerates it anew in 
God, and then it becomes a paradisical child, 
who gets the key of Paradise, and that soul 
sees into the midst thereof. 

But the gross body cannot see into it, because 
it belongs not to Paratlise ; it belongs to the 
earth, and must putrefy and rot, and rise in a 
new virtue and power in Christ, at the end of 
days; and then it may also be in Paradise, and 
not before ; it must lay off the third principle, 
namely, this skin or covering which father Adam 
and mother Eve got into, and in which they 
supposed they should be wise by wearing all 
tlie three principles manifested on them. Oh! 
that they had preferred the wearing two of the 
principles hidden in them, and had continued 
in the principle of light, it had been good for us. 
But of this I purpose to speak hereafter when I 
treat about the fall. 

Thus now in the essence of all essencrs, there 
are three several distinct properties, with one 
source or property far from one another, yet 
not parted asunder, but are in one another as 
one only essence; nevertheless the one does 
not comprehend the other, as in the three ele- 
ments, fire, air, water ; all three are in one 
another, but neither of them comprehend the 
other. And as one element generates another 
and yet is not of the essence, source, or property 
thereof; so the three principles are in one an- 
other, and one generates the other; and yet 
none of them all comprehends the other, nor is 
any of them the essence or substance of the 
other. 

The third principle, namely, this materia", 
world, shall pass away and go into its ether, and. 
then the shadow of all creatures remain, also 
of all growing things [vegetables and fruits] 
and of all that ever came to light ; as aUo the 
shadow and figure of all words and works ; and 
that incomprehensibly, like a nothing or shadow 
in respect of the light, and after the end of time 
there will be nothing but light and darkness; 
where the source or property remain in each 
of them as it has been from eternity, and the 
one shall not comprehend the other. 

Yet whether God will create more after this 
world's time, that my spirit doth not know ; for 
it apprehends no farther than what is in its 
centre wherein it lives, and in which the Para 
dise and the kingdom of heaven stands. 



CONCERNING THE SUPERSENSUAL 
LIFE.* 

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE. FROM THE SIXTH 
BOOK OF THE WORK ENTITLED "THE WAY TO CHRIST." 

1. The Disciple said to the Master: Hdw 

* Translated from the Extract in Kiinzel's " Drei Bu 
Cher Deutscher Prosa." 



14 



JACOB BOEHME. 



may I attain to the supersensual life, that I may 
see God and hear him speak ? 

The Master said : If tliou canst raise thyself 
for a moment tliither, where no creature dwell- 
eth, thou shalt hear what God saith. 

2. The Disciple said : Is that near or far? 
The Master said : It is in thee, and if thou 

canst be silent and cease, for an hour, from all 
thy willing and brooding, thou shalt hear un- 
speakable words of God. 

3. The Disciple said : How may I hear, if I 
cease from all willing and brooding 1 

The Master said ; If thou wilt cease from all 
brooding and willing of thine own, then the 
eternal Hearmg and Seeing and Speaking shall 
be revealed in thee, and shall discern God 
through thee. Thine own hearing and willing 
and seeing hinders thee, that thou canst not see 
nor hear God. 

4. The Disciple said : Wherewith shall I hear 
and see God, seeing he is above nature and 
creature? 

The Master said : If thou keepest silence, thou 
art what God was before nature and the creature, 
and out of which he made thy nature and 
creature. Then shalt thou hear and see with 
that wherewith God, in thee, saw and heard, 
before thine own willing and seeing and hearing 
did begin. 

5. Tlie Disciple said : What doth hinder me 
that I cannot attain thereunto? 

The Master said: Tliine own willing and 
hearing and seeing, and because tliou dost strive 
against that whence thou hast proceeded. With 
thine own will thou separatest thyself from 
God's willing, and with thine own seeing thou 
seest only in thy willing. And thy willing 
stoppeth thine hearing with the obstinate con- 
cupiscence of earthly, natural things, and leadeth 
thee into a pit, and overshadoweth thee with 
that which tliou desirest, so that thou canst not 
attain to the supernatural, supersensual. 

6. The Disciple said: Seeing I am in nature, 
how can I pass through nature into the super- 
sensual deep, without destroying nature? 

The Master said: To that end three things 
are requisite. The first is, that thou sliouldst 
surrender thy will unto God and let diyself 
down into the deeps of his mercy. The second 
is, that tliou shouldst hate thine own will, and 
not do that whereunto thy will impelleth thee. 
The third is, that thou shouldst bring thyself 
into subjection to the Cross, that thou mayest be 
able to bear the assaults of nature and creature. 
If thou doest tliis, God will in-speak into thee, 
and will lead thy passive will into himself, — 
into the supernatural deep, and thou shalt hear 
what the Lord speaketh in thee. 

7. The Disciple said : It were necessary that 
I should quit the world and my life, in order to 
do this. 

The Master said : If thou leave the world, 
thou wilt come into that whereof the world is 
made. And if thou losest thy life, and comest 
fnto impotence of thine own faculty, then shall 



thy life be in that, for the sake of which thou 
didst leave thy life, — that is in God, whence it 
came into the body. 

8. The Disciple said: God has created man 
in the life of nature, that he may have dominion 
over all creatures upon the earth, and be lord 
of everything in this world. Therefore, surely, 
he ought to possess it for his own. 

The Master said: If, in the outward alone, 
thou governest all animals, then thou art with 
thy will and thy government according to the 
manner of beasts, and exercisest only a symbo- 
lical and perishable dominion, and bringest thy 
desire into the beastly Essence wherewith thou 
wilt become infected and entangled, and acquire 
the nature of a beast. But if thou hast left the 
symbolical way, thou shalt stand in the super- 
symbolica! and shalt reign over all creatures, in 
the ground out of which they were created. 
And then nothing upon earth shall harm thee, 
for thou wilt have relations with all things, and 
nothing will be foreign from thee. 



CONCERNING THE BLESSING OF GOD 
IN THE GOODS OF THIS WORLD.* 

FEOM THE WORK EMTrFLED "THE THREEFOLD UFE OF MAN." 

Man has free permission to disport himself, 
on the earth, in wliatsoever employment he will. 
Do what he will, everything stands in the mira- 
culous power of God. A swineherd is as dear 
to him as a Doctor, so he be pious and confide 
purely in God's will. The simple is as useful 
to him as the wise. For witli the wise man 
he rules, and with the simple he builds. Both 
are equally instruments of his wondrous deeds. 
Each has his calling wherein he passeth his 
time ; and all are equal before him. » » * 

• * * As the flowers of the earth do not 
envy one another, although one is more beauti- 
ful and more powerful than another, but all, in 
a friendly manner, stand side by side, and each 
rejoices in the other's virtue: — and, as a physi- 
cian mingles together various kinds of herbs of 
which each gives forth its power and its virtue 
and all minister unto the sick; — so, likewise, 
do we all please God, as many of us as enter 
into his will. We all stand together in his field. 
And as tliorns and thistles spring forth from the 
ground and choke and devour many a good herb 
and flower; so, likewise, is the godless who 
trusteth not in God, but buildeth upon himself, 
and tliinketh : "I have my God in my box, I 
will hoard and leave great treasures to my chil- 
dren, that they also may sit in the place of mine 
honour ; that is the true way ;" — and therewith 
rendeth many a heart that it also waxetli care 
less and ihinketh that is the right way to hap 
piness ; that a man possess riches, and power 
and honour, he hath happiness. Yet, if we 

* From the above-mentioned work of Kiinzel 



consider it, it happeneth to one as to another; 
and the poor soul is none the less lost. For the 
rich man's dainties taste no better to him than 
the hungry mans morsel of bread. Everywhere 
there is care, grief, fear, sickness, and, at last, 
death. It is all a fightmg with shadows, in this 
world. The mighty sitteth in the dominion of 
the spirit of this world, and he that feareth God 
sitteth in the dominion of divine power and 
wisdom. The dominion of this world endeth 
with the body, but the dominion in the Spirit 
of God endureth forever. 



OF TRUE RESIGNATION.* 

If we would inherit the filiation, we must 
also put on the new man, which can inherit 
the filiation, which is like the Deity. God will 
have no sinner in heaven, but such as are born 
anew, and become children, who have put on 
heaven. 

A man must wrestle so long, until the dark 
centre that is shut up so close, break open, and 
the spark in the eentre kindle, and from thence 
immediately the noble lily, twig and branch, 
sprouts, as from the divine grain of mustard- 
seed, as Christ says. A man must pray ear- 
nestly, with great humility, and for a while 
become a fool in his own reason, and see him- 
self as void of understanding thereon, until 
Christ be formed in this new incarnation. 

And then when Christ is born, Herod is ready 
to kill the cliild ; which he seeks to do out- 
wardly by persecutions, and inwardly by tempt- 
ations, to try whether this lily branch will be 
strong enough to destroy the kingdom of the 
Devil, which is made manifest in the flesh. 

Then the destroyer of the serpent is brought 
into the wilderness, after he is baptized with 
the Holy Spirit, and tempted and tried whether 
he will continue in resignation in the will of 
God : he must stand so fast, that if need re- 
quire, he would leave all earthly things, and 
even the outward life, to be a child of God. 

No temporal honor must be preferred before 
the filiation, but he must with his will leave 
and forsake it all, and not account it his own, 
but esteem himself as a servant in it only, in 
obedience to his master; he must leave all 
worldly property. We do not mean that he 
may not have, or possess anything; but his 
heart must forsake it, and not bring his will 
into it, nor count it his own ; if he sets his heart 
upon it, he has no power to serve them that 
stand in need, with it. 

Self serves only that which is temporary; 
but resignation has rule over all that is under 

* From •• the Way to Christ." 



it. Self must do what the Devil will liave it 
to do in fleshly voluptuousness and pride of 
life ; but resignation treads it under the feet of 
the mind. Self despises that which is lowly 
and simple; but resignation sits down with the 
lowly in the dust : it says, I will be simple in 
myself, and understand nothing, lest my under- 
standing should exalt itself, and sin. I will lie 
down in the courts of my God, at his feet, that I 
may serve the Lord in that which he commands 
me. I will know nothing of myself that the 
commandment of the Lord may lead and guide 
me, and that I may only do what God doth 
through me, and will have done by me : I will 
sleep until the Lord awaken me with his spi- 
rit ; and if he will not, then will I cry out eter- 
nally in him in silence, and wait his commands. 

Beloved Brethren, men boast much now-a- 
days of Faith, but where is that faith? The 
modern faith is but the history. Where is that 
child that believes that Jesus is born? If that 
child were in being, and did believe that Jesus 
is born, it would also draw near to the sweet 
child Jesus, and receive him, and nurse him. 

Alas! the faith now-a-days is but historical, 
and a mere knowledge of the story that the 
Jews killed him, that he left this world, that 
he is not king on earth in the animal man, but 
that men may do as they list, and need not die 
from sin, and their evil lusts ; all this the wicked 
child self-rejoices in, that it may fatten the Devil 
by living deliciously. 

This shows that true faith was never weaker 
since Christ's time than it now is ; when, never- 
theless, the world cries aloud, and says, we 
have found the true faith, and contend about a 
child, so that there was never worse contention 
since men were on earth. 

If thou have that new-born child which was 
lost and is found again, then let it be seen in 
power and virtue, and let us openly see the 
sweet child Jesus brought forth by thee, and 
that thou art his nurse ; if not, then the children 
in Christ will say, thou hast found nothing but 
the history, namely, the cradle of the child. 

Beloved Brethren, this is a time of seeking 
and of finding : it is a time of earnestness ; 
whom it touches, it touches home: he that 
watches shall hear and see it; but he that 
sleeps in sin, and says in the fat days of his 
voluptuousness, all is peace and quiet, we hear 
no sound from the Lord; he shall be blind. 
But the voice of the Lord has sounded in all 
the ends of the earth, and in the trouble that 
is upon the face of the earth a smoke arises, 
and in the midst of the sinoke there is a great 
brightness in the divine light that is in the 
children of God. Hallelujah. Amen. Shout 
unto the Lord in Sion, for all mountains and 
hills are full of his glory: he flourishes like a 
green branch, and who shall hinder it? 



ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA. 



BorD 1642. Died 1709. 



This celebrated ecclesiastic — the most popu- 
lar preacher of his day, was descended from 
noble ancestors, and bore the family name of 
IJlrich Megerle. His parents, Jacob and Ve- 
rona Megerle, resided at Krdhenhennstetten, a 
village near the city of Moskirch, in Suabia. 
He distinguished himself in early youth by his 
industry and talents, and an ardent thirst for 
knowledge. He received a classical education 
at the Latin schools at Moskirch, Ingolstadt 
and Salzburg. In his eighteenth year he en- 
tered the order of the barefooted Augustine 
monks, at Mariabrunn, and studied philosophy 
and theology in a convent of that order at Vi- 
enna. Two years later, having been conse- 
crated priest and made doctor of theology, he 
went as holiday - preacher to the convent of 
Taxa, near Dachau, in Bavaria. From there 
he returned to Vienna, where he soon acquired 
an extended fame by his popular eloquence. 
In 1669 he was made imperial court-preacher 
by Leopold I., an office which he filled with 
general acceptance for twenty years. During 
this time he rose from grade to grade in his 
order, and became successively provincial pro- 
curator, lector, pater spiritualis, prior and defi- 
nitor of his province. As prior, he attended 
the meeting of the general chapter of his order, 
in Rome, 1689, preached there several times 
with great applause, and was presented by 
pope Innocent XI. with a consecrated cross. 



As definitor, he contributed greatly to the im- 
provement of several of the convents of his 
order. He died at Vienna, December 1st, 1709, 
in the sixty-eighth year of his age. 

As a pulpit-orator, Pater Abraham a Sancta 
Clara was distinguished by a broad humor, in 
which he resembles some of his contemporaries 
in the English and Scottish churclies. By 
Protestants he was, for a long time, considered 
as a mere clerical zany, or spiritual buffoon. 
But he glowed with a genuine enthusiasm for 
virtue and religion, was deeply convinced of 
the truth of what he taught, and possessed a 
profound knowledge of man and the world, 
sound practical morality, a complete mastery 
of his native language, great affluence of ima- 
gination, a brilliant wit, an animated delivery, 
and an excoriating satire. On the other hand, 
his characteristic faults were utter want of 
taste, a perpetual striving after effect, delight 
in puns and antitheses, a fondness for the bi- 
zarre, and a style which, though suited to his 
peculiar manner, is altogether beneath the dig- 
nity of his subject. He was an orator for the 
people in the full sense of the word, and al- 
though beyond his age in many respects, con- 
formed himself to the tastes and habits of the 
times. He was devoted to his order, which he 
served with great fidelity and beneficent effect 
durmg the whole of his active life. 



ON ENVY. 

FROM A WORK ENTITLED « JUDAS THE ARCH VILLAIN.' 



I HATE always heard indeed that: 

As the bell is, so it dingeth, 
As the singer, so he singeth. 
As the spawn is, so the fish, 
As the cook, so is the dish. 
As the cobbler, the shoe will look, 
As the wiiter, so the book. 
As the leech is, so the salve, 
As the cow, so is the calf. 
As the teacher, so the rede. 
As the pasture, so the feed. 
(46) 



As the soil is, so the crop. 

As the dancer, so the hop. 

As the tree is, so the pear, 

As the ma'am, the maidens are. 

As the soldier, so the battle, 

As the herdsman, so the cattle. 

As the lord, the servants be. 

As the parent, the progeny. 
I have always heard, have always read, have 
always written, have always said that these 
things are so; but now I perceive that not al- 
ways as the parents are, so is the progeny. 
Adam a good father ; Cain, his son, an arch 
villain; Noah, the father, a saint; Ham, the 
son, a scamp ; Abraham, the father, God-blessed ; 



ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA. 



47 



Ishmael, the son, God-cursed ; Isaac, the father, 
ati angel ; Esau, his son, a devil ; Jacob, the 
father, a lamb; Reuben, the son, a ram ; David, 
the father, a friend of God; Absalom, the son, 
a foe of God, &c. Yea, I know and I can show 
a lady before whose beauty Helena of Greece 
must hide herself, a lady before whose white 
face lilies must blush with shame, a lady be- 
fore whose grace of form Spring comes too late 
with its decorations, a lady whose countenance 
is more sun-bright than the sun, before whose 
loveliness the morning-red pales with wonder; 
and yet this beautiful and elect lady has a daugh- 
ter who is to view, liUe a heap of impurity; for 
she is savage as a dung-heap, black as a coal- 
heap, inopportune as a funeral-heap, stitf-necked 
as a stoiie-heap, unclean as an ant-heap, ugly 
as a dirt-heap, yea as the Devil himself This 
most beautiful lady is Virtue, Honour, Science — 
everything good ; but the daughter which she 
produces is cursed Envy. In the island of 
Malta there are no serpents, in Sardinia there 
are no wolves, in Germany there are no croco- 
diles, in Tuscany there are no ravens, in Hel- 
lespontus there are no dogs, in Iceland there is 
nothing poisonous, but in the whole world there 
is not a place where there is no envy. 

Daniel lived at court, and was quite a distin- 
guished lord at court; nay he rose so high that 
he was all-potent with King Darius, and that 
prince never saw better than when Daniel was 
the apple of liis eye ; and well shall it be with 
every monarch who has such a right hand as 
was the faithful Daniel. Nevertheless, this 
pious minister experienced, at last, a change in 
his king, from the best wine into the sharpest 
vinegar. For he commanded by an inhuman 
decree that Daniel should be cast into the den 
of lions, that those voracious animals might be 
gorged with so stately a crumb. But the meat 
was too good for such guests. Now I read it in 
thy forehead, how thou art tickled with curiosity 
to know the crime and misdeed of Daniel. Per- 
haps he was untrue to his king? though truth, 
at court, is generally quite genuine and almost 
brand-new, because it is so seldom used. Per- 
haps he suffered himself to be bribed with de- 
narii, and afterwards used spadilles against his 
own king* whereby he lost his game? Perhaps 
he betrayed the designs and ripe resolves of the 
king to the opposite party, and so blabbed 
blameably out of school? Perhaps he divided 
the kings rents and moneys, as the wolf divided 
the sheep? The wolf, namely, divided six 
sheep with the shepherd, in this way : The first 
is mine, the second ought to be yours ; but he 
took it likewise to himself; tlie third is mine 
again, the fourth, in strict justice, should be 
yours; but he took that also, &c.; so that at last 
nothing was left to the shepherd. Perhaps 
Daniel had been sleepy in his service at court, 
and made his a|)pearance only on occasions 
when some offices had become vacant? Per- 

* An allusion to the game of quadrille, or ombre. Tr. 



haps Daniel had shown a friendly rudene.s? or 
a rude friendliness to one or the other of the 
court-dames ? Nothing of the kind ! Not at all ! 
Daniel was a right, upright, well-disposed, just, 
intelligent, conscientious minister at court ; not 
a guilty but a guiltless, not a blameable but a 
blameless servant, and a prophet besides, and 
an interpreter of dreams into the bargain, and 
a chronicler on the top of that. If so, what was 
it then that plunged him into the tyrannous 
lions-den? Ask not long! A court-dog bit him, 
a court-cat scratched him, a court-arrow pierced 
him. He burned his mouth with a court-soup, 
he knocked his head against a court-door. Un- 
derstand me right; it was envy among the mi- 
nisters and courtiers at court that caused him 
to fall. So it happened to Henry, Count of Hol- 
stein, at the court of Edward HI., king of Eng- 
land. So it happened to Belisarius, the great 
war-chief, at the court of the emperor Justinian 
So it happened to Aristides, to Scipio, to The- 
mistocles, to Tully, to Epaminondas, to Socrates, 
to Pompey, to Iphicrates, to Conon, to Chabiias. 
But those are all foreign names. So it happened 
to many Ferdinands, Henrys Rudolphs, Casi- 
mirs. Philips, Conrads, Wolfgangs, &c., whom 
cursed envy plunged into misery. O, envy ! O, 
envy! •*•»»*» 



Goodly brothers had Joseph. Gen. 37. If 
these be brothers, then sloe-bushes may be called 
grape-vines. If these be brothers, then the 
wolf may be called the burgomaster of the sheep 
Not brothers were they, but brooders of all evil. 
When the honest youth, Joseph, out of brotherly 
love and sincerity, told them his dream, — of 
which it might be easily surmised that it was 
no empty vision but a prophecy of his future 
good fortune, — they straightway grew pale at 
the relation. What! said they, thou young pi- 
geon-bill! wilt thou be a king, and sliall thy 
fortune mount so high that we shall bow the 
knee to thee and serve thee ? Nay, the Devil 
bend thy neck, arrogant booby ! &c. They were 
so embittered against him that they could not 
look upon him. Yea they were driven so far 
by damned envy, that they resolved to throttle 
this their brother. But let us reason together a 
little, ye shepherds! (although you ought more 
properly to have been swine-herds.) Hear me. 
Either it is true that your brother is to be king, 
or it is not true. If it be not true, then laugh 
at the empty dream, and rather banter tliis 
young A. B. C.-smith with brotherly jests. Put 
a shepherd's staff in his hand instead of a scep- 
tre, and say laughingly, God save your majesty! 
&c. But if it is true that he is to be king, then 
you ought not to be angry with him on that ac- 
count, but rather to rejoice, and to say: So then 
Joseph is to be a king ! That is the greatest 
honour for us, and everlasting renown for our 
whole family. Well, we shall no longer wear 
our dirty shepherds' knapsacks, but every one 
of us will be a gentleman, and how good it will 
seem when v/e are called, my lord! Then, of 



18 



ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA. 



a surety, brother Reuben will be made chief 
master of ceremonies; then, certainly, brother 
Zebnlon will have the situation of president of 
the chamber ; brother Issachar cannot fail to 
become chief of the kitchen department; he 
loves a good bit, anyhow. Brother Simeon, 
without doubt, will be lord chamberlain, for he 
knows how to sport the compliments. Think 
on me! brother Asliur will be master of the 
chase. How he will hunt! Then we will 
have a different state of things. Now we must 
stuff our hungry stomachs with sour turnips; 
then they will serve up to us other bits. O, God 
grant that our brother may be a king! That is 
the kind of talk that Joseph's brothers should 
have held. But cursed envy perverted their 
understanding, disordered their reason, and they 
would rather suffer evil days and laborious days 
than to see Joseph exalted to royal dignity. O, 
hellish envy! The envious man is contented 
with his own poverty if he only sees that his 
neighbour is not rich. The envious man finds 
satisfaction in his own misery if he only notes 
that it is not well with his neighbour. The 
envious man complains not of his want of un- 
derstanding and his ignorance if be only per- 
ceives that his neighbour also hath not much 
faculty. The envious man is willing to remain 
abject if he only finds that his neighbour does 
not rise. The envious man laments not his 
mis-shape and his scarecrow face if he only 
knows that his neighbour is not fair. O, cursed 
envy ! thou sippest and suckest out of gall, honey, 
and out of honey, gall; for thy neighbour's good 
is to thee an evil, and thy neighbour's evil is to 
thee a good. 0! O! O! * * • • 

* * » • » » » 

The envious are, how are they? They are 
like muck-chafers, which from the fairest roses 
suck only poison, not honey; so the envious 
seek in their object only what is defective, the 
good they pass over in silence. The envious 
are, how are they? They are like files or rasps, 
which devour, gnaw, bite and tear other things, 
but destroy themselves also thereby. So the 
envious seek to injure their neighbour and waste 
the health of their own body and soul. The 
envious are, how are they? They are like 
wells, which are generally cool when the wea- 
tlier is warm, and generally warm when the 
weather, especially in winter, is cold ; so is it 
well with the envious when it is ill with others, 
and ill with them when it is well with others. 
The envious are, how are they? They are like 
the tliiinderbolt which, for the most part, strikes 
only lofty edifices, not those which are low; so 
the envious hate those whom God has exalted. 
The envious are, how are they ? They are like 
the quails. Those evil birds sigh when the sun 
rises; so the envious sigh and are pained when 
they see their neighbours rise, and grow in 
riches and honour. The envious are, how are 
they? They are like a tree beneath which 
young trees are growing, but the great tree op- 
presses them with its branches, for it cannot 



bear that other trees shall grow to equal it. So 
the envious labour diligently to prevent that any 
one should rise from low to high estate. The 
envious are, how are they? They are like men 
sick of a fever, to whom sweet food tastes bitter. 
Even so nothing more embitters the envious 
than when they perceive that their neighbour 
enjoys good and sweet fortune. The envious 
are, how are they? They are like flies, which 
usually plague men there where they are sore 
or wounded. So the envious seek only that in 
their neighbour which is blameworthy; what 
is virtuous and commendable they freely pass 
over in silence. The envious are, how are they? 
They are like buckets in a well; when one 
goes down the other mounts, when one goes up 
the other descends. So it is well with the en- 
vious, and he prospers greatly when he sees 
his neighbour fall, and when his neighbour 
mounts, the envious is cast down thereby. 

0, thou cursed vice! Thou art a maggot of 
the soul; further yet, thou art an imposthume 
of the heart; further yet, thou art a pest of the 
five senses ; further yet, thou art a poison of the 
limbs; further yet, thou art a dangerous fever 
of the blood ; I'unher yet, thou art a giddiness 
of the brain ; further yet, thou art a darkness of 
the understanding; further yet, thou art a hang- 
man and torturer and tyrant of the human body. 
Other vices have a little pleasure and imaginary 
delight. The wooing of Bathsheba sugared the 
heart of David somewhat. When Herod shared 
the board and bed of his brother's wife, he en- 
joyed a momentary satisfaction. When Nebu- 
chadnezzar set up for a god, and, in his arrogance 
and pride, sutfered himself to be worsliipjied ; 
the reputation of the thing tickled him a little. 
When the rich man gorged himself every day, 
his daily gormandizing, no doubt, gave him 
pleasure. When Achan made too long fingers 
and stumbled over the seventh* commandment, 
he enjoyed becoming rich without labour. * • 
In short, all other vices have on them and in 
them and with them a honey, although in small 
weight, but the envious finds nothing but sor- 
rows. »»••«» 

An envious man may eat what he will and 
how he will and when he will and as much as 
he will and where he will, he will nevertheless 
remain dog-meagre, because everything, with 
him, is changed into poison. • * * There- 
fore God the Lord himself asked Cain, after he 
had washed his hands in his brother's blood : 
" Quare concidit fades tua?" "Cain, why hath 
thy countenance fallen?" The fellow was as 
lean as a ramrod ; but there was no other cause 
for it than damned envy, which is a poison to 
human health. 



Of what country the prodigal son was, is not 
precisely known; but 1 believe he was an Irish- 

*The eiphth, according to the division of most Pro- 
testant sects. Tr. 



ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA. 



49 



niaa.* What liis name was, is not generally 
understooil | but 1 believe it was Malefacius. 
From what place he took his title (seeing he 
was a nobleman), has not yet been discovered ; 
but I believe it was Maidsberg or Womenham. 
What was the device in his coat of arms, no 
one has described ; but I believe it was a sow's 
stomach in a field verd. 

This chap travelled with w^ell-larded purse 
through various countries and provinces, and 
returned no better but rather worse. So it often 
happens still, that many a noble youth has his 
travels changed to travails. Not seldom also, 
he goes forth a i;ood German and returns a bad 
Herman.'^ What honour or credit is it to the 
noble river Danube that it travels through dif- 
ferent lands, through Suabia, Bavaria, Austria, 
Hungary, and at last unites with a sow ?4: The 
pious Jacob saw, in his journey, a ladder to 
heaven; but alas! many of our Quality find, in 
their journeys, a ladder into hell. If, nowadays, 
a man travel not, he is called a Jack-in-the-cor- 
ner and one who has set up his rest behind the 
stove. But tell ine, dear half-Germans! (for 
whole Germans, ye have long ceased to be.) Is 
it not true 1 Ye send your sons out that they 
may learn strange vices at great cost in stranger- 
lands, when, with far less expense, they might 
be acquiring virtues at home. They return with 
no more point to them than tliey went out, ex- 
cept that they bring home some new fasliion of 
point-\ace. They return no more gallant, unless 
it be that gallant comes fiom the French galant. 
They return more splendidly clad, but good 
habits were better than to be finely habited. 
New-fashioned hats, new-fashioned periwigs, 
new-fashioned collars, new-fashioned coats, 
new-fashioned breeches, new-fashioned hose, 
new-fashioned shoes, new-fashioned ribbons, 
new-fashioned buttons, — also new-fashioned 
consciences creep into our beloved Germany 
through your travels. Your fool's-frocks change 
too with every moon; and soon the tailors uill 
have to establish a university and take Doctors' 
degrees, and afterwards bear the title of Right- 
reverend Doctors of fashior.. 

If I had all the new far">ions of coats for four 
and twenty years, I woulu almost make a cur- 
tain before the sun with them, so that men 
should go about with lanterns in the day-time. 
At least, I would undertake to hide all Turkey 
with them, so that the Constantinopolitans should 
think their Mahomed was playing blind-the-cat 
with them. An old witch, at the request of 
king Saul, called the prophet Samuel from the 
dead, that he might know the result of his arms. 

*An untrariKl.iteahle pun. Irrliinder, literally, err- 
lander, one who wanders from country to country, a 
vagahonrt. Tr. 

t The translator is in doubt as to the meaning of ihis 
quip. Perhaps Herman stands for the Spanish Hermano; 
and the meaning is— a bad brother, a loose cornpnijion. 

J The river Save, called in Germau Sau, which is the 
German for sow. This river joins the Danube between 
Benilin and Belgrade. Tr. 

a 



It will soon come to pass, that people will want 
to call from the dead the identical tailor and 
master who made the beautiful Esther's gar- 
ment, when she was so well-pleasing in the 
eyes of Ahasuerus. ***** 
* * * So the prodigal son learned but little 
good in foreign lands. His doing was wooing; 
his thinking was drinking; his Latin was -^ Pro- 
Jiciat* his Italian, Brindisi,* his Bohemian, 
Sasdravi,* his German, Gesegnet's Gott.* In one 
word, he was a goodly fellow always mellow, 
a vagrant, a bacchant, an amant, a turbant, a 
distillant, Sec. Now he had wasted his sub- 
stance in foreign provinces and torn his con- 
science to tatters as well as his clothes. He 
might, witli truth, have said to his father what 
the brothers of Joseph said, without truth, to 
Jacob when they showed him the bloody coat, 
"/era ^esstma," &c., "an evil beast hath devoured 
him.'' An evil beast devoured the prodigal son; 
an evil beast, the golden eagle, an evil beast, 
the golden griffin, an evil beast, the golden buck, 
an evil beast, the golden bear. These tavern- 
beasts reduced the youngster to that condition 
that his breeches were as transparent as a 
fisherman's net, his stomach shrunk together 
like an empty bladder, and the mirror of his 
misery was to be seen on the sleeve of his dirty 
doublet, &c. And now when the scamp had 
got sick of the swine-diet, more wholesome 
thoughts came into his mind and he would go 
straight home to his old father and seek a favour 
able hearing at his feet; in which he succeeded 
according to his wish. And his own father fell 
quite lovingly on the neck of the bad vocativo, 
lor which a rope would have been fitter. Yea, 
he was introduced with special joy and jubilee 
into the paternal dwelling, sudden preparations 
were made for a feast, kitchen and cellar were 
put in requisition, and the best and fattest calf 
must be killed in a hurry and cooked and 
roasted. Away with the rags and tatters! and 
hurrah ! for the velvet coat and the prinked up 
hat and a gold ring! Bring on your fiddlers! 
allegro ! 

Meanwhile, the other brother comes home 
and hears from afar a fiddling, and a fifing, and 
a scraping, and a dancing, and a hopping, and a 
shouting, &c. Holloa! he says, what's tliati 
The devil and his grand-mother! What's to pay 
now ■? Surely my sister is not having a wedding? 
I heard nothing about any bride when I went 
out this morning. While he hovers in these 
thoughts, some one reaches him a glass of wine 
out of the window and trie house-servant runs 
toward him with the tidings that his brother, 
who fared so ill in foreign parts, was come 
home, and he must come in immediately and 
sit down to a roast of veal. At this he became 
entirely pale with sheer envy, and, while they 
waited on his brother in that style, he sat down 
before the door of the house and bit his nails, 

* Proficiat or prosit, a salutation atdrinking,equivalent 
to " Your health." Tr. 

5 



ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA. 



and gnashed his teeth, and scratched his head, 
and turned up liis nose, and sighed from his 
heart, and fasted and tormented himself so with 
his envy, that he had well nigh been struck 
with apoplexy. O fool! How much better 
would it have been, had the gispus gone in and 
welcomed his brother home! And if he had 
given him an old felt, it would have done no 
harm, seeing he had brought no hat with him. 
And if he had sat down to table with him and 
helped to make way with the roasted calf, and 
pledged him heartily in a few healths, and 
hopped about to the voice of the clear-sounding 



horns, and worn through a pair of shoe-soles 
and half another with dancing, it would have 
been much better and God would not have been 
so much offended thereat. But with his fasting 
and his envy, which tormented him more than 
the fiery serpents did the people of Israel, he 
deserved hell. In other cases afiiiction is a 
road to heavenly courts, and suffering a way to 
eternal joys ; and pains are the outriders of 
eternal merriment; but the torments of the en- 
vious fool are the earnest-money of eternal 
damnation. ****** 

****** If* 



JUSTUS MdSEK. 



Bom 1720. Died 1794. 



The following account of this genial writer 
and true-hearted man, as well as the first speci- 
men from his writings, is from Mrs. Austin's 
German Prose Writers. The other transla- 
tions are furnished by a friend. 

The writinors of Moser are little known in 
this coimtry, yet they are distinguished by a 
vigorous, homely good sense, a freedom from 
all affectation, a knowledge of the condition of 
the laboring classes, and a zeal for their im- 
provement and happiness, which obtained for 
him, not unjustly, the name of the Franklin of 
Germany. He was born in 1720, at Osnabrijck, 
where his father filled high offices under the 
government. He early gave proofs of great 
talents, which were judiciously cultivated by 
his mother. He studied law at Jena and Got- 
tingen; but the open book of human life was 
his favorite and most important study. As a 
man of business, he was the able and zealous 
defender of oppressed innocence, and resisted 
alone the arbitrary will of the then ruler of 
Osnabriick. The confidence of his country- 
men raised him, in 1747, to the honorable post 
of " Advocatus Patrise," and the Landstande 
appointed him Secretary and Syndic of the 
Order of Knights. His noble character was 
put to the test during the troubles of the Seven 
years' War, and secured him the respect of 
Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick. He was em- 
ployed for eight months in London in trans- 
acting the aifairs of the troops subsidized by 
England, and his residence in that country 
added much to his practical experience. He 
was for twenty years (during the minority of 
the English prince, who, in 1761, was acknow- 
ledged protestant bishop and sovereign of Osna- 
briick), virtually, though not nominally, chief- 
counsellor of the regent. Nothing but Moser's 
great talents, knowledge of business, and in- 
dustry, united to his unswerving integrity, fair- 
ness and disinterestedness, would have enabled 
him to steer his course, free from all suspicion 
or reproach, between the conflicting interests 
of the sovereign and the states, both of whom 



he served. For six years he was justiciary of 
the criminal court of Osnabriick ; and on his 
resignation, was appointed privy referendary 
of the government, which post he held till his 
death, January 6th, 1794. 

Moser's objects in writing were far higher 
than the gratification of the vanity, or the ac- 
quisition of the fame, of an author; yet there 
is no writer whose works have a more enduring 
reputation. They may serve as a model for all 
wlio are inspired with the noble desire of ren- 
dering intelligible to the people their own true 
interests ; — the highest office in which genius, 
wit, learning, or eloquence, can ever be em- 
ployed. 

Gifted in an eminent degree with a sound 
mind in a sound body, he devoted both to the 
service of his country and of mankind, and he 
closed a happy, useful, and honorable life at 
the age of 74, " having had much to rejoice, 
little to sadden, and nothing to offend him," as 
he himself thankfully acknowledged. There 
is a beautiful passage in Goethe's life,* of 
which I subjoin an abridged translation. 

" The little essays or papers of this admirable 
man, relating to matters of social and political 
interest, had been printed some years before in 
the Osnabriick newspaper, and had been point- 
ed out to me by Herder, who suffered nothing 
of merit to pass imobserved. Moser's daughter 
was now occupied in collecting them. 

" Tliey were all conceived in one spirit, and 
are all distinguished for their intimate know- 
ledge of the condition of the middle and lower 
classes, and indeed of the whole fabric of 
society. The author, with a perfect freedom 
from prejudice, analyzes the relations of the 
several classes to each other, and also those 
existing between the several towns and villages 
of the country. The public revenues and ex- 
penditure, the advantages and disadvantages 
of the various branches of industry, are brougnt 
distinctly before us, and old times compared 
and contrasted with new. 

* Diclitung und Wahrheil, book XIII. 
(51) 



52 



MOSER. 



" The internal condition of Osnabruck, and 
its relation to other countries, particularly Eng- 
land, are clearly stated, and practical conse- 
quences deduced. Tliough he calls them ' Pat- 
riotic Fantasies,' their contents are in fact true 
and practicable. 

" And as the whole structure of society rests 
on the basis of family, he devotes his especial 
attention to that. He treats, seriously or spor- 
tively, of the changes in manners and habits, 
dress, diet, domestic life, and education. It 
would be necessary to make an inventory of 
every incident of social life, if we would ex- 
haust the subjects which he handles. And how 
inimitable is the handling! It is a thorough 
man of business speaking to the people in a 
weekly paper, in order to render intelligible to 
all the intentions and projects of a wise and 
benevolent government; bj' no means in a 
merely didactic style, but in a variety of forms, 
which we might almost call poetical, and which 
certainly deserve to be called rhetorical, in the 



best sense of the word. He is always master 
of his subject, and has the art of giving a lively 
color to the most serious; sometimes assuming 
one mask, sometimes another, sometimes speak- 
ing in his own person, with a gay and tempered 
irony ; vigorous and true, sometimes even rough 
and almost coarse, but in every case so appro- 
priate, that it is impossible not to admire the 
talents, the good sense, the facility, lightness, 
taste and originality of the writer. In the 
choice of his subjects, his profound knowledge 
of them, enlarged views, skilful and appro- 
priate handling, deep and yet gay humor, I can 
compare him to none but Franklin." 

Nothing can be added to this just and beauti- 
ful description of Moser's " Patriotische Fan- 
tasien." It remains only to say, that his " His- 
tory of Osnabruck," is equally remarkable for 
the accurate antiquarian knowledge it exhibits. 
He left some other works, among which is a 
defence of the German language and litera- 
ture, in answer to Frederic the Great, 



LETTER 

FROM AN OLD MASKIED WOMAN TO A SENSITIVE ^OHNG LADY. 

You do your husband injustice, dear child, if 
you tliinli he loves you less ihan formerly. He 
is a man of an ardent, active temper, who loves 
labour and exertion, and finds his pleasure in 
them ; and as long as his love for you furnished 
liim with labour and exertion he was com- 
pletely absorbed in it. But this has, of course, 
ceased; your reciprocal position, — but by no 
means his love, as yon imagine, — has changed. 

A love which seeks to conquer, and a love 
which has conquered, are two totally differen' 
passions. The one puts on the stretch all the 
virtues of the hero; it excites in him fear, hope, 
desiie; it leads him from triumph to triumph, 
anil makes him tliink every foot of ground that 
he gains, a kingdom. Hence it keeps alive and 
fosters all the active powers of the man who 
abandons himself to it. The happy husband 
cannot appear like the lover; he has not like 
him to fear, to hope, and to desire; he has no 
ionger that charming toil, with all its triumphs, 
which he had before, nor can that which he has 
already won be a conquest. 

You have only, my dear child, to attend to 
this most natural and inevitable difference, and 
you will see in the whole conduct of your hus- 
band, who now finds more pleasure in business 
than in your smiles, nothing to offend you. You 
wish — do you not? — that he would still sit with 
you alone on the mossy bank in front of the 
erotto, as he used to do, look in your blue eyes, 
and kneel to kiss your pretty hand. You wish 



that he would paint to you, in livelier colours 
than ever, those delights of love which lovers 
know how to describe with so much art and 
passion; that he would lead your imagination 
from one rapture to another. My vi^ishes, at 
least for the first year after I married my hus- 
band, went to nothing short of this. But it will 
not do; — the best husband is also the most use- 
ful and active member of society ; and when 
love no longer demands toil and trouble, — wlien 
every triumph is a mere repetition of the last, — 
when success has lost something of its value 
along with its novelty, — the taste for activity no 
longer finds its appiopriate food, and turns to 
fresh objects of pursuit. The necessity for oc- 
cupation and for progress is of the very essence 
of our souls; and if our husbands are guided 
by reason in the choice of occupation, we ought 
not to pout because they do not sit with us so 
often as formerly by the silver brook or under 
the beech tree. At first I too found it hard to 
endure the change. But my husband talked to 
me about it with perfect frankness and sincerity. 
" The joy with which you receive me,'" said he, 
" does not conceal your vexation, and your sad- 
dened eye tries in vain to assume a cheerful 
look ; I see what you want, — that I would sit 
as I used to do on the mossy bank, hang on all 
your steps, and live on your breath; but this is 
impossible. I would bring you down from the 
top of the church steeple on a rope ladder, at 
the peril of my life, if I could obtain you in no 
other way ; but now, as I have you fast in my 
arms, as all dangers are passed and all obstacles 
overcome, my passion can no longer find satis- 



MOSER. 



53 



faction in that way. What has once been sa- 
crificed to my self-love, ceases to be a sacrifice. 
The spirit of invention, discovery, and conquest, 
inherent in man, demands a new career. Be- 
fore I ohtained you I used all the virtues I pos- 
sessed as steps by which to reach you; but now, 
as I have you, I place you at the top of them, 
and you are the highest step from which I now 
hope to ascend higher." 

Little as I relished the notion of the church 
tower, or the honour of serving as the highest 
step under my husband's feet, time and reflec- 
tion on the course of human affairs convinced 
me that the thing could not be otherwise. I 
therefore turned my active mind, which would 
perhaps in time have been tired of the mossy 
bank, to the domestic business which came 
within my department; and when we had both 
been busy and bustling in our several ways, and 
could tell each other in the evening what we 
had been doing, he in the fields, and I in the 
house or the garden, we were often more happy 
and contented than the most loving couple in 
the world. 

And, what is best of all, this pleasure has not 
left us after thirty years of marriage. We talk 
with as much animation as ever of our domestic 
affairs; I have learned to know all my hus- 
band's tastes, and I relate to him whatever I 
think likely to please him out of journals, whe- 
ther political or literary; I recommend hooks to 
him, and lay them before him ; I carry on the 
correspondence with our married children, and 
often delight him with good news of them and 
our little grandchildren. As to his accounts, I 
understand them as well as he, and make them 
easier to him by having mine of all the yearly 
outlay which passes through my hands, ready 
and in order ; if necessary, I can send in a state- 
ment to the treasury chamber, and my hand 
makes as good a figure in our casli-book as his; 
we are accustomed to the same order, we know 
the spirit of all our afl^airs and duties, and we 
haveoneaim and one rule inall ourundertakings. 

This would never have been the case if we 
had played the part of tender lovers after mar- 
riage as well as before, ami had exhausted our 
energies in asseverations of mutual love. We 
should perhaps have regarded each other with 
ennui, and have soon found the grotto too damp, 
the evening air too cool, the noontide too hot, 
the morning fatiguing. We should have longed 
for visitors, who when they came would not 
have been amused, and would have impatiently 
awaited the hour of departure, or, if we went 
to them, would have wished us away. Spoiled 
by effeminate trifling, we should have wanted 
to continue to trifle, and to share in pleasures 
we could not enjoy; or have been compelled to 
find refuge at the card-table, — the last place at 
which the old can figure with the young. 

Do you wish not to fall into this state, my 
dear child? Follow my example, and do not 
lorment yourself and your excellent husband 
with unreasonable exactions. Don't think, how- 



ever, that I have entirely renounced the plea- 
sure of seeing mine at my feet. Opportunities 
for this present themselves far more frequently 
to those who do not seek, but seem to avoid 
them, than to those who allow themselves to be 
found on the mossy bank at all times, and as 
often as it pleases their lord and master. 

I still sometimes sing to my little grandchil- 
dren, when they come to see me, a song which, 
in the days when his love had still to contend 
with all sorts of obstacles, used to throw him 
into raptures ; and when the little ones cry, 
"Ancora! ancora! grandmamma,' his eyes fill 
with tears of joy. I asked him once whether 
he would not now think it too dangerous to 
bring me down a rope-ladder from the top of 
the church steeple, upon which he called out 
as vehemently as the children, "0, ancora! 
grandmamma, ancora!"' 

P. S. — One thing, my dear child, I forgot. It 
seems to me that you trust too entirely to your 
good cause and your good heart, (perhaps, too, 
a little to your blue eyes.) and do not deign to 
try to attract your husband anew. I fancy yon 
are, at home, just as you were a week ago, in 

society, at our excellent G 's, where I found 

you as stiff and silent as if you had met only to 
tire each other to death. Did you not observe 
how soon I set the whole company in motion'? 
This was merely by a few words addressed to 
each, on the subject I thought most agreeable or 
most flattering to him. After a time the others 
began to feel more happy and at their ease, and 
we parted in high spirits and good humour. 

What I did there, I do daily at home. I try 
to make myself and all around me agreeable. 
It will not do to leave a man to himself till he 
comes to you. to take no pains to attract him, or 
to appear before him with a long face. But it 
is not so difficult as you think, dear child, to 
behave to a husband so that he shall remain 
forever in some measure a lover. I am an old 
woman, but you can still do what you like; a 
word from you at the right time will not fail of 
its effect. What need have you to play the suf- 
fering virtue ? The tear of a loving girl, says 
an old book, is like a dew-drop on the rose ; but 
that on the cheek of a wife is a drop of poison 
to her husband. Try to appear cheerful and 
contented, and your husband will be so; and 
when you have made him happy, you will be- 
come so, not in appearance, but in reality. 

The skill required is not so great. Nothing 
flatters a man so much as the happiness of his 
wife; he is always proud of himself as the 
source of it. As soon as you are cheerful, you 
will be lively and alert, and every moment will 
aflbrd you an opportunity of letting fall an agree- 
able word. Your education, which gives you 
an immense advantage, will greatly assist you; 
and your sensibility will become the noblest 
gift that nature has bestowed on you, when it 
shows itself in affectionate assiduity, and stamps 
on every action a soft, kind, and tender charac 
ter, instead of wasting itself in secret repining* 
5* 



54 



MOSER. 



HOW TO ATTAIN TO AN ADEQUATE 
EXPRESSION OF OUR IDEAS. 

YoiTR complaint, dearest friend, that you can 
seldom satisfy yourself perfectly, in expression 
and execution, when you attempt to impart 
weighty and interesting truth, may, likely 
enough, be well founded; but I am not yet con- 
vinced, that this arises from any deficiency of 
language. All words, especially dead words on 
paper, to which indeed the physiognomy is 
wanting, to assist expression, are but very im- 
perfect signs of our thoughts and feelings, and 
w« are often more affected by another's silence, 
tlran by the finest written discourse. But these 
signs, too, have their accompaniments, to the 
feeling and thinking reader; and as he who 
Hjiderstands music, does not employ the notes 
slavishly,* so the reader, who has the necessary 
capacity, can, by the help of written words, ac- 
company the writer in his elevation, and draw 
out of his soul, all that remained behind. 

I should rather say, that your thoughts and 
feelings were not sufficiently developed, when 
you made an attempt to express them. Most 
writers content themselves with thinking over 
their subject calmly, then forming what they 
call a plan, and handling their theme accord- 
ingly; or they avail themselves of the heat of 
the first impulse; and their glowing imagina- 
tion presents us a fresh painting, often glaring 
and powerful enough, and yet the result disap- 
points their expectations. But indispensable as 
it is, that he, who would express forcibly a 
great truth, should revolve it beforehand, order 
liis expressions, and handle his theme, accord- 
ing to its nature, with all energy; this is not yet 
the precise method by which we can attain to 
a powerful expression of our sentiments. 

However evident to me a truth may be, after 
I have gained instruction on the subject from 
books and my own reflections, and however 
well acquainted with it I may seem to myself, 
T do not venture to form my plan immediately 
aiul to treat it accordingly. I rather reflect, that 
it has innumerable windings and aspects not 
directly obvious, and I must first strive to master 
as many of these as possible, before I commu- 
nicate myself, or consider the plan and expres- 
sion. Accordingly, as soon as I feel inspired by 
my subject and prepared for utterance, I first 
throw all tliat comes into my mind upon paper. 
Another day, if the subject attracts me anew, I 
proceed in the same way, and this I repeat so 
long as the fire and the impulse last, penetrating 
ever deeper into the subject. So soon as I have 
put something on paper and relieved the mind 
of its first burden, it gradually extends its grasp 
and gains new views, which nearer images at 
first concealed. The farther it penetrates, and 
the more it discovers, the more fiery and pas- 
sionate it becomes in behalf of its beloved ob- 
je-c t. xt is continually discov ering more beauti- 

* i. e. with a slavish confinement to the written siens. 
Tr. 



ful relations, feels itself lighter and freer in 
comparison, gets acquainted and familiar with 
all parts, dwells upon and delights in their con- 
templation, and does not desist, till the last grace 
is bestowed. 

And now when I have got so far, and have 
commonly spent many days and nights, — morn- 
ing and evening hours, — while I lay down the 
pen at the least appearance of languor, I begin, 
in the hours of business, to read over what I 
have written and to reflect how I shall arrange 
my plan. Generally, during this employment, 
the best method of arrangement discloses itself, 
or if I cannot decide upon it, I lay my pa))er 
aside and wait for a happier hour, which must 
come wholly of itself, and does come readily, 
after one has once become familiar with a truth. 
But the best way of presenting the subject, is 
always that, and that only, which grows out of 
the subject itself during the process. Thus I 
begin to arrange gradually all I have gained in 
this way out of my own mind, to strike out 
what is not appropriate, and bring every thing 
into its place. 

Commonly, all that I first set down, comes to 
nothing; but there are scattered particulars 
which I now find necessary to note, with the 
general result. I retain more of the subsequent 
efforts in which there is a tendency to greater 
precision ; and the final improvements conduce, 
for the most part, only to the perspicuity and 
ease of my essay. The order or arrangement 
of the argument follows of itself, the main 
design, and tlie colouring I leave to the hand 
which, without the necessity of special guidance, 
paints with power and warmth what the heated 
imagination feels with increasing force. 

Yet I will not say, that, in this respect, you 
can immediately trust yourself. Every principle 
has its own place, and it does not operate with 
one as with another. Suppose I would prove 
to you the doubtful value of previous prepara- 
tion, and should begin by saying, "Garrick ad- 
mired Clairon, as the greatest actress of France, 
but thought it rather small in her, that she could 
decide in her own room, in cold blood, upon the 
degree of rage to which she would rise, as 
Medea." You might easily discern the justness 
of the comparison, but not feel all I wish you 
to feel in reading it. Garrick never disposed 
his parts beforehand ; he merely wrought him- 
self up into the situation of the person he had 
to represent, and then left it to his mighty soul, 
to exercise all its art, according to the feeling 
of the moment. And so nmst every one do, 
who would conceive forcibly great sentiments. 

The colouring is easier when separated from 
the general tone, but, in connexion with it, more 
difficult. On this subject, it is not easy to furnish 
rules. It is mastered only by attentive observa- 
tion of nature, and much experience of what 
should be adopted or rejected, expressed strong- 
ly or slightly. Subordination in tlie grouping 13 
the principal thing, and if you are happy and 
accurate in this, the various stand-points, from 



MOSER. 



55 



which your readers will survey your delinea- 
tion, deserve only a general consideration. 

Among a million of men, tliere is perhaps not 
more than one, who knows how to put his soul 
on the stretch so far, that it produces all it is 
capable of producing. Great numbers possess 
a multitude of impressions, whether from art or 
nature, concealed within, without being them- 
selves conscious of it. The soul must be placed 
in circumstances of emotion, it must be warmed 
in order to unfold itself fully, and excited to 
enthusiasm in order that it may yield up all 
that is in it. Horace recommends wine as a 
gentle torture of the soul. Others regard fond- 
ness for the subject in hand, as mightier, than 
the thirst for discoveries. Every one must 
make the experiment for himself. Rousseau 
never gave the first movements of his soul. He 
who offers these only and nothing more, presents 
such truths alone as are common, and known to 
all men. He, on the other hand, practised often 
ten times over the system, which I have pro- 
posed to you, and did not desist, so long as there 
was any thing to be drawn forth. When a 
great man pursues this course, we may be pretty 
certain, he will press farther, than any have 
done before him. Whenever you are con- 
scious of being stronger in feeling, than in ex- 
pression, be assured that your soul is sluggish, 
and refuses to bring forth all that is in her. 
Assail her, when you feel the time has come, 
and compel her to exert herself All the ideas, 
with which she has been at any time impressed, 
and those, which she herself has produced un- 
consciojsly from these impressions, must be put 
into motion and glow. She must compare, re- 
solve, and feel what she could never do without 
this stimulus; she must be enamoured and 
warmed with her great subject. But where 
there is this love for the subject, there needs no 
arrangement. Scarcely can one tell when it is 
done, how he passed from one point to another. 



THE MORAL ADVANTAGES OF PUBLIC 
CALAMITIES. 

"O, if it were only Easter, if only the long 
winter-evenings were over!" said to me last 
autumn a tenant, who had not reaped for him- 
self, his wife and seven children, so much as 
would keep them till Martinmas. The flax he 
had sown had not come up, and the last year's 
scarcity had already disabled him from paying 
his rent. 

" Now,'' said I to him yesterday, "Easter is 
come and the long winter is over, and I see you 
are still alive, with your wife and all your 
children. I suppose you have earned your bread 
with difficulty, but it could never have tasted 
so good, as it has this winter, when it was the 
rarest thing you had." 

" It was indeed very difficult," he replied, 
"you see my house is altogether miserable, my 



wife and children naked, and myself enfeebled. 
It has been so hard for us. The flax we still 
had, was soon spent. A pound of bread cost a 
skein, and there were only three who could 
spin, and nine who must eat. There was no 
work to be had out of the house, and when 
Christmas came, our flax was spun and gone. 
Ah, thou melancholy Christmas ! — My wife had 
already pawned her petticoats and caps ; we 
could not go to God's church. There was 
nothing besides in the house, on which we 
could raise any money, but the cow. I wished 
to drive her away to sell, but my wife and 
children held her fast embraced, and we all 
cried out, and stood so a long sad time. I 
walked out at last, for I could no longer endure 
my misery. I staid away two hours, that I 
might not see my own dying with hunger. 
But it was always as if six horses drew me 
back ; I must return home. I passed by aii 
oven filled with bread ; and want, the sweet 
savour and opportunity made me a thief; so 
miserable had I become. With this stolen 
bread we solemnized our Christmas. But 1 rose 
the next morning before day, took my cow, and 
carried her to the man from whom 1 had stolen 
the bread. With a thousand tears I acknow- 
ledged to him the deed ; and the man, whom I 
had known as hard and avaricious, gave her to 
me again and a bushel of rye also. Since then, 
my landlord, to whom I am yet in debt for the 
past year, and whom I could not have spoken 
to before, because he had nothing left himself, 
has given me aid. Ah, Sir! there is still pity 
in the world, there are still secret virtues, which 
we do not find out till the time of need!" 

The last remark of the good man pleased me. 
"But what will you do now?' 1 asked. "I 
must now to Holland,'' said he, "to earn some- 
thing to pay my debts. But I have no money 
for the journey, and since I have received so 
much from all I know, I can apply to nobody, 

and so my cow must still " Here he could 

say no more for sobbing, and tears rolled down 
his sorrowful face. — "And who knows whether 
I shall ever return from Holland, since I find 
myself so weak after such a wretched winter, 
and must make great exertions now, to earn 
only so much as I owe for corn and rent." 

I provided him for his journey, his main- 
tenance, his children; and now I made haste 
to think over the secret virtues, which want 
discloses in so many hearts. How great, how 
noble, thought I, has many a heart shown it- 
self in the present scarcity! What concealed 
fountains of virtue have been opened by want, 
and how many thanks do we owe to Providence 
for these trials. 

Prosperous and easy times, long continued, 
finally lull men to sleep. The poor man is un- 
grateful, because help comes promptly, and 
prompt help renders him negligent in his busi- 
ness. The philosopher amuses himself with 
an ideal world, and the statesman with idle 
projects. Mere voluptuous passions arise fron; 



fie 



mOser. 



repose, and find an easy gratification. The 
virtues hold their even way with the civilities. 
Nothing compels feeling and decision. Interest 
in the public good slackens, and all goes on so 
'nditTerently well, that even the greatest genius 

s only half developed. But if want breaks in, 
;f peril demands heroes, and a universal call 
summons the soul ; if the State is striving against 
its downfall; if its dangers are increasing with 
every neglected moment; if the most frightful 
crisis can only be diverted by the greatest sacri- 
fice; then all is action and greatness; the orator 
waxes mighty, the genius surpasses his own 
hopes, courage and constancy inspire the friend; 
heart and hand open with equal promptitude; 
performance follows resolve, and the soul is 
astonished at its own powers. It finds in itself 
unknown virtues, mounts ever higher, and dis- 
cerns from new elevations an ever widening 
field of duty. Great things, and things adored 
in a state of tranquillity, vanish with its flight; 
and man shows himself once more a creature 
worthy of the Godhead. 

How many seeds of virtue would iiever 
germinate, and how few would ripen, if there 
were no want, no adversity! To liow many 

nave not tneir own hearts been revealed by the 



sight of a poor man wasting away! And how 
many a poor man has not been inspired by 
hunger, with feeling, gratitude and inclination 
for labour, which before he had neglected! 
Will not also many of our country-peojile dis- 
cern, better than before, the worth of modera- 
tion and frugality? and many have learnt to 
do without a multitude of things, which they 
formerly thought absolutely necessary? I do 
not now refer to the political uses of public 
calamities ; that would lead to other considera- 
tions. How salutary, how instructive, as well 
for the heart as for the understanding, is thus 
the present scarcity! The good Providence 
seems to have ordained that this should occur, 
at least once, in every generation. Without this 
awakening, many would lead a very stupid 
life. The more refined part of mankind cer- 
tainly take sufficient pains to deserve abundant 
chastisement, and — when they do not receive 
enough in this way — to torment themselves. 
But their sensibility needs but a slight occasion 
to call it into action ; and Heaven needs not 
punish any land in order to chastise some few 
fools. Too great, or too unfeeling, to suffer by 
a public calamity, they are left to the martyr- 
dom of their own imagination. 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



Bora 1724. Died 1S04. 



A SLIGHT acquaintance with the German 
literature of the last halt-century, discovers the 
vast influence, on all its productions, of the 
critical and transcendental philosophies. These 
terms, which are sometimes confounded, desig- 
nate two distinct branches of speculation. The 
critical philosophy begins and ends with Kant. 
The transcendental, to which it gave binh, 
developed itself with various phases in the sys- 
tems of those philosophers, who, after him, 
attained successively the highest eminence, as 
metaphysicians ; particularly, Fichte, Schel- 
ling, Hegel. The transcendental philosophy, 
although, in one sense, the offspring of the 
critical, differs from it in its positive, system- 
atic and constructive character ; whereas, in 
the critical, the negative and destructive ten- 
dency predominates. Kant has, properly speak- 
ing, no system ; he is -analytic, not synthetic. 
Both these philosophies, however, are parts of 
one movement, and may properly enough be 
comprised under one denomination. The term 
transcendental, according to the current use, 
has this comprehension at present, and is likely 
to retain it. 

The history of European philosophy exiiibits 
perhaps no other instance of a movement so 
succinct, so defined and complete ; — so epic as 
that represented by the four names which have 
been mentioned. Kant, the critic, prepares 
the way by analyzing our cognitions, and dis- 
encumbering the ground of traditionary errors. 
Fichte, the idealist, pursues to its last results 
the subjective path of philosophical inquiry. 
Schelling, the pantheistic realist, takes the 
objective direction. Finally, Hegel, the en- 
cyclopedist, describes the outermost circle and 
lays the ground-plan whicii embraces and clas- 
sifies all branches and topics of philosophy in 
one comprehensive system. 

To the influence of this philosophy on the 
national mind, German literature owes some 
of its most distinctive features; in particu- 
lar, that thoughtful tone and that profound 
spirit which so strongly characterize it. If 
it be inferior to others in some particu- 
lars; if it has less of creative genius and 



afl^uence than the English, less of grace and 
plausibility than the French, of artistic perfec- 
tion than the Italian, of romantic and popular 
interest than the Spanish ; it is superior to all 
these in intensity and depth. It presents a 
greater amount of ideas in proportion to its 
extent, acts more powerfully on the mind in 
proportion to the genius embarked in it; has 
more of that quality which is called suggestive 
than any literature of modern Europe. And 
for these properties it is principally indebted to- 
the efforts and speculations of those great men 
who have labored so assiduously to found a 
science of absolute truth.* 

Immanuel Kant was born at Konigsberg, in 
old Prussia, April 22d, 1724. His father pur- 
sued the business of a saddler in one of the 
suburbs of that city. In his ninth year, he was 
put to school at the Collegium Fredericianuni, 
where he distinguished himself by his applica- 
tion, and laid the foundation of that vast eru- 
dition by which he was afterwards distinguish- 
ed. In 1740, he entered the university of his 
native city, where he first studied theology, 
and afterwards applied himself to philosophy 
and the exact sciences. After leaving the 
university, he held the office of private tutor 
in several families, and resided for nine years 
with Count HuUesen of Arnsdorf In 1755, 
he returned to Konigsberg, and took the degree 
of Master of Arts. For fifteen years he lec- 
tured, in connection with tiie university, on 
logic, metaphysics, physics, and mathematics. 
In 1770, he was made Professor nnlinnrius of 
logic and nietapliysics; which ofilce he re- 
tained till 1794 ; refusing several more lucra- 
tive offers from other universities. He died, 
February 12th, 1804, in his eightieth year; 
having never travelled above seven miles from 

* "German literature is inextricably interwoven with 
German philosophy. There is not a fairytale of Tieek, 
not a song of Goethe, not a play of Schiller, not a critj. 
cisni of Schlejiel, not a description of Humboldt, in which 
this undercurrent is not perceptible. Nay, however para- 
doxical it may appear, I will venture to affirm thai Ger- 
man music has received much of its peculiar character 
from the same source, that the compositions of Beethoven, 
Weber, Spohr. Mendelssohn, are deeply tinctured with- 
the same spirit."— JUr*. ^uatin. 

(57) 



58 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



his native city, but leaving' a name which had 
traversed the civilized world. Kant remained 
unmarried, but was social in his habits, and a 
welcome visiter in the first families of Konigs- 
berg, who knew how to prize the greatest in- 
tellect of the age. He was an agreeable com- 
panion, and entertained his company with 
amusing anecdotes, of which he possessed an 
inexhaustible store, and which he related in a 
very dry manner, with unmoved countenance, 
exciting great merriment in others. He dressed 
with elegance, and was fond of cards ; seldom 
passing an evening without a game of I'hombre, 
which he considered as the only certain means 
of withdrawing his mind from strenuous thought, 
and composing himself to rest. 

Reichardt, in the "Urania" for 1812, has 
given a spirited sketch of his person and habits. 
"He was utterly dry in body and mind. More 
meagre, nay withered, than his little body, per- 
haps none ever existed; colder and more purely 
secluded within himself, no sage ever lived. 
A high, cheerful brow, a fine nose and bright 
clear eyes, distinguished advantageously the 
upper part of his countenance. But the lower 
part, on tiie other hand, was the most perfect 
expression of coarse sensuality, which sliowed 
itself to excess, especially in eating and drmk- 
ing. He loved a good table in cheerful com- 
pany." " So boundless a memory as Kant pos- 
sessed one shall seldom find. His lectures 
were rendered exceedingly interesting thereby. 
His lectures on physics and physical geography, 
in particular, were very instructive and pleas- 
ing to young people, by reason of his measure- 
less acquaintance with history, travels, biogra- 
phy, novels, and all departments which could 
furnish materials for enriching and illustrating 
those sciences. Although he had his notes be- 
fore him, lie seldom looked at them, and often 
repeated whole columns of names and dates 
from memory." 

" The life-history of Immanuel Kant," says 
Heine, "is difficult to describe. For he had 
neither life nor history. He lived a mechanic- 
ally regular, almost abstract bachelor-existence, 
in a still, retired street of Konigsberg, an an- 
cient city on the north-eastern boundary of 
Germany. I do not think that the great clock 
of the cathedral in that place accomplished its 
daily task in a more passionless and regular 
manner than its countryman, Immanuel Kant. 
Rising, coffee-drinking, writing, reading lec- 
tures, dining, walking, — everything had its 



set time; and the neighbours knew with per- 
fect accuracy that it was half-past three o'clock, 
when Immanuel Kant, in his grey body-coat, 
with his rattan in his hand, came out of his 
house-door, and bent his steps toward the little 
linden-alley which, for his sake, is still called 
the philosopher's walk. Eight times he walked 
up and down that alley, at all seasons of the 
year ; and when the weather was dull, and the 
grey clouds portended rain, his servant, old 
Lampe, was seen walking behind him with 
anxious concern, carrying a long umbrella un- 
der his arm, like a picture of providence. 

Strange contrast between the outward life 
of the man and his destructive, world-to-pieces- 
crushing thought ! Truly, if the citizens of 
Konigsberg had suspected the entire import of 
that thought, they would have felt a far more 
shuddering horror for that man than for the 
executioner, — an executioner who beheads only 
men. But the good people saw in him nothing 
more than a professor of philosophy, and when,, 
at the set time, he passed along, they gave him 
friendly greeting, and perhaps set their watches 
by him." 

His fame, at present, rests chiefly on his la- 
bors as a metaphysician. But, in his own day, 
he was scarcely less distinguished by his con- 
tributions to the exact sciences than by his in- 
vestigation of the intellectual powers and the 
ideal world. He published important treatises 
on various subjects connected with physical 
science, of which the most celebrated is the 
"Universal Natural History and Theory of the 
Heavens." In this work he seems to have an- 
ticipated some of the subsequent discoveries in 
astronomy. In particular, he conjectured the 
existence of another planet beyond Saturn, 
more than twenty years before Sir W. Herschel 
had discovered the Georgium Sidus. The fol- 
lowing is an extract from the passage in which 
this conjecture is propounded. " Should there 
not be between Saturn, the outermost of the 
planets which we know, and the least eccentric 
comet, which descends to us from a distance, 
perhaps ten times greater, another planet whose 
motion approaches more nearly to the conietary 
than that of Saturn?" * * * "The law 
which determines the relation between the 
eccentricity of the planetary orbits and their 
distance from the sun supports this conjec- 
ture."* 



* Jlllgemeine JVaturgeschichle und Thcorie des Himmels 
Erster Theil. 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



59 



Kant's moral character, distinguished for 
probity and a high sense of honor, was held in 
the highest estimation by his fellow-citizens. 

There is an entertaining biography of him 
by Borrowsky, a personal friend. 



For the following " Remarks" on Kant's phi- 
losophy, the editor is indebted to the translator 
of the extracts which are given from the "Cri- 
tique on the Faculty of judging," and the 
" Plan for an everlasting peace."* 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



[In reading Kant's writings, the observation 
often forces itself upon us, that the words will 
very well bear a construction quite opposite to 
that he himself seems to put upon them; and 
we discover that they are equally intelligible 
and harmonious from two entirely distinct points 
of view. It is true, indeed, of all honest and 
thorough discussion of principles, that its appli- 
cation is infinitely wider than the particular 
intent of the writer. Thus a profound remark 
in Morals is equally applicable to Physics, Art, 
and Politics. But in Kant, born to represent an 
important step in the progress of Modern Philo- 
sophy, this double meaning, passing easily into 
open contradiction, accompanied too by the most 
entire earnestness and strictness of inquiry, is 
particularly remarkable, and has given occasion 
to much ditTerence of opinion as to the whole 
scope and fundamental character of his philo- 
sophy. 

Thus he is commonly cited as the founder 
of modern Transcendentalism, which in the 
popular estimate is equivalent to Mysticism ; 
yet where the aim is rather to find fault than to 
understand, it is easy too to make him out a 
materialist and a skeptic. This peculiarity, 
allied to and resulting from the very nature of 
liis system, as we shall hereafter see, must be 
understood and kept in view in the study of his 
writings, and particularly in the Critique of the 
Judgment, (from which the longest of our ex- 
tracts is taken); which it rentiers one of the 
most interesting, but most difficult of his writ- 
ings. 

Kant's starting-point is altogether with the 
Materialists, or as they call themselves of late, 
the Common-sense, or Inductive Philosophers. 
Ill common with all the world of his time, and 
with most persons of the present day, he as- 
sumes that our knowledge is limited, both in 
extent and in degree ; that we know in part, 
and parts only. 

Nevertheless, the fact that we have Expe- 
rience, of some kind, whatever be its value, 
remains unshaken ; and with this he commences 
his examination of our Cognitive Faculty; hav- 
ing for his aim to discover, and after the rigidest 
scrutiny, set down, as Knowledge, only what 
we certainly know; leaving all that belongs to 
Opinion, Faith or Feeling, to stand on its own 
basis. 

As his Testof Certainty, he appeals directly to 
the private intuition, or consciousness, not rely- 
ing on Experience, however often rejieated ; for, 



as he says, this, though it may be amply suffi- 
cient for the uses of everyday life, is yet easily 
distinguishable from absolute and original cer- 
tainty. This latter he calls Knowledge <i priori, 
by which is to be understood, not a knowledge 
preceding Experience, but deriving its supj^ort 
from something prior to and inilependent of 
Experience. For example, our conception of a 
triangle, though suggested by the actual figure, 
cannot be derived from it; for there is no perfect 
triangle; none perfectly adequate to the con- 
ception. 

It is obvious that on the strict application of 
this test, most of our so-called Knowledge must 
take another name; and the inquiry occurs: 
whether there be anything in Experience de- 
serving to be called Knowledge. 

Kant answers that there is: viz. That in all 
our perceptions of outward things, they must 
appear as existing in Space and Time. This is 
not the result of Experience ; for all Experience 
must presuppose it; and whatever validity we 
may allow our Itnowledge of phenomena, of 
this at least we are certain, that they can appear 
to us only in Space and Time. 

These, then, are ihe forms of our perceptions, 
not indicating anything in the nature of the 
objects perceived, but mere subjective forms. 

Accordingly, he divides Knowledge into two 
kinds ; Knowledge of Forms, (subjective Know- 
ledge); and Knowledge of subject-matter, (ob- 
jective Knowledge) ; and he says that of the 
latter we not only have nothing, but cannot- 
even conceive of the possibility of our ever 
having any knowledge of things as they are in 
themselves. 

It would not be possible for us in the brief 
space devoted to this' sketch of Kant's philoso- 
phy, to give even a general account of his de- 
velopment of his theory of Perception, nor of his 
critique of the Understanding. Suffice it to say 
that on this principle of the subjectiveness of 
all Knowledge, he proceeds to construct a sys- 
tem of subjective Knowledge, (Understanding); 
embracing, according to him, all our proper 
cognitive faculty. 

It is evident, however, from what has already 
been said, that as Knowledge relates only to 
the forms and conditions of Experience, it must 
depend entirely upon the possibility of Expe- 
rience ; and where tliis is impossible. Know- 
ledge must also be impossible. Now, Kant 

* J. Elliot Cabot, Esq. 



60 



IMMANITEL KANT. 



finds certain conceptions in the mind, not only 
unconnected with, but, by their very nature, 
transcending all possibility of Experifince. For 
example, our conceptions of God, Freedom, and 
Immortality, to whicli no possible sensuous ex- 
perience can be adequate. Such conceptions 
Kant calls Transcendental Ideas; and the faculty 
conceiving them. Reason. Tlie Transcendental 
Ideas lay claim to absolute certainty and objec- 
tivity, without reference to Experience. This 
is evidently in contradiction to the theory of 
Knowledge according to the Understanding. 
Finite perception is deceptive, and must appeal 
to Experience as the test of its correctness. The 
claims of the Transcendental Ideas to theoretic 
Knowledge, therefore, must be considered as an 
overweening pretence, and they should rather 
be called transcendetit, than transcendental. 
They cannot give us any information as to the 
nature of any object; but, at most, liUe empiri- 
cal conceptions, declare some law of the subject. 
And in support of this he shows that every 
Transcendental Idea contains a contradiction ; 
that is, when we endeavour to give it a theo- 
retic application, to declare what it asserts con- 
cerning its object, two opposite propositions of 
equal apparent truth are the result. Thus our 
idea as to the extent of the Universe, — it is 
equally easy to maintain that it is infinite, or 
that it is finite ; eternal, or having originated in 
Time, and so on. And these Antinomies of Pure 
Reason, as he calls them, he shows are inherent 
in all Ideas. 

To the Transcendental Ideas he accordingly 
assigns a merely subjective application. 

Wherever the Subject and the Object coincide, 
there, according to him, is the true province of 
the Transcendental Ideas, for then they have 
objective validity. Thus in l\\e practical Ideas, 
as Kant styles them; for instance the Idea of 
Duty; here the conception (Subject) and the 
Object, (the course of life to be pursued,) coincide. 

So of the idea of God. Considered theoreti- 
cally, that is, if we attempt to discover his na- 
ture, we are baffled and fall into contradictions, 
from the weakness of human powers; — such 
conceptions are transcendent, not transcendental. 
But considering God as the foundation of the 
moral order of the Universe, of the idea of Duty, 
we are in no danger of error, for here both ends 
of the problem are within our reach. 

Kant's skepticism is therefore wholly theoreti- 
cal ; and he consoles himself for the unwelcome 
results of his inquiries by the reflection that all 
the practical and solid interests of humanity re- 
main untouched; and that only our vain as- 
sumption of knowledge, unsuited to our nature 
and position, is atfected. It is of no importance 
whether our notions of God are correct, theoreti- 
cally, or not; it is sufficient that we have a sub- 
jective (practical) knowledge of him, in the 
Idea of Duty. 

Kant's method, as already explained, is em- 
pirical, or so to say, narrative. He begins with 
certain universally-admitted facts, and proceeds 



to examine their consequences and relations, as 
they fall under his hand, but without searching 
out their foundation or ultimate significance. 

Thus he gives us the /arms. Space and Time, 
as if for aught he knows there may be other* 
that he has not yet discovered. And he does 
not inquire why it is that these and no others 
should exist. They stand there without out 
knowing whence or how. But if we examine 
into their nature we discover them to be essen- 
tially connected v/ith the nature of sensuous 
Perception; and they conduct us to new points 
of view in relation to Kant's system. 

All Knowledge must presuppose some con- 
nection between the Subject and the Object; 
the inind and the thing; and whichever it may 
be that acts on the other, there is at all events 
a communication between them. And more- 
over this empirical communication must depend 
upon an original and essential connection. If 
we could imagine two essentially and primarily 
distinct kinds of Matter, they could not act upon 
each other, nor could there be any communica- 
tion between them. For Matter can act or be 
acted upon only according to its laws. But the 
laws of Matter are its essence, and if they act 
according to the same laws they must be iden- 
tical. It is necessary, therefore, and an an- 
tecedent condition of the perception of things, 
that both they and we should be parts of one 
identical nature. So too in proceeding beyond 
mere sensuous perception, — the abstract rules 
formed by the Understanding, e. g. the common 
hypotheses in Physics, presuppose a like iden- 
tity, for they are formed by generalization, and 
this is impossible without at least a dim idea 
of a common centre of all things. The reason 
why animals, or men reduced to a mere animal 
existence, do not generalize nor form rules, ex- 
cept to a very limited extent, is that this Idea 
is not present in their consciousness, (or only 
very dimly,) but exists outside of them, as In- 
stinct. 

So that the simplest Experience presupposes 
an entire continuity throughout the Universe as 
its fundamental condition. This series or con- 
tinuity, considered abstractly, is Space. Space 
is not the idea, but the abstraction of the material 
Universe ; for it belongs to subjective perception 
and Understanding, which have nothing to do 
with Ideas; but it is a sufficient recognition, 
by the sensuous faculty, of what the Reason af- 
terwards comes to know as concrete Truth. 
Thus we caimot imagine a limitation of Space, 
nor of a place where it is not. The edge, or 
boundary of Space, or a vacuum where there is 
Extension without Space, is an absurility. And 
it is equally impossible to imagine an object not 
in Space. 

Space is in fact the abstraction of the Infinite 
displayed in the Finite. For Matter, though 
necessarily connected with and supported by 
Spirit, is yet its direct opposite. Every one of 
the qualities of Matter is antagonistic to the cor- 
responding spiritual quality. Thus Spirit is in- 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



61 



finite and eternal; Matter finite and transitory. 
Or rather, Matter, if it could be considered by 
itself, would be a mere negation, and is inca- 
pable of being expressed without its opposite. 
For transience, for example, implies a certain 
duration. The material Universe, therefore, is 
an embodied contradiction, and Space of course 
a mere suspension or abstraction of this. Thus 
Space is both the affirmative condition and the 
negation of Extension ; for there is no imlimited 
Extension, and limitation is equivalent to ne- 
gation. 

So of Time. It differs from Space only as 
quality from quantity; Intension from Exten- 
sion; the inward from the outward sense, so 
called. As Matter is limited in extent, so also 
it is transient in substance ; and as Space con- 
tains both extension and limitation, so Time is 
enjbodied Change, i.e. persistence and tran- 
sience : we cannot arrest any particle of it, as 
the Present, for as we pause, it is already Past. 
Every-ilay experience shows us that our notion 
of Time depends upon the number of events 
that have successively impressed us and then 
given place to others. Amid a rapid succession 
of interesting events, a week, when past, seems 
a month, and a month a year, for we date from 
each succeeding event. On the other hand, to 
measure Time for economic purpose, we em- 
ploy astronomic changes, since liere the succes- 
sion is unvarying. 

It is the profound remark of an ancient Hin- 
doo book, that Time is the connection of Matter 
and Spirit. And the same is true of Space. 

The interesting point here, and that to which 
the preceding inquiries tend, is this: That not 
the Transcendental Ideas alone, but the com- 
monest and simplest experience must necessa- 
rily contain a contradiction, to the Understand- 
ing. Time is the contradiction of Eternity, yet 
also of the moment, or point in Tiine; Space is 
the opposition of Unity, yet also of the point 
in Space. And it is also very remarkable that 
Kant in the table which he gives of the differ- 
ent classes of possible judgments, and also in 
his table of Categories, or classes under which 
all pure conceptions of the Understanding may 
be re<luce(l, has in each instance distributed 
them under various heads, by threes, of which 
two are contraries and the third their result; 
without giving any deduction, or reason for so 
doing. Thus under the head of Quantity, in 
judgment, lie gives : Universal, Particular, and 
Special ; and under the saine head in the Ca- 
tegories, he gives: Unity, Multiplicity, and To- 
tality; and so on through the whole. The 
truth is that each of these classes contains, not 
only three kinds of judgment, or of conceptions, 
but also the three elements necessary to every 
judgment and every conception ; viz. the con- 
tradiction and its result. Thus if 1 say: This 
paper is white, here we have the general at- 
tribute, white, the limitation, to this piece of 
paper, (negation of other paper); and the re- 
sult, this special piece of paper. So of all con- 



ceptions, and so of all knowledge ; there is no 
possible act of cognition that does not embrace 
this eleiTient of contradiction. It is the combi 
nation of outside and inside, light and darkness 
extent and limitation, requisite to every sen 
suous impression; and it is the puzzle in the 
highest problems that employ the mind of man 
Thus in Civil Government, the coexistence of 
personal freedom, (which supposes each indi 
vidual supreme and unlimited), with Society 
in which he is only a part. So in Religion, the 
fierce disputes that have agitated the world 
now for eighteen centuries, arise solely from the 
impossibility, and at the same time the ever-re- 
curring necessity, of conceiving Man to be at 
once human and divine, finite and infinite ; 
and the difficulty of reconciling the doctrine of 
Immortality and possible perfection, with the 
common views of humanity,on any other ground. 
A finite immortal is the most tremendous of 
contradictions. This is the cause of the horror 
with which the doctrine of the mere humanity 
of Jesus Christ is looked upon by inost persons. 

But these contradictions and these impossi- 
bilities are such only to the Understanding ; that 
is, the mind employed only with particulars. 
The contradiction truly exists in the Universe, 
and to him who does not transcend it, does not 
see it and its contrary united in an harmonious 
synthesis, it is final. But in reality it is super- 
ficial, and Reason, or the mind contemplating 
things as a Whole, readily resolves it. Then 
it is no longer .contradiction, but the necessary 
organism of the Idea. 

Kant, from his point of view, was quite right 
in making knowledge subjective only, for he 
confines his inquiries as to the Cognitive faculty 
entirely to the Understanding, or subjective 
Reason, to the very nature of which, this an- 
tagonism of the subjective and objective, and 
their absolute separation, is altogether essential. 

There is another branch of Kant"s enquiry, 
touched upon in the beginning of these re- 
marks, but which our limits forbid our discus- 
sing at much length ; leading, however, to the 
same point. This is the distinction he makes 
between the phenomenon, or appearance of a 
thing, and the thing itself, and his doctrine that 
we can know nothing of the latter, but that 
all our perception and knowledge is confined 
to the former. This evidently follows from his 
premises. 

For if all our intercourse with things is that 
of one thing with another, it must evidently be 
merely outward, like all relations of diings to 
each other. 

If we bring two bodies together, diey touch 
oidy their outer surfaces; an inward union is 
impossible. Modern Chemistry has shown ex- 
perimentally that the transfbrinaiions of Matter 
are merely apparent, and consist solely of vari- 
ous combinations of the same particles. Bodies 
apparently the most distinct, for exani'Tile 
starch, gum, sugar, fat, and the woody fibre o:" 



plants are the same or nearly so, in composi- 
tion. For Matter, as has been well said, has 
no inside, but only outside, and is capable only 
of outward relations. 

This Kant shows, psycholosically, in our 
sensuous perceptions. For what do we after 
all mean, when we say we perceive a thing, 
for instance a tree? Plainly nothing more than 
that we see certain colours and outlines ap- 
parently connected and belonging to some 
thing. 

But whether there is anything really existing 
in that place, or whether it be only something 
within myself, or the effect of another thing, 
I cannot (with absolute certainty) tell. For 
our senses are our only evidence, and they pre- 
tend to nothing more than a perception of ap- 
pearances. To another intelligence, or to dif- 
ferently constructed senses, the object may ap- 
pear quite different. At first sight, indeed, 
it might seem that we do entirely rely upon the 
report of our senses ; but let any one compare 
his knowledge of any outward fact with his 
perception of a mathematical truth, and he will 
find the former much the weaker. We may 
admit the possibility of our being persuaded to 
change our notions as to the colour, shape, and 
other qualities of any object; but we cannot for 
an instant admit the possibility of being con- 
vinced that two and two do not make four. 
Now evidently there are no degrees of certainty ; 
we either know, or we do not know. 

Kant accordingly comes to the conclusion 
that we cannot, properly speaking, know any- 
thing of the real nature or substance of objects : 
and that all we can hope to know about them 
is their effect upon ourselves ; or at the most, 
the forms and rules of this subjective effect. 

Nevertheless our claim of objective know- 
ledge continues : in spite of the contradiction 
of the Understanding, there is an instinctive 
feeling that it is not absolute, but only the dif- 
ferent sides of one truth. And in truth the 
contradiction here too belongs only to the Un- 
derstanding, transcending its province. It is 
true, that of anything absolutely objective, 
really foreign to our nature, we can know 
nothing objectively; and more than this, as we 
have seen above, we could not have even sub- 
jective knowledge of an absolute object; it 
would be for us a mere non-entity. 

But this antithesis of Subject and Object is 
entire'y subordinate and belongs wholly to the 
Understanding Reflection and consciousness 
indeed by nature require it, and depend upon 
it; but it is the prerogative of Reason to see 
through and reconcile all distinctions and oppo- 
sitions, not indeed anniliilating them, but ap- 
pointing to them their proper sphere. 

So that this contradiction to the Understand- 
ing is so far from interfering with the validity 
of the Transcendental Ideas (conceptions of the 
Re&son) that it is essential to their nature. 
Knowledge is not rendered impossible by it, 
but all knowledge, down to the merest sensu- 



ous perception, is shown by Kant himself (pro- 
perly understood), to contain and require it. 

Kant is not the only philosopher who has ar- 
rived at these contradictions. They are neces- 
sarily present in the Understanding; and in all 
empirical philosophy, logically carried out, this 
is made evident. The only escape is either in 
the feebleness that cannot understand its own 
results; or in wilfully ignoring them, which is 
the course pursued by Cousin, and more avow- 
edly by the "Scotch School." 

But the interesting feature in Kant's inquiry, 
and that which gives it its place in the History 
of Philosophy, arises from the faithfulness with 
which it is made. His rigid and faithful ex- 
amination of facts of consciousness brought him 
to principles, which his adherence to the com- 
mon point of view made him reject or overlook, 
but which in fact involved a revolution in Phi- 
losophy. His close analysis revealed the con- 
tradiction contained in those propositions which 
seem most solid and certain to the Understand- 
ing, and this showed the true province and the 
limitations of this faculty (or rather this direc- 
tion of the mindj, by pushing to their necessary 
consequences the common principles. It is not 
sufficient to contradict or refute Error ; it is 
requisite moreover to show that it is an em- 
bodied self-contradiction and self-refutation, and 
to see this the repugnant elements must be dis- 
played. It is this dialectic that makes the value 
of Kant's Critique, and it is not the less inter- 
esting for being unconscious. 

Among the extracts we have given from 
Kant's writinas, that from the Critique of the 
Judgment is intended as a specimen of his 
method and style in his strictly scientific works. 
This book is remarkable as displaying in the 
most striking manner the contradiction above 
alluded to. Thus in his principle that Beauty 
is a subjective fitness; — when it is evident, and 
indeed he himself has explained, that fitness 
necessarily implies an object, something for 
which the thing is fit; and when he speaks of 
a "ftormal regularity without law,'' etc., — here 
and throughout we have the material stand- 
point, and also the idealistic, to which the 
former necessarily leads. This extract may 
also serve as a specimen of Kant's scientific 
style, which is perfectly uniform throughout his 
more important works. Its crabbed, harsh 
character, and the frequent use of unusual 
words, or at least of words used in unusual 
senses, will no doubt excuse us in the eyes of 
our readers from giving extracts of sutticient 
length, to afford any adequate means of judg- 
ing of Kant's general merits as a philosopher. 
But what is given may be enough at least to 
correct or prevent some false impressions; be- 
ing as we have said, as far as it goes, a fair 
specimen of the whole. 

The other extracts exhibit Kant rather as a 
philanthropist and a well-read scholar than as 
a philosopiief, and both in matter and in stylo 
are much less abstruse and peculiar. 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



63 



FROM THE 

CRITIQUE OF THE JUDGMENT. 

The domain of our general cognitive faculty 
comprehends two provinces, one embracing our 
conceptions of Nature, and tlie other the idea 
of Freedom ; for in each of these it has a priori 
authority. Philosophy is divided accordingly into 
theoretical and practical. * * * The system of 
laws, relating to our conceptions of Nature, is 
derived from the Understanding, and is theore- 
tical. That arising from the idea of Freedom, 
is derived from the Reason, and is exchisively 
practical. * * * The subject-matter to which 
the laws of the cognitive faculty apply, is nothing 
else than the aggregate of all objects of possible 
experience, considered merely as phenomena. 
* * * The provinces of Understanding and 
of Reason therefore are different, though their 
subject-matter is the same, and they do not in- 
terfere with each other ' for this reason,'* that 
conceptions relating to Nature give us objects 
as present to Perception (^Anschauung),^ though 
not as the things themselves, but only as phe- 
nomena ; the idea of Freedom on the other 
hand has to do with the thing itself, but not as 
an object of sensation. Thus neither can give 
a theoretical knowledge of its Object (nor even 
of the subject thinking), in its essential nature, 
for this would be the Supersensuous ; the idea 
of which must indeed be presupposed as the 
foundation of the possibility of Experience, but 
can never be raised and enlarged into a cogni- 
tion. * * * Now, although an impassable 
chasm is established between the province of 
the conception of Nature (as the Sensuous), and 
that of the idea of Freedom (the Supersensuous), 
so that no passage is possible from the former 
to the latter, as if they were two diiferent 
worlds, one of which could have no influence 
upon the other ; yet there exists an obligation 
that the latter should exert an influence over 
the former: that is, that the idea of Freedom 
should actualize in the sensible world, the end 
sought by its laws. It must be conceivable 
therefore, that Nature should admit at least the 
possibility of a coincidence with the ends to be 
accomplished in the sensible world in accord- 
ance with the laws of Freedom. There must 
therefore be a ground of unity between the 
supersensuous foimdation of Nature, with the 
principle of Freedom ; and this, though we can 
have no 'complete' cognition of it, either theore- 
tical or practical, yet makes the transition pos- 
sible from the one system of views to the 
other. * * * * * * 

But among the higher cognitive faculties there 
is one that forms a connecting link between the 
Understanding and the Reason. This is the 

*The words between commas' ' here and elsewhere 
are inserted to render the sense more clear. Tr. 

1 1 am obliged (leluctantly) to translate Jlnfchauung by 
Perctplion, instead n( Inluilion. since by the latter word 
we mean an intelleclual belwtding, which is never Kant's 
sense. Tr, 



Judgment, concerning ■which we have reason 
(from analogy) to conjecture that it also has, if not 
a peculiar province, yet a principle peculiar to 
itself, and a priori, though certainly subjective. 
* * * For all the faculties or capabilities of 
the mind may be reduced to three, which are 
not farther reducible to any common principle ; 
viz : the Cognitive faculty the sentiment of 
Pleasure or Pain and Desire. The laws of the 
cognitive faculty are given by the Understand- 
ing alone, * * * and those of Desire, (as 
subject to the idea of Freedom), by the Reason. 
Between these lies the sentiment of Pleasure; 
as the Judgment between Understanding and 
Reason. It is therelore at least to be conjectured, 
that the Judgment also must contain an a priori 
principle of its own; and as Pleasure or Pain 
is necessarily connected with Desire, a transition 
must thus be formed between the pure cognitive 
faculty, i. e. from the province of Nature, to that 
of Freedom; just as in its logical employment 
it renders possible a connection of Understand- 
ing with Reason. * * * A reference to this 
analogy is familiar even to the common under- 
standing, and we often call beautiful objects in 
Nature or Art by names which seem to pre- 
suppose a moral judgment. We call trees ma- 
jestic and splendid; or fields smiling and happy; 
— even colours are said to be innocent, modest, 
tender, &c. « » * Taste makes possible as 
it were the passage from the pleasures of sense 
to habitual moral interest, without too abrupt a 
transition. ***** 

Judgment is the faculty of conceiving the 
Particular as contained in the Universal. Where 
the Universal, (the rule, the principle, the law,) 
is given. Judgment, which subordinates tlie 
Particular to it, is determinative. But where the 
Particular is given, for which the Universal is 
to be sought, it is merely reflective. 

The determinative Judgment has only to sub- 
ordinate particulars to the general transcenden- 
tal laws furnished by the Understanding; the 
law is given a priori. But so manifold are the 
forms in Nature, the modifications as it were 
of the general transcendental principles of Na- 
ture, left undetermined by the laws furnished 
a priori by the pure Understanding (since these 
apply only to the possibility of Nature in general, 
as perceptible by the senses), that there must 
exist for them laws, which indeed as empirical, 
maybe accidental to the view of owr understand- 
ing, but which, if they are to have the name of 
laws, (as the idea of nature demands), must be 
considered as necessary, and as proceeding from 
a principle of unity among the manifold parti- 
culars. 

The reflective Judgment, whose province it 
is to ascend from the Particular in Nature t<i 
the Universal, is therefore in need of a princi 
pie, and this it cannot derive from Experience, 
since its very aim is to establish the unity of all 
empirical principles under principles hi^iher 
though likewise empirical, and thus to estabhoh 
the possibility of a systematic subordination 



04 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



among them. Such a transcendental principle, 
the reflective Judgment therefore must give to 
itself, and cannot take it from anything else, 
(since it would then be determinative); nor yet 
impose it upon Nature, since all study of the 
laws of Nature must conform to Nature, as 
something independent of the conditions of re- 
flection. 

Now as the general laws of Nature* have 
their foundation in the Understanding, the prin- 
ciple in question can be no other than this, 
that the particular, empirical laws (as far as 
tliey are left indeterminate by the general laws,) 
are to be considered as so connected together 
as if Nature had been subjected to these also, 
by an Understanding (thougli not by ours), so 
as to render possible a system of Experience 
according to particular natural laws. Not as 
if such an Understanding must actually be pos- 
tulated, (for it is only the reflective and not the 
de'ermiiialive Judgment that requires this idea 
as its principle) — but the reflective faculty pre- 
scribes it as a law for itself, and not for Nature. 

Now since the conception of an object, as 
containing at the same time the reasoti of the 
actual existence of the object, is called the end, 
and since the harmony of a particular thing 
with that in the nature of things which is pos- 
sible oidy from their adaptation to ends, is called 
the fitness of its form, it follows that the princi- 
ple of Judgment, as respects the Form of things, 
under the laws of Experience, is the fitness of 
Nature in her manifold variety. That is, by this 
view. Nature is so conceived as if there were 
an Understanding that contained a principle of 
union among her various empirical laws. 

The fitness of Nature, therefore, is a special 
conception a priori, having its origin solely in 
the reflective Judgment. For we cannot ascribe 
to natural objects anything like an aiming of 
Nature in them at ends, but only use this con- 
ception in aid of our study of Nature in relation 
to the connection of Phenomena which is given 
by eai|)irical laws. ***** 

This transcendental conception of a fitness in 
Nature belongs neither to our conceptions of 
Nature nor to the idea of Freedom, since it at- 
tributes nothing to the object (Nature), but only 
gives the way in which we must proceed in the 
study of the objects in Nature, with a viem to a 
complete coherent system of ExfJerience. It is 
thus a subjective principle (maxim) of the Judg- 
ment ; and hence we are rejoiced, as if at a 
happy accident, favourable to our endeavours, 
(and in fact relieved from a necessity), when 
we meet such a systematic unity among merely 
empirical laws; although we must necessarily 
presuppose that such a unity exists, without be- 
ing able to comprehend or prove it. * * 

Tlie Understanding is indeed in possession 
of general laws of Nature a priori, without 
which Nature could not be an object of Expe- 

* Space and Time, the (subjective) conditions of the 
existence of Phenomena. Tr. 



rience. It is requisite, however, that there 
should also exist a certain order in the rules of 
Nature that relate to particulars, which are 
known to the Understanding only by Expe- 
rience, and as far as it is concerned, acciden- 
tal.* 

These rules, without which there could be 
no passing from the general possibility of Expe- 
rience to an actual experience,j- the Understand- 
ing must conceive as laws, (i.e. as necessary); 
since otherwise they would form no order of 
Nature : — though it does not perceive, and may 
never comprehend them. So that although the 
Understanding can declare nothing a priori as 
to the nature of objects, yet in compliance with 
these laws of ' particular' Experience, as we call 
them, it is necessary to presuppose an a priori 
principle : — viz. that a cognizable order of Na- 
ture under these laws, is possible ; and to lay 
this at the foundation of all study of Nature. 
As for instance is expressed in tlie following 
propositions: That there is in Nature a system 
of genera and species comprehensible by us;^ 
that these approach a common type, so that a 
transition from one to the other, and thus to a 
higher order, is possible: That though at first it 
seems to us unavoidable to suppose, for the spe- 
cific variety of effects in Nature, an equal vari- 
ety of causes, yet they may perhaps be em- 
braced under a few principles, with the disco- 
very of which we are to employ ourselves, &c. 

This harmony of Nature with our cognitive 
faculty is presupposed a priori by the Judgment 
as the foundation of its examination of Nature 
in her 'particular or' empirical laws. For the 
Understanding the objective existence of this liar- 
mony, is accidental ; — the Judgment alone as- 
cribes it to Nature, as 'an adaptation or' fitness 
to our cognitive faculty, transcending Experi- 
ence. For without presupposing this, we shoiild 
have no order of Nature under particular laws, 
and hence no clue for experience and inquiry 
into these laws in their manifold variety. For 
it is easily conceivable, notwitlistanding all 
the uniformity of Nature in her general laws, 
without which 'even' the form of an empirical 
cognition would not be possible, that never- 
theless, the variety of particular laws and their 
effects might be so great that it would be im- 
possible for our Understanding to discover in 
Nature any comprehensible system of subdivi- 
sion into genera and species, by which one 
should throw light upon the other, and render 
it possible for us to combine so confused (or, 

* That is, the Understanding knows only their exist 
ence, and not xky they exist, (their principle) ; — so that 
it cannot pronounce them necessary. Tr. 

t Tlie general possibility of Experience is given a pri- 
ori, in Space and Time; hut in order to have any expe- 
rience of an actual thing, there must pre. exist a synthesis 
or union of various particulars in a more general whole. 
We cannot perceive an isolated quality; e.g. colour 
without extension, or vice-versa. This union Kant calls 
the Unity of Apperception, and declares it to be a neces 
sary antecedent of Experience. Tr 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



65 



properly speaking, so infinitely complex) a mass 
iiiio a coherent experience. ♦ • • 

This harmony of Nature, amid the complexity 
of her particular laws, with our need of finding 
in her, general principles, must, as far as our 
faculties reach, be considered accidental, but 
yet as a necessary postulate of our Understand- 
ing, and hence as a fitness in Nature to the 
aim of our Understanding in its striving after 
Knowledge. The general laws of the Under- 
standing, which are at the same time laws of 
Nature, are as necessary to Nature (though 
'subjective, or arising from spontaneity) as the 
laws of motion. * • * But that the order 
of Nature under particular laws in all their 
possible variety and dissimilarity, transcending 
our powers of comprehension, is yet in reality 
fitted to our cognitive faculties, is, so far as we 
can see, accidental ; and the discovery of this 
order is the business of the Understanding, 
which is thus directed to its true function, the 
introiluction of unity of principle among these 
various particular laws. This design the Judg- 
ment is tbrced to ascribe to Nature; since the 
Understanding can furnish no such law. * * 

The Judgment is thus in possession of an a 
priori principle of the possibility of Nature, but 
it is only a subjective one, whereby a law is 
prescribed, not to Nature, but to itself in its 
study of Nature. This law we may call the law 
of Specification in Nature, as to her empirical 
laws. 

This is not seen a priori in Nature, but postu- 
lated, as the principle according to which we 
must conceive the subdivision of her general 
laws, and the subordination under them of her 
particular laws. So that when it is said that 
Nature subdivides her general laws according 
to a principle of fitness to our cognitive faculty, 
• * • vve neither give a law to Nature, nor 
learn one from her by Experience, though this 
may confirm it. For this only is intended ; that 
however Nature may be constituted as to her 
general principles, we must at all events pursue 
our study of her empirical laws according to 
this principle and the maxims founded on it; 
since it is only so far as this is done, that we 
can proceed in the employment of our Under- 
standing in Experience, and the acquisition of 
Knowledge. 

The attaining of any end is connected with a 
feeling of Pleasure, and where the condition of 
attaining the end is an a priori notion; (as in 
the present case, a principle of the reflective 
Judgjnent), the feeling of Pleasure is placed on 
a foundation a priori, and of universal validity. 

Now although we do not and cannot trace 
the slightest feeling of Pleasure from the coin- 
cidence of our perceptions with the laws and 
universal iileas of Nature, (the Categories); 
since the Understanding proceeds without 'con- 
scious' aim, by the necessity of its nature; yet 
on the other hand the discovery that two or 
mt^e apparently heterogeneous laws are em- 
l 



braced under one common principle, is the oc 
casion of very marked satisfaction, often indeed 
of an admiration, which does not cease even 
when we are familiar with the object. 

It is true 'that in many cases' we no longer 
feel any pleasure to arise from the compre- 
hensibility of Nature, and her unity amid the 
divisions of genera and species (whereby alone 
Experience and knowledge of her particular 
laws is possible) ; but it must certainly have 
been felt at one time; and it is only because 
the commonest experience would not be pos- 
sible without this harmony, that it has gradually 
lost itself in the mere cognition, and is no 
longer distinguished. * » * Qn the other 
hand, a view of Nature -which should declare 
at the outset, that at the slightest advance 
beyond the coinmonest experience we should 
come upon a heterogeneousness of her laws, 
making the combination of particular laws 
under general principles of Experience, im- 
possible for our Understanding, would be al- 
together repulsive to us: for this is opposed 
to the principle of the (subjective) harmony of 
Nature in her divisions, with the reflective 
Judgment. 

This postulate of the Judgment however is 
so undefined as to the extent to which this 
principle of the ideal fitness of Nature to our 
cognitive faculty is to be allowed, that if we 
should be told that a deeper or wider know- 
ledge of Nature from observation must at last 
reveal to us a complexity in her laws, not re- 
ducible to a single principle by any human un- 
derstanding; we should have nothing to ob- 
ject: though it is more agreeable to us when 
hopes are aflbrded, that the more we penetrate 
into Nature, or become acquainted with out- 
ward, as yet imknown laws, the more simple 
and consonant we shall find her principles, 
amid all the apparent heterogeneousness of her 
empirical laws. » » » 

THE NOTION OP ADAPTATION IN NATURE, AP- 
PLIED TO jESTHETICS. 

The merely subjective in the notion of an 
object ; i. e. its relation to the Subject, and not 
to the thing, forms the (esthetic* character of the 
notion ; but that which aids, or may be em- 
ployed in determining the nature of the thing 
as an object of knowledge, is its logical validily. 

In the cognition of a sensible ol>ject, both 
these relations occur. * * * Sensation ex- 
presses both the merely subjective in our 
notions of outward things, and also their 
material (real) principle, whereby their actual 
existence is declared. * * * B^t. that sub- 
jective element in a notion, which can lu no 
case form part of a cognition, is the pleasiat or 
displeasure connected with it. For by pleasure 
or the contrary, I know nothing of the object 
though the sentiment may result from a cog 

* iEstlietic Willi Kant mean? sensuous; dependent on 
or belonging to the senses. Tr. 
6* 



66 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



nition. Now the adaptedness of a tiling, as 
given in perception, is no quality of tlie object, 
for that could not be perceived, though it may 
be inferred from a knowledge of the thing. So 
that this adaptedness, preceding the cognition, 
and not even aiming at knowledge of the ob- 
ject, yet still immediately connected with its 
notion, is that subjective element in the notion, 
which cannot form any part of cognition. 

'J'he object therefore is said to be adapted, 
only because its image 'or notion' is imme- 
diately connected with the feeling of pleasure; 
and the notion 'itself is an aesthetic notion' as to 
the fitness of the object. The only question is 
whether such a notion of fitness exists. 

When the mere apprehension of the form of 
a sensible object, unconnected with any con- 
ception or definite knowledge, is attended with 
pleasure, the notion is thereby referred, not to 
the object, but merely to tlie subject ; * and tlie 
pleasure can express only the harmony of the 
object with the cognitive faculties exercised in 
the reflective Judgment; thus a mere subjec- 
tive, formal adaptedness of the object. For 
such apprehension of forms by the Imagination 
can never take place without some comparison 
(even though unconscious) on the part of the 
reflective Judgment, of the apprehensions with 
its faculty of connecting sensations with ideas. 

When therefore in this comparison the Imagi- 
nation (the faculty of a priori perceptions) is 
unexpectedly brought into harmony with the 
Understanding (the faculty of conceptions), by 
means of the notion of an object, and thereby 
a feeling of pleasure awakened; in such case 
there must appear to us to exist a fitness of the 
object to the reflective Judgment. This is an 
(Esthetic judgment as to the fitness of the object ; 
neither founding itself upon, nor giving any 
conception of the thing itself. 

Whenever the form of an object (abstracted 
from its material influence upon us, as Sensa- 
tion), in merely considering it, without reference 
to any conception of its nature, is found by the 
Judgment to cause pleasure by its mere image, 
this pleasure the Judgment decides to be neces- 
sarily connected with the notion ; not merely 
for the particular person, but for all. The 
object in such case is said to be beautiful ; and 
the ability to judge by means of this pleasure 
(and thus to form judgments of universal 
validity), is called Taste. * * » 

JUDGMKNT BT MEANS OF T.ISTE, IS ESTHETIC. 

In order to determine whether a thing is 
beautiful or not, we do not refer the notion to 
its object, through the Understanding (as in 
cognition); but to the Subject, and the feeling 
of pleasure or displeasure, through the Imagi- 
nation. * » » * 

All notions may refer to objects, except those 
lelating to the sentiment of pleasure or dis- 
pleasure, for this denotes nothing in the Object, 
lint only an affection of the Subject. » » * 



An objective fitness can be known only from the 
reference of particulars to a certain end, thus 
only from a conception 'of the nature of the 
object.' * * • It is either outward adapted- 
ness, i. e. usefulness; or inward adaptedness, 
i. e. the perfection of the thing. — That the satis- 
faction derived from an object, whence we call 
it beautiful, cannot depend on any notion of its 
usefulness, is sufficiently evident from what has 
been said. For then it would not be a pleasure 
derived immediately from tlie object, which is 
the essential condition of a judgment concern- 
ing Beauty. But an objective, inward fitness, 
i. e. Perfection, comes nearer to the predicate 
of Beauty, and it has hence been held by dis- 
tinguished philosophers, that Perfection, indis- 
tinctly conceived, is synonymous with Beauty. — 
It is of the greatest importance in a Critique of 
Taste, to determine whether Beauty can be 
resolved into the idea of Perfection. 

In order to judge of objective fitness, we must 
always have the conception of an end, and 
where the fitness is not outward, (Usefulness), 
but inward; the conception of an inward end 
which shall contain the ground of the inward 
possibility of the object. Now as end is some- 
thing the idea of which may be consiilered as 
the ground of the possibility of the object itself, 
in order to conceive of an objective fitness in a 
tiling, the conception of what it ought to be must 
precede it. * • * The merely formal ele- 
inent in the notion of a thing: i. e. the com- 
bination of the Manifold into one, (leaving its 
nature undetermined), gives of itself no know- 
ledge of objective fitness; since as we abstract 
from the particular thing, as an en<l, (that 
which it ought to be), nothing is left but the 
subjective fitness of the notions in the mind of 
the beholder j * • * but nothing as to the 
perfection of any object. * * * Thus, for 
example, if I come upon a grassy spot in the 
woods, around which the trees stand in a circle, 
and do not image to myself any purpose, (as 
for instance, that it might be used for a rustic 
dance) ; the mere form will not give me the 
least idea of perfection. But to conceive of 
formal, objective fitness, without any end pro- 
posed ; that is the mere form of a perfection; 
• * * is a complete contradiction. 

Now Taste is ajsthetic Judgment: i. e. it rests 
upon subjective grounds, and cannot have any 
conception, (and thus not that of a particular 
end), as its motive. Therefore the idea of 
Beauty, as a formal, subjective fitness, by no 
means involves any perfection of the thing; and 
the distinction between the ideas of the Beauti- 
ful and of the Good, (as if they diflered only in 
logical form, the former merely a confused, the 
latter a distinct idea of Perfection), is without 
foimdation. for then there would be no specific 
difl'erence between them, and an Eesthetic judg- 
ment would be at the same time cognitive. * • 

But I have already shown that the -.jestlu tic 
Judgment is peculiar in this, tha* it gives no 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



67 



knowledge wliatever, (not even confused), of 

Its Object, • • • but refers the image, wherein 
an Object is presented 'to the mind," merely to 
the subject. » • * • * 

THE PLEASURE THAT DETEnMINES THE AES- 
THETIC JUDGMENT, IS ENTIHELT UNCON- 
NECTED WITH INTEREST. 

Interest is the pleasure that we connect with 
the notion that a certain thing exists. It is 
therefore constantly connected with Desire ; 
which is either its motive, or necessarily coti- 
nerted therewith. Now when it is asked 
whether a thing is beautiful or not, we do not 
seek to know whether the existence of the thing 
can be of any importance to us, or to any one : 
but only what is our judgment respecting it, 
apart Irom the question of its existence ^ If any 
one ask me whether the palace I see before me, 
is beautiful, I may indeed say that I am not 
fond of things made only to be stared at; or I 
may answer after the manner of the Iroquois 
Sachem, who liked nothing in Paris better than 
the restaurans ; or I may scold in Rousseau's 
style, alx)ut the vanity of the great, who waste 
the sweat of the people on such superfluities; 
or finally, I can easily persua<le myself that if I 
were upon an uninhabited island, without liope 
of ever seeing men again, and by my mere wish 
could conjure up such a palace, I should never 
give myself even this trouble, if I already had 
a hut that suited me. All this may be granted; 
but this is not now the question. The point is 
only whether the mere image of the thing in 
my mind is accompanied by pleasure ; however 
indifferent I may be as to its existence. It is 
easy to see that it is what 1 make out of the 
notion wiiliin me, and not that wherein I am 
dependent on the existence of the object, that 
enables me to say that it is beautiful, and to 
prove that I have Taste. 

Every one must confess that a judgment con- 
cerning Beauty, with which the slightest interest 
is mingled, is quite partial, and no pure aesthetic 
judgment. We must be altogether disinterested, 
and indifferent as to the existence of the thing, 
in order to judge in matters of Taste. 

We cannot better illustrate tliis point, (which 
is of special importance), than by contrasting 
with the pure, disinterested* pleasure of the 
a-sthetic judgment, pleasure that is connected 
witli interest. ***** 

THE PLEASURE DEUITED FHOJt THE AGREE- 
ABLE, IS CONNECTED WITH INTEREST. 

The Agreeable is that which is pleasing to 
the senses, in Sensation. * * • By Sensa- 
tion we understan<l an image received through 
the senses, referring to an object; and, to prevent 
the continual danger of misunderstanding, we 

* A judgrntnt ao to an objpct giving Pleasure, may he 
entirely di-iinlerestud, hut yet very interrsliug: i.e. it does 
not I'.puiiil il.s<-lf upon any interest, hul produces it. Such 
are all purely moral judgments. * • * » 



shall call that which constantly and necessarily 
remains subjective, and can in no case con- 
stitute a notion of an object, by the customary 
name of Feeling. 

The green colour of the meadows belongs to 
objective sensation, as the perception of a Sen- 
sible object ; but the agreeableness of the colour 
belongs to subjective Sensation, whereby no 
object is given ; i. e. to Feeling. * * * 

Now. that my judgment of a thing, declaring 
it to be agreeable, expresses an interest in it, is 
clear from this, that it excites by means of Sen- 
sation, a desire for such things; hence the plea- 
sure presupposes, not a mere judgment con- 
cerning it, but a reference of its existence to 
my condition, so far as affected by such an 
object. * * * It is not mere approbation I 
bestow on it, but inclination is excited by it; 
and those sensations which are the most vividly 
and intensely agreeable, are so far from being 
connected with Judgment as to the object of 
the sensation, that those who are constantly 
bent on enjoyment willingly disclaim all Judg- 
ment. 

THE PLEASINGNESS OF GOOD IS CONNECTED 
WITH INTEREST. 

Good is that which is pleasing to tis, through 
the Reason, by its bare idea. We say that a 
thing is good for something, (useful), when it 
pleases us as means only; but we call thai 
good in itself which pleases by itself. But in 
each is contained the idea of purpose, and thus 
the relation of the Reason to a volition, (at least 
in possibility); consequently, a pleasure at the 
existence of an object or an action ; i. e. Interest. 

In order to pronounce a thing good, I must 
know what sort of a thing it is; that is, I must 
have a conception of its nature. Flowers, fan 
ciful pictures, interwoven figures, such as are 
called Arabesques, convey no particular idea, 
and yet are pleasing. 'On the other hand,' the 
pleasure derived from Beauty is necessarily 
dependent on the notion of an object, and thus 
contains the indication of some conception, 
though it does not determine its j)recise charac 
ter. Herein it is distinguished from the Agree- 
able, which rests entirely upon Sensation. • • 

The Agreeable and the Good are distinguish- 
ed from each other, it is true, in the commonest 
experience. We say unhesitatingly of a highly- 
seasoned dish, prepared with every provocative 
of appetite, that it is agreeable, and at the same 
time that it is not good; since it is pleasing 
immediately to the senses, but mediately, i. e. 
tl) rough a consideration of its consequences, it 
is disagreeable. • » • But notwithstanding 
this ditierence, they agree in this, that they arc 
always connected with an interest in the object; 
not only the agreeable, and that which is good 
as means, (the Useful), but also absolute and 
universal Good, viz : moral Good, which carrie." 
with it the highest interest, since it is the objec- 
of the Will, (that is, of Desire, determined by 
Reason). But to will anything, and to take 



68 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



pleasure in its existence — that is, to take an in- 
terest in it, are identical. 

COMPARISON OF THE THBEE KINDS OF PLEA- 
SUHE. 

The Agreeable and the Good have each a 
reference to Desire, and carry with them, the 
one a patholojjical, the other a pure practical 
satisfaction, produced not by the mere notion 
of the thing, but by its existence. • * » 

'On the contrary,' the sestlietic Judgment is 
purely contemplative ; that is, indifferent to the 
existence of the object, and regards only tlie 
relation which the nature of the thing bears to 
the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. • * 

It results, there ore, that Taste is the faculty 
of judging of an object or a sentiment, by means 
of the pleasure or displeasure arising from it, 
unconnected with any interest. The object of 
such pleasure is called beautiful. 

THE BEAUTIFUt IS THAT WHICH, APART FROM 
ANY CONCKPTION, IS CONSIDERED AS AFFORD- 
ING PLEASURE TO ALL. 

This definition of the Beautiful follows from 
the foregoing definition of it as the object of 
disinterested pleasure. For, when any one per- 
ceives that the pleasure afforded by a thing is 
unconnected with interest, that thing he cannot 
consider otherwise than as pleasing to all. For 
as the pleasure is founded upon no private in- 
clination, or consideration of interest, but, on 
the contrary, as the mind feels itself enlirely 
unbiassed in the satisfaction attributed to the 
object, the pleasure cannot depend upon any 
private circumstances or conditions ; it must 
therefore be considered as founded in an attri- 
bute common to all, and a liUe pleasure must 
be presumed to be felt by every one. * * 
So that Taste must necessarily be considered 
as the power of judging of that by which even 
Feeling may be communicated, and thus as 
aiding in the accomplishment of what is sought 
by every one's natural inclination. 

A man left on a desert island would orna- 
ment neither his hut nor his person, for himself. 
He would not seek for flowers, much less plant 
them, for ornament. It is only in society that it 
occurs to him to be not only a man, but a man 
of Taste, (the commencement of civilization); 
for as such is one considered who is desirous 
of communicating his pleasure to others, and 
expert in doing so, and who is not satisfied 
with an object unless he can share with others 
the pleasure it affords. Hence we expect and 
require of every one this regai-d to universal 
coirunnnication, as it were from an original 
contract dictated by Humanity itself. * * • 

Here is a j)leasure which, like all pleasure 
or displeasure not resulting from the idea of 
Freedom, (that i>, from the previous determina- 
tion of the higlier faculty of Desire, by pure 
Reason), cannot be understood from concep- 
:ions, as if necessarily connected with the notion 
'tf an object, but only througn reflective Percep- 



tion ; and thus like all empirical judgments, 
can claim no objective necessity, nor a priori 
validity. But the sesthetic judgment, like all 
empirical judgments, claims only acquiescence 
from every one, which notwithstanding its 
essentially accidental nature, it well may. The 
only astonishing and remarkable point is, that 
it is no empirical conception, but a feeling of 
Pleasure, (and thus no conception whatever), 
which is to be attributed to every one, and con- 
nected with the notion of the thing, as if it were 
a predicate belonging to its cognition. A single 
empirical judgment, for example, when we find 
a movable drop of water in a rock-crystal, 
rightly demands that every one should find it 
so, since it is formed according to the universal 
conditions of the determinative Judgment, and 
the laws of all possible Experience. So he who 
feels pleasure in the mere contemplation of the 
form of an object, without reference to a con- 
ception, properly claims the agreement of all, 
although it is a private and empirical judgment, 
since the ground of this pleasure is to be sought 
in the universal though subjective condition of 
reflective judgments. * • * So that the 
pleasure in an EESthetic judgment is dependent 
indeed on an empirical notion, and cannot be 
connected a priori with any conception ; (we 
cannot determine a priori what will be agreea- 
ble to Taste, or the contrary; we must make 
the experiment) ; but it is the fouiulation of the 
judgment, since it depends merely upon reflec- 
tion and the universal though subjective condi- 
tions of the harmony on which all cognition of 
objects is founded. ***** 

We therefore speak of the Beautiful as if 
Beauty were something in the nature of the 
thing, and as if our Judgment were logical, (giv- 
ing a knowledge of the object through concep- 
tions 'of its nature ); whereas it is on\y testlielic, 
and contains only a relation of the object to the 
subject. And this because the aesthetic judg- 
ment herein resembles the logical judgment, that 
it may claim universal validity. 

This universality, however, cannot be derived 
from coiiceptions, for there is no transition from 
conceptions to the feeling of pleasure or dis- 
pleasure, except in the purely practical ('moral ) 
laws; and these are accompanied by interest, 
and thus distinguished from the pure aesthetic 
Judgment. 

Accordingly the spsthetic judgment must con- 
tain, together with the consciousness of being 
divested of all Interest, a claim to universal 
validity, independent of objective universality; 
that is, a .subjective universality. 

COMPARISON OF THE BEAUTIFUL WITH THE 
AGREEABLE BY MEANS OF THE ABOVE CRITE- 
RION. 

As to the Agreeable, it is felt by every one, 
that a judgment founded upon his private feel- 
ing, and asserting only that the object is pleasing 
to him, is confined to himself Then when a 
man says : This Canary wine is pleasant : he 



I M MANUEL KANT. 



69 



will not object if any one correct his expression, 
and tell him be sboiiUl rather say: It is pleasant 
to me. * * * Xo one person the colour of 
violet is soft and pleasing, to another dead and 
flat. One man is fond of wind-instruments, 
another of stringed instruments. To contend 
about such things, and to pronounce the judg- 
ment of others, differing from our own, incor- 
rect, as if there were a logical opposition be- 
tween them, would be folly. As to the Agree- 
able tlie maxim holds, therefore, that every one 
has a taste of his own, in matters of Sense. 

As to the Beautiful, however, the case is quite 
difl^erent. Here it would be absurd for any one 
pretending to Taste to think to justify himself 
by saying that the object, (the building we see, 
the garment that person wears, the concert we 
listen to, the poem that is to be criticised), is 
beautiful to him. For he should not call it beau- 
tiful, if it pleases him alone. There may be 
many things pleasing and attractive to him, but 
this is nothing to anyone else: if he declare 
anything to be beautiful, he attributes the same 
pleasure to others; he judges not for himself 
alone, but for all; and speaks of Beauty as a 
quality of the thing. 

We say, therefore, the thing is beautiful ; not 
expecting the assent of others, from having often 
found tlieni to agree with us in opinion, but re- 
quiring it. We find fault with men if they judge 
otherwise, as wanting in that Taste wliich 
should be an universal attribute. 

As to the Beautiful, therefore, we cannot say 
that every one has a taste of his own. For this 
would be to declare that there is no such tiling 
as Taste; that is, no Eesthetic judgment that can 
properly claim the assent of all. 

In respect to the Agreeable, there is indeed a 
degree of unanimity in mens judgments, in re- 
ference to which sotne are said to have Taste 
and others not; and this not as signifying a per- 
fection of the organs of Sense, but of the faculty 
of judging as to the Agreeable. Thus one who 
knows how to regale his guests with various 
luxuries, (agreeable to the diiTerent senses,) so 
as to please all, is said to have Taste. But the 
universality is here only comparative, and thus 
this kind of Taste is capable only of general 
rules, as being derived from Experience, and 
not of universal laws, such as the aesthetic judg- 
ment claims to establish for the Beautiful. * * 

It is to be remarked, however, in this place, 
that the jEsthetic Judgment presupposes nothing 
more than a general assent, » ♦ * thus the 
possibility of an cestlietic judgment possessing 
universal validity. It does not postulate the as- 
sent of every person, (for this belot)gs only to a 
logically universal judgment, which can be sup- 
ported by demonstration), but only demands this 
assent, as an example of the rule, the confirma- 
tion of which is sought, not from conceptions, 
but from the agreement 'in feeling' of other 
persons. * » * Whether any particular 
person who thinks to pronounce an a;sthetic 
\udgment do really judge in accordance with 



this principle, may be uncertain; but that he 
does refer to it, and therefore that his judgment 
is cBsthetic, is declared by the use of the word 
Beauty. .**... 

AH iESTHETTC JUBOMEtfT, WHEHEIN AN OBJECT 
IS PRONOUNCED BEAUTIFUL AS CONSECTED 
WITH A PARTICULAR IDEA, IS NOT PURE. 

There are two kinds of Beauty; Beauty de- 
tached (^pulchritudo vaga), and Beauty adherent 
[pulchritudo adharens). The former presupposes 
no idea of the object; the latter presupposes an 
idea, and an adequate perfection of the thing. 
Under the first class are embraced the ' inde- 
pendent and' self- subsisting beauties of any 
object; the other includes (as dependent and 
attached to the idea of some particular thini") 
objects conceived to exist for a special end. 
'I'he beauty of fiowers is free, detached Beauty. 
What the flower actually is, only the botanist 
knows; and even he, though he sees in it the 
reproductive organ of the plant, yet in judging 
of it as an object of Taste, pays no regard to 
this natural end. This Judgment, therefore, is 
founded upon no perfection of any sort; no in- 
ward fitness regulating the management of the 
parts. Many birds, such as parrots, humming- 
birds, the birds of Paradise, and various sea- 
shells, are beautiful in themselves; not as con- 
nected with an object with reference to its de- 
sign, but independently and of themselves. So 
drawings a la grecgiu, arabesque borders, &c., 
signify nothing, represent no particular object, 
and express no particular idea, but are free, 
detached Beauty. So what are called fantasies, 
in Music (without theme); indeed all Music 
without text may be considered as of this kind. 

In judging of detached Beauty, in its form, 
the £ESthetic Judgment is pure. It presupposes 
no idea of a design to be accomplishe<l, which 
should be represented by the object; for by this 
the freedom of the Imagination, sporting as it 
were in contemplation of the object, would 
only be restrained. But human Beauty (whether 
of a man, a woman, or a child); the beauty of 
a horse ; of a building (church, palace, arsenal_ 
or summer-house), presupposes the idea of 
design, which determines what the thing should 
be ; the idea of perfection. It is therefore 
merely adherent Beauty. Thus as the con- 
nection of the Agreeable (in Sensation), with 
Beauty, which properly concerns only Form, 
disturbs the purity of the Judgment; so also 
connection with the Good (that is, something for 
which the thing, from its design, is good), is 
likewise destructive of the purity of the testhetic 
Judgment. 

'For example' we might add much Jjat is 
pleasing when seen by itself, to a building 
were it not that it is intended for a church: it 
might ornament a figure to cover it with tracery- 
work, and delicate, yet regular lines, as in the 
tatooing of the New Zealanders ; were it not 
that it is a human being: this counten.mct! 
might have much more delicate features, and a 



70 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



softer and more pleasing outline, were it not 
intended to represent a man, or indeed a war- 
rior. So the pleasure derived from the inward 
design of a tiling, which determines its precise 
character, is founded upon an idea; but that 
derived iVom Beauty is by nature such that it 
presupposes no conception, but is connected im- 
mediately with the image of the thing. 

Now if the sestlietic judgment is made de- 
pendent on design, and thus a judgment of the 
Reason, it is no loiiger a pure aesthetic judg- 
ment. 

It is true that this advantage is gained by the 
connection of trsthetic with intellectual plea- 
sure, that 'the principle of Taste becomes 
fixed, and though not universal, yet it is capable 
of being subjected, as to certain things, to fixed 
rides. These rules, however, are then no longer 
rules of Taste, but of a union of Taste with 
Reason; i. e. the Beautiful with the Good. * * 

OF THE IDEAL OF BEAUTT. 

As to Taste, ' therefore,' there are no objec- 
tive rules * * to determine what is beau- 
tiful. For all Judgment from this source is 
aesthetic, that is, subjective Feeling and not a 
conception of any object, that determines it. 
To seek a principle of Taste which should 
give indefinite conceptions a universal criterion 
of the Beautiful, is -a fruitless endeavour, since 
what is sought is impossible and self-contra- 
dictory. 

That this feeling (of pleasure or displeasure) 
shall be capable of being generally communi- 
cated, and this without any conception 'of the 
nature of the oljject;' and the general approxi- 
mate agreement of all ages and all nations, in 
relation to this feeling, as to certain objects is 
the empirical though obscure criterion of Taste, 
scarcely reaching to conjecture, which, as so 
many examples show us, has a deep-hidden 
foundation in the common nature of Man; in 
the common principles of Judgment as to the 
Forms under which objects are presented to us. 

Hence some products of Taste are considered 
as models; not as if Taste could be acquired, 
by imitation ; for Taste must be a faculty of the 
individual; but he who copies a model, shows 
himself expert, as far as he copies correctly; 
but Taste involves the power of judging of tlie 
model itself 

From this it follows that the highest model, 
the prototype of Taste can be only an Idea, 
vvhicli every one must awaken in himself. * * 

An Idea is properly a conception of Reason; 
an Ideal is tlie image of some thing adequate 
to the Llea. Each such prototype of Taste 
rests indeed upon the vague idea of a maximum 
'of Beauty,' but can be reached only by repre- 
sentation, and not by conceptions. It is there- 
fore more properly called an Ideal 'than an 
Idea' of Beauty; and this, though' we may not 
possess it, yet we strive to produce within our- 
selves. But since it depends upon represen- 



tation, and not upon conception, it is an Ideal 
of the Imagination only; the Imagination being 
the faculty of Representation. Now how do 
we arrive at this Ideal of Beauty? ^priori, or 
by Experience'? And also, what kind of Beauty 
is capable of an Ideal? 

It is to be observed in tlie first place, that the 
Beauty for which we are to expect an Ideal, is 
not vague, but fixed Beauty, 'controlled by' a 
conception of objective fitness. An Ideal there- 
fore is not the object of a perfectly pure aesthetic 
judgment, but of one partaking in a measure of 
the nature of an idea. That is, the principles 
by which we judge concerning an Ideal, have 
for their foundation some idea of Reason, ac- 
cording to definite conceptions, and this idea 
determines a priori, the design upon which rests 
the possibility of the object. An Ideal of beau- 
tiful flowers; of fine furniture; of a beautiful 
view, is inconceivable. Even indeed as to 
Beauty dependent on adaptation to particular 
ends, an Ideal is often inconceivable; for ex- 
ample, an Ideal of a beautiful dwelling-house, 
of a beautiful tree, garden, &c. ; probably be- 
cause the purpose is not sufficiently definite and 
fixed by the notion of the thing, and thus the 
fitness is almost as ' floating and' unattached to 
a 'particular' object, as in the case of vague or 
detaciied Beauty. 

Man, as 'a being,' having the end of his ex- 
istence within himself, and able to determine 
its aims by means of Reason, or, where he is 
obliged to take them from the outward world, 
yet able to compare them with fundamental 
and universal aims, and to form an aesthetic 
judgment from the comparison, Man alone can 
present an Ideal of Beauty, in like rnanner as 
Humanity alone, among all earthly things, can 
afibrd an Ideal of perfection in him, as In- 
telligence. ***** 

The Ideal of the human form consists in the 
expression of the moral nature, without which 
it cannot afibrd a universal and positive pleasure, 
(as distinguished from the merely negative satis- 
faction of an academically correct representa- 

tlOlll 

The correctness of such an Ideal of Beauty is 
tested in this; that it permits no intermixture 
of sensuous satisfaction with the pleasure de- 
rived from the object, and yet excites a strong 
interest in it. 

***** * 

Taking the result of the above investigations, 
we find that all depends on the conception of 
Taste; and that this is the faculty of judging 
of an object according to the free, yet normal 
action of the Imagination. * * * But that 
the Imagination should be free, and yet essen- 
tially subject to law, that is, that it should con- 
tain an autonomy, is a contradiction. 

The Understanding alone gives the law. But 
if the Imagination is compelled to proceed ac- 
cording to a definite law, the product will be 
determined as to its Form, according to certain 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



Tl 



conceptions of the perfection of tlie thing, and 
in this case the pleasure will not be owing to 
Beauty, but to Goodness, (to Perfection, though 
mere formal Perfection), and the judgment will 
be no tpsthetic judgment. 

It is thus a normal regularity, without law ; 
a sunjective liarmony of the Imagination and 
the Understanding, without any objective har- 
mony, (wherein the notion is referred to a pre- 
cise conception of the object); and it is thus 
alone that the freedom and regularity of the 
Understanding can co-exist with the peculiar 
nature of an sestlietic judgment. 

We find regular, geometrical iigiires, a circle, 
a square, a cube, &c., commonly given by critics 
of Taste as the simplest and most undoubted 
examples of Beauty; and yet they are called 
regular, because they can only be conceived of 
as mere representatives of a particular idea, 
■which prescribes to the figure the law by which 
alone it exists. Thus one of the two must be 
■wrong; either this judgment of the critics, in 
ascribing Beauty to these figures, or ours, which 
declares fitness, without conception, essential to 
Beauty. 

Now it is not necessary to select a man of 
taste, in order to discover that greater pleasure 
is afl"orded by the figure of a circle than by a 
scrawl, and more in an equilateral and equi- 
angular triangle than in one of uneven shape 
and as it were deformed. For tliis requires 
only common sense, and not Taste. Where we 
fiml a purpose, for example, to determine the 
size 'of a place, or to make accessible the rela- 
tions of the parts to each other and to the whole ; 
— here regular figures, and those of the simplest 
kind are required; and the pleasure depends 
not immediately upon the image of the figure, 
but on its applicability to various purposes. A 
room whose walls form unequal angles, a 
garden of such a shape, in short all disturbance 
of symmetry, as well in the forms of animals, 
(e. g. to be one-eyed), as of buildings or flo'wer- 
beds, is unpleasant, because inappropriate; not 
only practically, as relates to a particular use 
of these things, but also in judging of them ge- 
nerally, as adapted to various purposes. This 
is not the case with the cesthetio judgment, 
which if pure, unites pleasure or displeasure 
with the mere view of the object, immediately, 
without reference to any employment or end. 
* * * All stiff" regularity, approaching the 
mathematical, is unpleasant, from its aflx)rding 
no continued exercise of the perceptive powers; 
and where neither knowledge nor a special end 
is sought, it is tedious. On the other hand what- 
ever affords a ready and agreeable exercise to 
the Imagination, is always new, and we do not 
tire of beholding it. 

Marsden, in his description of Sumatra, makes 
the remark that in this island the wild beauties 
of Nature everywhere surround the beholder, 
and thus have little attraction for him ; whereas 
a pepper-garden, where the poles upon wliich 



this plant climbs, form parallel lines of alleys, 
had a great charm for him when he came upon 
it in the midst of the forest; and he concludes 
from this that the apparently lawless beauty of 
the wilderness is pleasing only as variety, to 
one who has become tired of regularity. 

But he would have only to make the experi 
ment of spending a day in his pepper-garden, 
to see that when the Understanding has satis- 
fied the craving for order which everywhere 
accompanies it, the object is no longer interest 
ing, but on the contrary imposes an irksome 
restraint upon the Imagination ; whereas the 
profusion of Nature, lavish even to extravagance 
in that country, wliere it is suljjected to no rules 
of art, would atford constant nourishment to his 
taste. 

Thus the song of birds, irreducible to any 
musical rules, seems to have more freedom, and 
thus to offer more to the Taste, than even tlie 
human voice, though exercised according to all 
the rules of Music. For we sooner tire of tlie 
latter, if often and long repeated. * * * 

A distinction is also to be made between 
beautiful objects, and beautiful views of objects, 
(which may be indistinct, from distance). In 
the latter case pleasure seems to arise not so 
much from what is seen, as from what we are led 
to imagine in the field of view ; that is, from the 
fancies with which the mind pleases itself, be- 
ing constantly excited by the variety upon which 
the eys falls; thus for e.xample in the varying 
shapes in a wood-fire, or a murmuring brook; 
neither of which are beautiful, but which have 
a charm for tlie imagination, by the excitement 
they afford. * * .* Por the Imagination (as 
a productive faculty of Cognition), has great 
power in creating as it were another Nature, 
froni the material furnished by actual Nature. 
With this we occupy ourselves when 'the world 
of experience seems too common-place ; we 
re-rnodel it, still indeed according to the laws 
of analogy, but also on principles that lie higlier 
up in the Reason, and which are as truly na- 
tural to us as those in accordance with which 
the Understanding apprehends empirical N-a- 
ture. 

Herein we feel our freedom from the law of 
association that attaches to the empirical use of 
this faculty, and according to which indeed Na- 
ture furnishes us with material ; but this is 
wrought by us into something quite different 
and superior to nature. * * * 



FROM THE 

'•PLAN FOR AN EVERLASTING PEACE."* 

Nations, 'considered collectively' as States, 
maybe judged by the same rules as indiviiluals, 
who, in the state of nature (i. e. of independence 
of outward laws), are obnoxious to each other 
by their mere contiguity, and each of whom 

* Zum eioiffen Frieden, Koiiigsberg. 17!l.'> 



72 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



may and ought, for the sake of his own safety, 
to demand of the other to enter into a compact 
with liim, of tlie nature of a civil {rovernment, 
wliereby each may be secured -.n his right. 
* * * Tlie attachment of savages to their 
lawless freedom, 'and their preference of un- 
ceasing conflict to submission to the restraint of 
laws to be established by themselves — and thus 
of insane freedom to that in accordance with 
Reason — is looUed upon by us with profound 
contempt, and considered as rudeness, want of 
civi!Jzatioii, and bestial degradation of Imma- 
nity. It would seem, therefore, as if cultivated 
nations, united into separate States, must hasten 
to escape as soon as possible from so degraded 
a condition. Instead of this, however, the ma- 
jesty of every State (for the majesty of a people 
is an absurd expression) is thought to consist 
precisely in this, that it is subject to no restraint 
iiom outward laws, and the glory of its chief 
magistrate to be, that without exposing himself 
to danger, he has many thousands at his com- 
mand, ready to be sacrificed for a matter that 
does not concern them at all:* and the differ- 
ence between the savages of Europe and those 
of America consists principally in this, that 
whereas many tribes of the latter have been 
entirely eaten up by their enemies, the former 
know how to make a better use of the conquered 
than to feed upon them, and prefer increasing 
by them the number of their subjects, and thus 
of the implements for yet more extensive wars. 

When we consider the depravity of human 
nature, which shows itself openly in the uncon- 
trolled relations of nations (whilst in the condi- 
tion of civil government it is in a great measure 
veiled), — it is much to be wondered at that the 
word Right has not as yet been dispensed with, 
as pedantic, in military politics, and that no 
State has yet dared openly to declare itself for 
this opinion. For Hugo Grotius, Putfendorf, 
Valtel, &c. (no very comforting counsellors), are 
still faithfully cited in justification of warlike 
attacks, though their code, whether pliilosophi- 
cal or diplomatic, lias not and cannot have the 
least legal force, since States as such are subject 
to no common outward authority; and though 
there is no instance where a State has ever 
been induced by any arguments armed with the 
voices of such mighty men, to desist from its 
intention. 

This reverence which every State pays (at 
least in words) to the idea of Right, proves that 
there exists in Man (though as yet undeveloped) 
the germ of a more complete mastery over the 
evil principle within, and a hope of similar vic- 
tory in others. For otherwise States intending 
to make war upon each other would never make 
use of the word Right, unless it were in mock- 
ery, as the Gallic prince, who declared: "That 

•Tlius a Bulgarian prince answered the Grecian empe- 
ror, who good iiaturedly wished to decide their dispute by 
a duel :— " A smith wlio has tongs will not pull red-hot 
iron out of the tire with his fingers." 



it was the preference that Nature has given to 
the stronger over the weaker, that the latter 
should obey.'' 

The mode by whicli States maintain their 
rights is never legal process, as where an out- 
ward tribunal exists, but only War, and this and 
its favourable event. Victory, do not decide the 
right; a treaty of peace terminates only the ex- 
isting war, and not the state of War, a new pre 
text being easily found. * * * Reason 
' therefore,' from the throne of tlie supreme moral 
authority, entirely condemns War, as a means of 
obtaining justice, and on the other hand makes 
Peace an immediate duty. But Peace cannot 
be made or secured without a compact among 
nations. So that a league of a peculiar nature 
is demanded, which we may call a league of 
Peace (fadus pacificum), and which would be 
distinguished from a compact of peace (^pactum 
pads), in this, that the object of the latter is to 
put an end only to one war, but that of the for- 
mer to abolish War forever. * * * 

The practicability (objective reality) of this 
idea of a Federation, to extend by degrees over 
all Stales, and thus lead to an everlasting Peace, 
may be easily shown. For if by good fortune 
a mighty and enlightened nation should be able 
to form itself into a republic (which from its 
nature must be inclined to lasting peace), this 
would give a centre for the federative union of 
other states, to collect around it, and thus secure 
the freedom of each, according to the idea of 
international Law, and to spread itself out by 
degrees farther and farther by repeated unions 

of this kind. 

»* ****** 

The idea of international Law, as a right to 
make War, that is, a right to determine what is 
just, not by universal laws limiting the freedom 
of each, but by one-sided maxims, through force, 
— it is utterly without meaning, unless we un- 
derstand by it, that it is quite right that men 
with such views should perish by mutual anni- 
hilation, and thus find everlasting Peace in the 
wide grave, that covers all the horror of vio- 
lence, together with its authors. 

There is no other way in accordance with 
Reason, for States to escape froin the condition 
of lawlessness in their relations to each other, 
than by giving up, like private individuals, their 
wild (lawless) freedom, and submitting to pub- 
lic laws. 

Since the communion (more or less close) 
between the nations of the earth, has extended 
so far that an act of injustice done in one part 
of the earth is felt in all, the idea of cosmopoli- 
tan Law is no fantastic nor exaggerated notion, 
but the necessary complement of the unwritten 
code, as well of civil as international Law; ne- 
cessary to the public Law of the human race in 
general, and thus to eternal Peace, with the ap- 
proach of which we can flatter ourselves only 
on this condition. * » » * » 

If it is our duty ' to strive for' this state of 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



73 



public Law, and if at the same time there is a 
well-grounded hope that it may be actualized, 
though ouly in an infinitely exteniied approxi- 
mation, then an everlasting Peace, to succeed 
the hitherto falsely so called treaties of Peace, 
(properly truces), is no empty idea, but a pro- 
blem to be solved progressively, and continu- 
ally approaching the goal, since the periods of 
equal progress are, we hope, constantly be- 
coming shorter. » * • * * 

out THE OUAnASTT OF AX EVEBtASTIJfO PEACE. 

This guaranty is given by nothing less than 
the great Artist, Nature, [iiatura dcedala rerurn), 
from whose mechanical course the design shines 
visibly forth, to produce through the very dis- 
sensions of men an involuntary concord. We 
give therefore to Nature, considered as the 
overpowering influence of a Cause unknown to 
us in the laws of its action, the name of Fate ; 
but viewing it as adaptation to a design run- 
ning through the Universe ; as the recondite 
wisdom of a higher Cause whose energy is 
directed towards the objective destination* of 
the human race, we name it Providence; not, 
indeed, that we, properly speaking, know, or 
can even infer it, from these contrivances of 
Nature; but we are obliged to suppose it, to 
form any conception of their possibility, accord- 
ing to the analogy of human contrivances. The 
relation, however, and the harmony 'of this 
Cause' with the end immediately prescribed to 
us by Reason (in Morals) is an idea in theory 
transcending our powers, but practically, (for 
instance, as to the idea of the duty of Peace, 
and the employment of the mechanism of Na- 
ture to this end), established, and its reality 
well-founded. *••**• 

Before examining farther into the nature of 
this guaranty, it will be necessary first to con- 
sider the situation in which Nature has placed 
the actors in her great theatre, and which 
niakes'the secure establishment of Peace finally 
necessary ; and afterwards the manner in which 
she brings this about. 

The arrangement provided by Nature for 
this end consists in this; 1. That she has taken 
care that in all parts of the earth, men shall be 
able to live ; 2. That she has scattered them, 
by means of War, in all direc'.ions. even to the 
most inhospitable regions, in order that these 
may be peopled ; 3. That, by the same means, 
she has compelled them to enter into relations 
more or less (bunded upon Law. 

It is admirable that even the cold deserts on 
the Arctic Sea produce moss, which the rein- 
deer digs from under the snow, to be itself the 
food or the steed of the Ostiacs or Samoides; or 
that the salt sand ■wastes provide the camel, 
created as it were for crossing them ; in order 
not to leave these regions unoccupied. • • * 

* That 13, the destiny of the race, in History, as dis- 
tinguished from Virtue, the destination of the indivi- 
dual. 'J'r. 



But 'the inhabitants of these countries' were 
driven thither probably by War alone. * * » 
Nature, in providing that it should be possible 
for man to inhabit every part of the earth, at 
the same tiine despotically willed that they 
should inhabit every part, even against their 
inclination, and without connecting with this 
necessity the moral constraint of an idea of 
Duty, but choosing War as the means of ac- 
complishing this purpose. Thus we see nations 
the identity of whose language testifies to theii 
common origin, as the Samoides on the Froze i 
Ocean and a nation of similar language a tliou- 
sand miles distant, on the other side of the 
Altai moimtains; between whom a ditferent 
(Mongolian) nation, an equestrian and warlike 
people, has thrust itself, and thus driven one 
portion of the tribe to sucli a distance, into the 
most inhospitable regions, whither they would 
certainly never have spread from their own 
inclination. So the Fins in the northernmost 
parts of Europe, called Laplanders, and the 
Hungarians, with whom they are related in 
language, are now widely separated by the 
Gothic and Sarmatian races that have pene- 
trated between them. And what can have 
driven the Esqiiiinaux, (a race quite different 
from any of the American, and perhaps consist- 
ing of ancient European adventurers), into the 
North; and the Pescheras in South America 
into Terra del Fuego, except War; of which 
Nature avails herself as means of peopling all 
parts of the earth? » • » • » 

Thus much concerning what Nature does for 
her own purposes, with the human race, consi- 
dered as a race of animals. 

Now comes the question, which touches the 
most important point in the design of an ever- 
lasting Peace. ' What does Nature to this' in- 
tent, as to the aim which Man's reason makes 
his duty; that is, what does she in furtherance 
of his moral endeavour ; and how does she gua- 
ranty that what Man ought to do, but does not, 
according to his nature as a free being, he shall 
nevertheless do, without prejudice to his free- 
doin, by a natural necessity. * * * 

When I say of Nature that she wills this or 
that to take place, I mean by this, not that she 
makes it our duty, (for this belongs solely to the 
free practical Reason), but that she does it her- 
self whether we wish it or not: (fata volentem 
ducunt, nolentem trahuntV 

1. Even if a nation were not driven by inter- 
nal discord to submit to the restraint of public 
laws, yet War would accomplish this from with- 
out; for, according to the beforementioned pro- 
visioti of Nature, every nation finds in its neigh- 
bourhood another nation pressing upon it, against 
which it must inwardly organize itself into a 
State, in order to be prepared for resistance. 
Now the republican form of government is the 
only one perfectly adapted to the riglits of Man. 
but also the hardest to establish, and yet more 
difRcult to preserve. So that many maintain 
I that it would have to be a commonwealth of 
7 



/4 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



angels since men, with their selfish inclinations, 
ai-e not capable of so siiMime a form of govern- 
ment. But here Nature comes to the assistance 
of this universal Will, so honoured, but practi- 
cally so powerless; and this by means of these 
same selfish inclinations. So that it requires 
only a good organization of the State, (which 
surely is within the power of men), so to array 
these forces against each other, that the one 
shall prevent or neutralize the evil effect of the 
other ; so that the result for the Reason will be 
the same as if neither existed. Thus a man, 
though not morally good, may be compelled to 
be a good citizen. Paradoxical as it may sound, 
the problem of civil organization maybe solved 
by a nation of devils, provided they have un- 
derstan<ling. It runs thus: — "So to order and 
organize a multitude of rational beings, all re- 
quiring universal laws for their protection, but 
each secretly inclined to make himself an ex- 
ception to their operation, that though they con- 
flict in their private feeling, yet these feelings 
shall so counteract each other that in civil rela- 
tions the result will be the same as if they had 
no such evil feelings." 

Such a problem must be capable of a solution. 
For it is not the moral improvement of mankind, 
but only the mechanism of Nature, as to which 
we inquire how it is to be employed in the af- 
fairs of men, so to direct the conflict of hostile 
sentiments among a people, that they shall 
oblige each other to submit to compulsory laws, 
and thus bring about a condition of tranquillity 
in which laws are effective. This may be seen 
even in actually existing States, though very 
imperfectly organized; they approach in out- 
ward condition very near to what the idea of 
Right commands, though inward morality is 
certainly not the cause; for good government is 
not the product of Morality, but, vice-versa, a 
good moral devekpment of a nation is to be 
expected only from good government. 

ISo that the mechanism of Nature, through 
selfish inclinations, which are naturally opposed 
to each otlier in their outward effects also, serves 
as an instrument to prepare the way for what 
Reason aims at, the law of Right; and thus, as 
far as depends on the State, to further and se- 
cure inward as well as outward Peace. 

We may say, therefore, that Nature impera- 
tively demands that the right shall finally pre- 
vail. What is neglected at first brings itself 
about at last, though with much discomfort. * * 

2. The idea of international Law presupposes 
a separation of many independent, neighbouring 
States, and though this in itself is a state of War 
(unless a federative union repress the outbreak 
of hostilities), yet even this is more in accord- 
ance with Reason than an amalgamation, by a 
power overgrowing the oriiers and passing into 
a universal monarchy. For laws are always 
weakened in proportion to the increase of the 
area of government ; and a soulless despotism, 
after having rooted out the germs of good, falls 
at last into anarchy. Nevertheless it is the de- 



sire of every State (or of its rulers) thus to bring 
about a state of enduring Peace, by monopolis- 
ing, if possible, the government of the whole 
world. But Nature will have it otherwise. 

She makes use of two means to prevent na- 
tions from intermingling, and to separate them : 
the ditference of Language, and the difference 
of Creed, which indeed carries with it an incli- 
nation to mutual hatred, and an excuse for War; 
but yet, in the advance of culture, and the gra- 
dually increasing friendly intercourse of man- 
kind, leads to greater harmony of principles, 
and to a peaceful understanding, brought about 
and secured, not like the despotism above spoken 
of (on the grave of Freedom), by the exhaustion 
of all forces, but by their equilibrium amid the 
liveliest contention. 

3. As Nature wisely separates nations, though 
the will of each State, supported too by princi- 
ples of international law, would seek for union, 
by cunning or violence ; — so on the other hand 
she unites nations whom the idea of cosmopo- 
litan Right would not have protected against 
violence and war, by mutual interest. 

This is the spirit of Commerce, which cannot 
coexist with War, and which, sooner or later, 
takes possession of every nation. For as among 
all means of influence under the command of 
the governing authority of the State, the power 
of money is most to be relied on. States are 
compelled (not precisely by moral motives) to 
encourage Peace; and in whatever quarter of 
the world War threatens to break out, to prevent 
it by negotiations, as if in constant league to 
this end. ******* 

Thus does Nature guaranty everlasting Peace, 
by the very mechanism of human passions; not 
indeed so securely that future Peace can be 
(theoretically) prophesied ; but practically she is 
successful, and renders it our duty to labour to 
bring about this end, as no mere chimera. 



SUPPOSED BEGINNING OF THE HISTORY 
OF MAN. 

To strew conjectures in the course of a his- 
tory, in order to fill up a gap in the narrative, 
may be regarded as allowable ; since that which 
went before, as remote cause, and that which 
came after, as effect, may furnish a tolerably 
safe guide to the discovery of the intermediate 
causes, and thus make the transition intelligible. 
But to a'eate a history entirely out of conjecture, 
seems to be little better than laying the plan of 
a novel. Such a history ought not to be called 
a conjectural history, but a mere fiction. Never- 
theless, that which ought not to be hazarded in 
relation to the progressive history of hun)an af- 
fairs, may yet be attempted in relation to the 
first beginning of the same, so far as that begin- 
ning is the work of Nature. For here, it is not 
necessary to invent. Experience will suffice, 
if we assume, that experience, in the first be 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



7f 



ginning of things, vras neither better nor worse 
llian now, — an assumption which agrees with 
the analo<!y of nature, and has nothing presump- 
tuous in it. A history of the first unfolding of 
freedom from an original capacity in the nature 
of man, is something very different from the 
liistory of freedom in its progress, which can 
liave no other basis than received accounts. 

Conjecture, however, must urge no extrava- 
gant claims to assent. It must announce itself 
not as serious occupation, but only as an exer- 
cise permitted to tlie imagination, under the 
guidance of reason, by way of recreation and 
mental hygiene. Accordingly, it must not mea- 
sure itself with a narrative on the same subject, 
which has been proposed and believed as actual 
history, and whose evidence depends on far 
other grounds than those of natural philosophy. 
For this reason, and because I am attempting 
here a mere pleasure-excursion, I may count on 
the privilege of being allowed to avail myself 
of a certain ancient, sacred document, and of 
fancying that my excursion made on the M-ings 
of imagination, though not without a guiding 
thread deduced by reason froin experience, has 
hit the exact line which that docuinent histori- 
cally describes. The reader will turn over the 
leaves of the document (first book of Moses, 
from the second to the fourth chapter), and, fol- 
lowing step by step, see whether tlie course 
pursued by philosophy according to ideas, coin- 
cides with the one which is there indicated. 

Not to lose ourselves in merely fantastic con- 
jectures, we must begin with that which cannot 
be deduced by human reason from antecedent 
natural causes, viz. the existence of man. We 
must suppose him existing in fully developed 
stature, in order that he may be independent 
of maternal aid. We must suppose a pair, in 
order that he may propagate his species; and 
yet but a single pair, in order that war may not 
spring up at once, betweeti those who are near 
logetlier and yet estranged from each other; 
and tliat Nature may not be charged, on the 
score of various parentage, with having made 
no sufficient provision for union, as llie chief 
enil of human destination. For the unity of the 
family from wliicli all men were to derive their 
origin, was undoubtedly the best means to bring 
about this end. I place this pair in a region 
secured against the attack of beasts of prey, and 
richly furnished by nature with the means of 
support; that is, in a kind of garden, and in a 
cliuiale forever genial. Farther still, I contein- 
plate them at that period only, at which they 
have already made important progress in the 
ability to use their powers. I begin therefore 
not with the utter rudeness of nature, lest there 
should be too many conjectures for the reader, 
and too kw probabilities, if I were to attempt 
to fill up this gap, which probably comprises a 
long period of time. 

The first man, then, could stand and walk ; 
he could speak (Gen.ii. 20.) and even talk, that 
is, sp»'ak according to connected ideas !•;. 23.), 



consequently, think. All tli«se faculties he was 
forced to acquire for himself, for if they had 
been inborn, they would be hereditary, which 
is contrary to experience. But I here assume 
that he is already possessed of these faculties, 
and direct my attention exclusively to the deve- 
lopment of the moral in his doing and abstain- 
ing, which necessarily presupposes the faculties 
in question. 

At first, the novice is guided solely by in- 
stinct, that voice of God which all animals obey. 
This allowed him certain articles of food and% 
forbade others. (Gen. iii. 2 3.) It is not ne- 
cessary however, to suppose, for this purpose, a 
special instinct which has since been lost. It 
inight have been simply the sense of smell, its 
relation to the organ of taste, and the known 
sympathy of the latter with the instruments of 
digestion. Hence a capacity, the lilce of which 
may still be observed, to predict the suitableness 
or unsuitableness of any particular species of 
food. It is not even necessary to suppose this 
sense stronger in the first pair than it is now; 
for it is well known what difference exists in 
the powers of perception, between those who 
are occupied with their senses alone and those 
who are occupied, at the same time, with their 
thoughts, and thereby diverted from their sensa- 
tions. 

So long as inexperienced man obeyed this 
call of Nature, he found his account in so doing. 
Soon, however. Reason began to stir and he 
sought to extend his knowledge of the means 
of subsistence beyond the bounds of instinct, by 
a comparison of that which he had eaten with 
that which resembled it, in the judgment of 
another sense than the one to which the instinct 
attached, — the sense of sight. (Gen. iii. 6.) 
This experiment might have had a happy issue, 
although instinct did not advise, provided it did 
not forbid. But it is a property of reason to be 
able, with the help of imagination, to elaborate 
artificial desires not only without a natural im- 
pulse, but even against the impulses of nature. 
These desires which, in their first manifesta- 
tion, we call wantonness, gradually produce a 
whole swarm of unnecessary and even of un- 
natural propensities, to which we give tlie name 
of luxury. The occasion of the first defection 
from natural instinct, may have been a trifle, 
but the consequence of this first experiment 
was, that man became conscious of his reason, 
as a faculty capable of extension beyond the 
limits within which other animals are held ; 
and this consequence was of great importance 
and had a decisive influence on his vvayof life. 
Although, therefore, it may have been merely a 
fruit, the sight of which tempted him to partake' 
of it by its resemblance to other pleasant fruits, 
of which he had already partaken- yet if we 
add the example of an animal to whose nature 
such fruit was adapted, whereas it was not 
adapted to the nature of man, and, consequently, 
forbidden to liitn by an opposing natural in 
stinct; — this circumstance would give to reason 



76 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



the first occasion to practise chicanery with Na- 
ture (Oen. iii. 1.) and, in spite of her prohibition, 
to make the first experiment of a free choice ; 
which experiment, being the first, probably did 
not result according to expectation. No matter 
how insignificant the injury which ensued, 
man's eyes were opened by it. (Gen. iii. 7.) 
He discovered in himself the capacity to select 
his own life-path, instead of being confined to a 
given one, liUe other animals. The momentary 
pleasure which the perception of tliis advantage 
miglit awake in him, must have been followed 
immediately by fear and anxiety. How was 
he, wlio, as yet, knew nothing according to its 
hidden qualities and remote effects, — how was 
lie to proceed with his newly discovered power? 
He stood, as it were, on the brink of an abyss. 
From the single objects of his desire, as they 
had hitherto been indicated to him by instinct, 
he learned their infinity, an infinity in which 
he was as yet unprepared to choose. It was 
not possible for him however to return from 
this state of freedom once tasted, to that of 
servitude, or subjection to the law of instinct. 

Next to the instinct of nourishment, by which 
Nature preserves the individual, the instinct of 
sex, by which she provides for the preservation 
of the species, is the most important. Reason, 
once called into action, began without much 
delay to manifest its influence here likewise. 
Man soon found that what, with other animals, 
is transient and for the most part dependent on 
periodical impulse, was capable of being pro- 
longed and even increased, in his case, by means 
of the imagination, which acts with greater 
moderation indeed, but also with greater per- 
manence and uniformity, the more the object is 
withdrawn from the senses; and that, by this 
means, the satiety which the satisfaction of a 
merely animal desire brings with it, might be 
prevented. Accordingly, the fig-leaf (v. 7.) 
was the product of a far greater exercise of 
reason, than that which appeared in the first 
stage of its development. For to render a pro- 
pensity more intense and more permanent by 
withdrawing the object of it from the senses, 
shows a consciousness of some degree of power 
of reason over impulses, and not merely, like 
that first step, a capacity to serve them to a 
greater or less extent. Denial was the artifice 
which led from the joys of mere sensation to 
ideal ones, from mere animal desire to love, 
and, with love, from the feeling of the merely 
agreeable, to the taste for the beautiful, first in 
man, and then in nature. Propriety, — the dis- 
position to inspire respect in others by the decent 
concealment of whatsoever might produce con- 
tempt, — as the true foundation of all genuine 
social union, gave moreover the first hint to the 
cultivation of man, as a moral being. — A small 
beginning, but one which makes an epoch, by 
giving a new direction to thought, is more iin- 
portant than the whole immeasurable series of 
extensions given to culture, in consequence of it. 

The tliird step in the progress of reason, after 



it had connected itself with the first felt anc 
immediate necessities, was the deliberate ex- 
pectation of the future. This faculty, by means 
of which not only the present life-moment is 
enjoyed, but the coming and often far distant 
time made present, is the most decisive mark 
of the advantage possessed by man in being 
able to prepare himself, according to his destina- 
tion, for distant ends; but it is also, at the same 
time, the most inexhaustible fountain of cares 
and troubles, occasioned by the uncertain future, 
from M'hich all other animals are freed, (vs. 
13 — 19.) The man, who had himself and a 
wife, together with future children, to support, 
anticipated the ever-growing difficulty of his 
labour. The woman anticipated the evils to 
which Nature had subjected her sex, and the 
added ones which the stronger man would lay 
upon her. Both saw with fear, in the back 
ground of the picture, after a toilsome life, that 
which indeed befalls inevitably all creatures, but 
without occasioning them any anxiety, namely, 
death. And they seemed to reproach them- 
selves for the use of reason which had brought 
all these evils upon them, and to coimt it a 
crime. To live in their posterity, who might 
experience a happier lot, and, as members of a 
family, lighten the common burden, was, per- 
haps, the only consoling prospect which still 
sustained them. (Gen. iii. 16 — 20.) 

The fourth and last step in the progress of 
reason, and that which raised man entirely 
above the fellowship of the beasts, was this, 
that he comprehended, however, obscurely, that 
he is truly the aim of Nature, and that nothing 
which lives upon the earth can rival him in 
this. The first titne that he said to the sheep: 
"that skin which thou wearest. Nature gave 
thee not for thine own sake but for mine," and 
so saying, took it from the animal and put it 
upon himself; (v. 21.) he became conscious of 
a prerogative which, by virtue of his nature, he 
possessed above all other animals. He no longer 
regarded these as his associates in creation, but 
as means and instruments committed to his will, 
for the accomplishment of whatsoever ends he 
pleased. This conception includes, though dim- 
ly, the converse; viz. that he could not say the 
same of his fellowman, but must regard him as 
an equal partaker with himself of the gifts of 
Nature. We have here a remote preparative 
■for those limitations which reason was here- 
after to impose upon the will of man in regard 
to his fellow, and which are even more neces- 
sary than inclination and love, to the constitu- 
tion of society. 

And thus had man, — in consideration of his 
title to be an end unto himself, to be regarded 
as such by every other and by none to be used 
merely as a means to other ends, — entered into 
an equality with all rational beings of whatsoever 
rank. (Gen. iii. 22.) It is here, and not in the 
possession of reason, considered merely as at, 
instrument for the satisfaction of various pro- 
pensities, that we are to look for the ground or 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



77 



that unlimited equality of man even with higher 
beings, who may be incomparably superior to 
him in natural endowments, but no one of whom 
has therefore a right to manage and dispose of 
him at pleasure. This step in the progress of 
reason is therefore simultaneous with the dis- 
missal of man from the mother-lap of Nature; 
—a change which was honourable indeed, but 
at the same time dangerous, inasmuch as it 
drove him forth from the unmolested and safe 
condition in which his childhood was nursed, 
as it were from a garden which had maintained 
him without any care on his part, (v. 23.) and 
thrust him into the wide world, where so many 
cares and troubles and unknown evils awaited 
him. Hereafter, the burdens of life will often 
elicit the wish for a paradise — the creature of 
liis imagination — where he may dream or trifle 
away his existence in quiet inactivity and un- 
interrupted peace. But reason, restless and irre- 
sistibly impelling hirn to unfold the capacities 
implanted in him, stations itself between him 
and that region of imaginary joys, and will not 
permit him to return into that condition of rude 
simplicity out of which it has drawn him forth, 
(v. 24.) It impels him to undergo with patience 
the labour which he hates, to chase the gauds 
which he despises, and to forget even death so 
terrible to him, in the pursuit of those trifles 
whose loss is more terrible still. 

REMARK. 

From tliis sketch of the first history of man it 
appears, that his departure from the Paradise 
which reason represents as the first residence 
of his species, was nothing else than the transi- 
tion from the rudeness of a merely animal na- 
ture, to humanity, from the leading strings of 
instinct to the guidance of reason, — in a word, 
from the guardianship of Nature, to a state of 
freedoin. Whether man has gained or lost by 
this change, can no longer be a question, if we 
regard tlie destination of the species, which con- 
sists solely in progress toward perfection; how- 
ever defective may have been the first attempts, 
and even a long series of successive attempts to 
penetrate to this end. Nevertheless, this course 
which, for the species, is a progress from worse 
to better, is not exactly such for the individual. 
Before reason was awakened, there was neither 
command nor prohibition, and consequently no 
transgression. But when reason began its work, 
and, weak as it was, came into collision with 
atjimalism in all its strength, it was unavoida- 
ble that evils, and what was worse, with the 
growing cultivation of reason, vices should 
arise, which were entirely foreign from the 
state of ignorance, and consequently of inno- 
cence. The first step out of this state, therefore, 
on the moral siile, was a Fall; on the physical, 
a number of life-ills, hitherto unknown, were 
the efl^ect; consequently, the punishment of that 
Fall. So the history of Nolure begins with good, 
f >r it is the work of God : but the history of Free- 
dimt begins with evil, for it is the work of man. 



For the individual who, in the use of his free- 
dom, has reference only to himself, the change 
was a loss. For Nature, whose aim in relation 
to man, is directed to tlie species, it was a gain. 
The former, therefore, has reason to ascribe all 
the evils that he suffisrs, and all the evils that 
he does, to his own fault; at the same time, 
however, as a member of the whole, (the spe- 
cies) he must admire and commend the wisdom 
and propriety of the arrangement. 

In this way, we may reconcile, with each 
other, and with reason, the oft misinterpreted, 
and, in appearance, successively conflicting as- 
sertions of the celebrated J. J. Rousseau. In 
his work on The Influence of the Sciences, and 
in that on The Inequality of Men, he very cor- 
rectly exhibits the unavoidable contradiction 
which exists between culture and the nature 
of man, as a physical race of beings, in which 
each inilividual is to fulfil entirely his destina- 
tion. But in his -Emil' and his 'Social Contract' 
and other writings, he endeavours to solve the 
difficult problem, and to show how culture must 
proceed in order to unfold, according to their 
destination, the faculties of Humanity as a moral 
species, so that there may no longer be any con- 
flict between the natural and the moral destina- 
tion. From this conflict,* since culture has not 

* To mpiition but a few instances of this conflict be- 
tween the etfort of Humanity to fulfil its moral des'.iiia. 
tion on the one hand, and the unchangeable observance 
of the laws implanted in man's nature, adapted to a rude 
and animal cimdition on the other hand, I adduce the 
following. The epoch of man's majority, i. t. the im- 
pulse as well as the capacity to propafiate his species, is 
set by Nature at the age of sixteen or seventeen years; 
an age at which the youth, in a rude state of Nature, be- 
comes literally a man; for he posses.ses then the power 
to maintain himself, to beget children, and to maintain 
them, together with his wife. Tlie simplicity of his wajits 
makes this easy. In a state of cultivation, on the other 
hand, many means, acquired skill, as well as favourable 
external circumstances, are necessary for this purpose ; 
so that, civilly, this epoch is deferred, on an average, by 
at least ten years. Nature, mennuliile, has not changed 
her period of maturity to suit the progress of social re- 
finement, but obstinately insists on her own law, which 
she has calculateil for the preservation of the human 
race, as an animal species. Hence arises an unavoidable 
conflict between the purposes of Nature and the customs 
of Society. The natural man has already attained to 
niaithood at an age when the civil man is still a youth, 
or even a child. For we may call him a child who, on 
account of his years, (in a state of civilizatnin) cannot 
even maintain himseif, much lees his kind; although he 
has the impulse and the capacity, and, consequently, the 
call of Nature to beget his kind. Assuredly, Nature has 
not implanted instincts and capacities in living beings, 
merely that they may war against and suppress them. 
The lenilencies of Nature, thi*refore, are not designed for 
a state of civilization, but solely for the preservation of 
the human species as a race of animals. There is an 
unavoidable collision between nature and civilization, 
in this particular, which only a perfect civil polity — the 
highest aim of culture — can do away. At present, the 
interval in question (between natural and civil nmjority^ 
is usually beset with vices and their conseq lences. the 
manifold evils of humanity. 

Another example which proves the truth ol 'he propf 
7* 



78- 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



yet rightly commenced, much less completed its 
course, according to true principles, educating 
alike the man and the citizen, arise all the real 
evils which oppress human life, and all the 
vices which dishonour it. The propensities 
v/hich lead to those vices, and on which the 
blame is laid in such cases, are good in them- 
selves, and have their end as natural endow- 
ments. But these natural endowments, being 
calculated for a state of Nature alone, are trench- 
ed upon by progressive culture, and, in turn, 
re-act upon culture, until perfected Art returns 
to Nature again ; which is the final goal in the 
moral destination of the human species. 

CONCLUSIOK OP THE BISTORT. 

The beginning of the next period was the 
transition of man from an era of peace and ease 
to one of labour and discord, as a prelude to 
social union. And here again we must make a 
great leap, and suppose him at once in posses- 
sion of tame animals, and of fruits which he 
could multiply by sowing and planting: (Gen. 
iv. 2.) although it must have been a long pro- 
cess, by which he arrived from the rude life of 

sitioii, that Nature lias iaiplarited in us two tendencies 
to two iliffereiit emis, viz., of man as an animal and of 
man as a moral spcies, is the ^rs longa vita breiiis of 
Hjpiiocrates Science and art mi^ht he carried much far- 
ther hy a single mind which is made for them, after it 
has once attained the requisite maturity of jndirnient by 
long discipline and acquired knowledge, than hy succes- 
sive genorations of learned men ; provided that single 
head could live through the whole period, occupied liy 
those successive generations, with the same yctuthful 
power of intellect. Now Nature has evidently taken her 
dHtermin.'ttion respecting the duration of human life, 
from a very cliflvrent point of view than the promotion 
of scii-nce. For when a man of the happiest intellect 
stauiis on the brink of the greatest discoveries, which he 
is authorized to expect from his skill and experience, old 
a:.'e comes in ; he growsdull, and must leave it to another 
generaiion, beginning with the A. B. C, and going over 
the whole ground again which he has been over, to add 
another span to thi^ progress of culture. Accordingly, the 
proixress of the human race toward the fulhhnent of its 
entire destinaiiun appears to be continually interrupted, 
and in continual danger of falling back again into primi- 
tive ruiieness. And the Grecian philosopher did not com- 
plain entirely without cause, when he said ' it is a pity 
that man must die then when he has just begun to un- 
derstand how he ought to live." 

We may take, for a third example, the inequality of 
ths human condition. Not the inequality of natural 
endowments nor of the gifts of Fortune, but that inequa- 
lity in universal human rights, concerning which Rous- 
seau complains with much truth, hut which is inseparable 
from culture as long as it proceeds wiihout a plan, as it 
must for a long time, and to which Nature certainly did 
not destine man, seeing she gave him freedom, and rea- 
son to restrain that freedom solely by its own universal 
and external legality, which we call civil right. Man 
was intended to work his way gradually out of the rude- 
ness of his natural tendencies, and while he lifts himself 
alvwe them, nevertheless to take heed thai he does not 
sin against thein; a faculty which he does not acquire till 
lafc, and after many unsuccessful attempts. In the mean- 
wnile, Humanity sighs under various evils which, from 
nexperience, it inflicts upon itself. 



a hunter to the first of these possessions, or from 
the irregular digging of roots and gathering of 
fruits to the second. At this point, the division 
between men who had hitherto lived peaceably 
side by side, behoved to begin ; the consequence 
of which was the separation of those addicted 
to different modes of life, and their dispersion 
over the earth. The life of the shepherd is not 
only easy, but affords also the most certain sup- 
port, since there can be no want of feed in a 
soil which is uninhabited far and wide. On 
the other hand, agriculture or planting is very 
toilsome, dependent on the uncertainty of the 
weather ; consequently insecure, and requiring, 
moreover, permanent buildings, ownership of 
the soil, and sufficient power to defend it. But 
the herdsman hates this property in the soil, 
which limits the freedom of his pasturage. 
With regard to the first point, the agriculturalist 
might seem to envy the herdsman as more 
favoured by Heaven than himself (v. 4.) ; in 
fact, however, he was much troubled by him as 
long as he remained in his neighbourhood ; for 
the browsing cattle did not spare his planta- 
tions. Since now it was easy for the herdsman, 
after the damage which he had caused, to with- 
draw himself to a distance and thus escape 
reprisals, seeing he left nothing which he could 
not as well find everywhere else, it was proba- 
bly the husbandman who first used violence 
against these trespasses which the herdsman 
thought lawful, and who, since the occasion for 
these trespasses could never entirely cease, was 
compelled, unless he would lose the fruits of 
his long diligence, to remove as far as possible 
from those who led a nomadic life. (v. 16.) 
This separation maUes the third epoch. 

A soil, on the working and planting of which 
(especially with trees), the support of life de- 
pends, requires fixed habitations ; and, for the 
defence of these against all assaults, a muhilude 
of men who shall assist each other. Conse- 
quently, men addicted to this mode of life, could 
no longer disperse by families, but must keep 
together and establish villages, (improperly 
called cities), in order to protect their property 
against hunters or hordes of vagrant herdsmen. 
The first necessities of life, the production of 
which involved various pursuits (v. 20.), might 
now be exchanged, the one lor the other. The 
necessary consequence of this was culture, and 
the beginning of the arts, as well of amusement 
as of industry, (vs. 21, 22.) But what is most 
important, there was also some arrangeinent 
toward a civil constitution and public justice; 
at first, indeed, with respect only to gross acts 
of violence, the avenging of which was now 
no longer left to individuals, as in the savage 
statCj but committed to a legalized power which 
kept the whole together; that is a kind of 
Government, beyond v/hich there was no exe- 
cutive force (vs. 23, 24.) From this first rude 
institution, all human arts, among which that 
of society and civil security is the most pro- 
fitable, could gradually unfold themselves, the 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



79 



human race multiply, and like swarms of bees 
diffuse itself from a common centre, by sending 
forth cultivated colonists. With this perio<l, 
also, the inequality among men, — that rich foun- 
taii) of so much evil, but also of all good — began 
and continued to increase. 

So long, indeed, as the nomadic, herd-tending 
nations which acknowledge God alone for their 
ruler, hovered around the inhabitants of cities, 
and the husbandmen, who had a man (magis- 
trate) for their master* (vi. 4.), and, being sworn 
foes of property in land, assumed a hostile atti- 
tude toward them, and were hated by them in 
turn, there was continual war between the two, 
or, at least, contiimal danger of war; and there- 
fore both nations could enjoy, internally at least, 
the inestimable blessing of free<lom. For the 
danger of war is even now the only thing that 
qualifies Despotism. Wealth is required in 
order that a State may become a Power; but 
.without liberty there can be no wealth-pro- 
ducing industry. To su])ply the place of this, 
in a poor nation, there must be a general par- 
ticipation in the maintenance of the common 
weal. And this again cannot exist without a 
feeling of liberty. 

In time, however, the growing luxury of the 
city-dwellers, particularly the art of pleasing, 
by which the city women eclipsed the dirty 
nymjihs of the wilderness, could not but prove 
a powerful temptation to those herdsmen to 
form connexions with them, and thus to suffer 
themselves to be drawn into the splendid misery 
of the cities. Then, with the amalgamation of 
two once hostile nations, — putting an end to all 
danger of war, but, at the same time also, to all 
liberty, — it came to pass that the despotism of 
powerful tyrants on the one hand, together with 
a culture scarcely yet commenced, — soulless 
luxury in abject slavery, combined with all the 
vices of the savage state — on the other hand 
Irresistibly diverted the human race from that 
progressive cultivation of their capacity for 
good, prescribed to tliem by Nature, and thereby 
rendered them unworthy of their very exis- 
tence, as a species intended to rule over the 
earth, and not merely to enjoy as brutes or to 
serve as slaves, (v. 17.) 

CONCLODING REMARK. 

The thinking man feels a sorrow that may 
even lead lo moral corruption, of which the 
thoughtless knows nothing. He feels, namely, 
a <liscotitent with that Providence which guides 
the course of the world at large, when he re- 
flects on the evils which oppress the human 
race to so great an extent, and seemingly with- 

* The Ar.ihinii Bediiuiii.-i slill call thHinsejves chililreii 
of a fnriiier Shr.ik, Ihe founder of their tribe (as Beni 
^Ud, &(:.). 'I'his persrinajie, however, is liy no ineaus 
a ruler, and can exercise, of his own will, no authority 
ovir theui. For in a nation of henlsinen, as no one 
possesses real estate which he would have lo leave behind, 
any family that isdjeconlented njay ea.<iily separate itself 
from the tribe, and (jo to strengthen another. 



out the hope of anything better. It is of the 
greatest importance, however, lo be satisfied wilh 
Providence, notwithstanding it has prescribed to 
us a path so full of toil in our earthly world ; 
partly that we may still take courage amid our 
difficulties; partly, lest, in ascribing these evils 
to Fate, we forget our own guilt, which perhaps 
is the sole cause of them, and so neglect to seek 
a remedy for them in self reformation. 

It must be confessed that the greatest evils 
which afflict civilized nations arise from wur : 
not so much indeed from that which actually 
is, or has been, as from the never-ending, ever- 
increasing preparation for that which is to be. 
To this end are applied all the forces of the 
State and all the fruits of its culture, which 
might be used for still further culture. Free- 
dom is, in many points, materially invaded, and 
the motherly care of the State for individual 
members, changed to requisitions of inexorable 
severity: which, nevertheless, are justified by 
the fear of external danger. But, would this 
culture, would the intimate union of the various 
classes of the Commonwealth for the mutual 
furthering of their prosperity, would the same 
population, nay, would that degree of freedom, 
which, under very restrictive laws, still exists, — 
would they be found, were it not for that respect 
for Humanity which the constant dread of war 
enforces in the Heads of States? Look at 
China, which, though she may suffer a sudden 
invasion, yet, in consequence of her situation, 
has no pov\erful enemy to fear; and where, 
consequently, every trace of freedom is ob- 
literated ! In that stage of culture, therefore, at 
which the human race at present stands, war 
is an indispensable means for the promotion of 
further culture; and not till the progress of cul- 
ture is completed (God knows when), would a 
perpetual peace be salutary for us; and not till 
then would it be possible. Accordingly, so far 
as this point is concerned, we ourselves are to 
blame for the evils of which we so bitterly 
complain; and the sacred record is quite right 
in represetiting the amalgamation of nations 
into one Community, and their perfect deliver- 
ance from external danger, while their culture 
has scarcely yet commenced, as a hindrance to 
all further culture, and a lapse into irremediable 
corruption. 

The second cause of discontent among men 
is the order of Nature with respect to the short- 
ness of life. It is true, one' must have esti- 
mated very erroneously the value of life, to 
wish it longer than it actually is; for that would 
be oidy prolonging a struggle with perpetual 
difficulties. On the other hand, however, one 
can hardly blame a childish judgment for fear- 
ing death without loving life, or for thinking, — 
ditficult as it may be to spend a single day in 
tolerable contentment, — that there are never 
days enough in which to repeat the torment. 
But when we consider, with how many cares 
the means of maintaining so short a life af- 
flict us, and how much injustice is perpetra'sd 



80 



IMMANUEL KANT. 



in the hope of some future, though equally 
transient gooii, it is reasonable to conclude, that, 
if men could look forward to a life of eight 
hundred years or rnore, the fatlier would no 
longer be secure of his life from the son, the 
brother from the brother, friend from friend ; 
and that the vices of so long-lived a race would 
reach such a height as to render man worthy 
of no better fate, than to be swept from the 
earth m a general flood, (vs. 12, 13.) 

Tlie third wish, or rather empty longing, (for 
one is conscious that the object can never be 
attained) is the shadow-image of that golden age 
so much praised by the poets : — a state in which 
men are to be freed from all imaginary neces- 
sities imposed by luxury, and contented with 
the simple wants of Nature ; where there is to 
be a jierfect equality of condition, everduring 
peace; in a word, the pure enjoyment of a 
careless life spent in idle dreaming or in childish 
sports. This longing, which makes the Robinson 
Crusoes and the voyages to the South Sea Islands 
so attractive, illustrates the satiety which the 
thinking man experiences in a state of civiliza- 
tion, if he seeks its value in enjoyment alone, 
and balances the counterweight of indolence, 
■when admonished by reason to give value to 
life, by means of action. The vanity of this 
desire of a return to the period of simplicity and 
innocence, is abundantly evident, when, from 
the above representation of his original condi- 
tion, we learn that man could not maintain 
himself in it, precisely, because it does not satisfy 
Uitn ; and that he is still less disposed to return 



to it again. So that, after all, the present la- 
borious condition is to be regarded as his own 
choice. 

Such a representation of his history is there- 
fore profitable to man, and conducive to his in- 
struction and improvement, as showing hiin that 
he must not charge Providence with the evils 
which afflict him; also, that he is not justified 
in imputing his own crimes to the transgression 
of his first Parents, creating an hereditary ten- 
dency to similar transgressions in their des- 
cendants, (for voluntary actions have nothing 
hereditary in them), but that, on the contrary, 
he may, with perfect justice, regard their action} 
as his own, and, accordingly, take to himself 
the whole blame of the evils arising from tha 
misuse of his reason ; since he cannot but ba 
conscious that he would have done precisely as 
they did, in similar circumstances, and that the 
first use which he made of his reason would 
have been, — in spite of the admonitions of Na- 
ture, — to abuse it. This point of moral evil 
being adjusted, those which are strictly physical 
wWl hardly be found to yield a balance in our 
favour, if tried by a debt and credit account of 
guilt and desert. 

And so the result of an attempt to construct 
a history of primitive man by the aid of philo- 
sophy, is contentment with Providence and the 
course of human things on the whole, as pro- 
ceeding not from good to bad but from worse 
to better. To this process every one, for his 
part, is called upon by Nature berself, to con 
tribute according to his power. 




En J-rared ly AB.Walter. 



L E § S D W ca 



JOHANN GOTTHOLD KPHRAIM LESSING. 



Born 1729. Died 1731. 



Lessing was the son of a Lutheran Clergy- 
man ; his birthplace, Kamentz in Upper Lu- 
satia. 

Biography, fonJ to trace the promise of future 
greatness in cliildish caprices, pleases itself 
with the circumstance, that at the age of five, 
he was unwilling to have his picture taken 
otherwise, than with a great pile of books by 
his side. So great, it is intimated, was the 
child's passion for I^etters ! 

At the age of twelve he was sent to the 
High-school at Meissen in Saxony, where he 
labored with great diligence and laid the 
foundation of his extensive erudition. At 
seventeen he entered the university of Leip- 
zig, where his parents wished him to study 
theology. But following the bent of his own 
genius, he studied everything else instead; 
and though a constant hearer of the cele- 
brated Ernesti, he otherwise gave no heed to 
prepare himself for the sacred office. He felt 
the secret ^Dran/r,^ which indicated another 
calling, and in fact before he left Leipzig had 
already begun his literary career, as a writer 
for the stage. The Drama was his first love ; 
but he did not confine himself to that, nor to 
any one province of literature. Indeed there 
is scarcely one which his learning and his 
genius have not illustrated. 

In 1750 he went to Wittenberg to prosecute 
his theological studies in compliance with the 
earnest solicitation of his parents. His younger 
brother, Johann Gottlieb, was already a student 
at this university ; and the two, in conjunction, 
published several essays in theology and polite 
literature, which procured them much honor 
from the Public, and some odium from the 
orthodox. 

Leasing however did not remain long in 
Wittenberg, nor did he ever become a preacher. 
He went to Berlin, and lived as author by pro- 
fession, in intimate communion with Mendels- 
sohn, Nicolai, Rammler, and others, supporting 
himself by his pen. Some of his principal 
works, particularly Emilia Galotti and the Lao- 
coon, were published during this period, and 



while holding the office of secretary to General 
Tauenzien, at Breslau. In 1760 he was made 
member of the Royal academy of sciences at 
Berlin. In 1766 he accepted a situation con- 
nected with the theatre at Hamburg, as thea- 
trical critic, and there wrote his Dramalurgie. 
In 1770 he was made librarian to the library 
at Wolfenbuttel, in the Duchy of Brunswick- 
Wolfenbuttel, where, with the exception of a 
tour to Italy, made in the company of the here- 
ditary Prince of Brunswick, he remained until 
his death. Here he published his Nathan the 
Wise, and several theological treatises. The 
latter involved him in vexatious controversie.^ 
and subjected him to persecutions which em- 
bittered the remainder of his days, and, as it is 
thought, abridged their term. He died in the 
beginning of his fifty-third year ; too soon for 
the interests of literature, too late for his own 
peace. 

The life comprehended in this brief outline 
was singularly unblessed. Lessing was not 
made of the stuff which thrives in the world of 
men. He was one of those illstarred geniuses, 
who, owing to some fatality or some defect, or, 
quite as often perhaps, to some unwonted and 
unaccommodating virtue, fail to find an equal 
and congenial sphere for the exercise of their 
faculties, and are never at one with their 
destiny. His erratic course, not wholly fre« 
from folly,* was crossed with frequent vexa- 
tions and bitter disappointments. He had the 
misfortune, among others, to lose, soon after 
marriage, a beloved wife to whom he had been 
betrothed for six years. — "Six years," says He- 
gejf — "what a long time for a betrothed pair! 
and, in this interim, almost nothing but vexation 
and suffering through sickness. And then the 
duration of the marriage, — only three years ! 
Who can help thinking, in such a case, of the 
vanity of man and his dearest cares? Should 
we not think that, if a man could know this 

* He is accused of having been addicted to game? ot 
hazard. 

t " Ueber Lessing's Bricfwechsel mit seiner Frau.' He 
gel's Vermischte Schriften. 

(8n 



82 



LESSING. 



beforehand, he would prefer an earlier death 
than Nature had intended, to such a life?" 

"That a man like Lessing," says Heine,* 
" could never be happy you will easily com- 
prehend. Even if he had not loved the truth, 
and if he had not everywhere fought for it, of 
his own free will, he must nevertheless have 
been unhappy, for he was a Genius. They 
will pardon thee everything, said lately a sigh- 
ing poet; they will pardon thy riches, they 
will pirdon thy high birth, they will pardon 
thy handsome figure, they will even pardon thy 
talent, but to genius men are inexorable. There- 
fore is the history of great men always a mar- 
tyr-legend. If they suffered not for great 
Humanity, they suffered for their own great- 
ness, for their great manner of being, for their 
unphilistine ways, their dissatisfaction with 
ostentatious common-place, with the smirking 
meanness of their environment ; — a dissatisfac- 
tion which naturally drives them into extra- 
vagances, e. g. into the play-house, or even 
into the gambling-house, as happened to poor 
Lessing. ***** 

It is heart-rending to read in his biography, 
how Destiny denied this man every joy, and 
how it was not even permitted him to recreate 
himself from his daily conflicts, in the peaceful 
bosom of a family. Once only. Fortune seemed 
disposed to favor him. She gave him a be- 
loved wife, a child. But this happiness was 
like the sunbeam which gilds the wing of a 
passing bird. It passed as soon. The wife 
died in giving birth to her first child ; the 
child immediately after birth. Concerning the 
latter, he wrote to a friend these horribly witty 
words : " JVIy joy was but briefl And I was 
unwilling to lose him, — this son. For he had 
so much sense ! So much sense ! Do not think 
that the few hours of paternity have made me 
such an ape of a father. I know what I say. 
Was it not a proof of sense, that he came so 
unwillingly into the world 1 — that he suspected 
mischief so soon ] Was it not a proof of sense, 
that he seized the first opportunity to be off 
again 1 — I had hoped, for once, to have some 
comfort like other people. But it proved a bad 
business for me." 

" There was one sorrow of which Lessing 
never spoke with his friends ; that was, his 
awful loneliness, his spiritual isolation. Some 
of his cotemgoraries loved him, no one under- 

* Salon, vol. ii. 



stood him. Mendelssohn, his best friend, de 
fended him with zeal when he was accused of 
Spinozism. The zeal and the defence were as 
laughable as they were superfluous. Be quiet 
in thy grave, old Moses ! thy Lessing, to be 
sure, was on the way to this dreadful error, 
this pitiable calamity — Spinozism. But the 
All-highest, the Father in heaven rescued him, 
at the right moment, by death. Be quiet, thy 
Lessing was not a Spinozist, as slander would 
have it. He died a good deist, like thee and 
Nicolai, and Teller, and the Universal Ger- 
man Library!" 

This life, so unsuccessful, so tragic, in its 
personal aspects, was eminently successful in 
its fruits. German literature is indebted to 
Lessing as scarcely to any other name in its 
annals. He has been to it what Luther was 
to the language, — tlie father of a new era and 
order of things. That era of the German in- 
tellect which has just transpired, that era which 
gave to Germany her present intellectual posi- 
tion among the nations, and which, through her 
influence, has become an era in the progress of 
the universal mind, dates from Lessing, its 
earliest representative in general literature; 
as Kant was its earliest representative in phi- 
losophy. He first delivered his countrymen 
from the tyranny of French forms, and, placing 
before them the true models of all time, parti- 
cularly Shakspeare and the Greeks, led them 
back to Nature, and, through Nature, to new 
creations. Great as a poet, — although his sub- 
lime ideal of the poet's function led him to dis- 
claim that title, — * he was still greater as a 
critic, and, therein, a true son of his country, a 



* He thus speaks of himself at the close of the Drama- 
turtle: '* I am neither actor nor poet. It is true men 
have sometimes done me the honour to rank me in the 
latter class. But it is only because they misunderstood 
me. They should not infer so liberally from some dra- 
matic attempts which I have hazarded. Not every one 
who takes the brush in his hand is a painter. The oldest 
of those attempts were made at that age when we are 
so willing to mistake pleasure and facility for genius. 
Whatever is tolerable in the later ones, I am very con- 
scious that I owe it wholly and only to criticism. I feel 
not in me the living fountain wliicli struggles forth, of 
its own force, and, by its own force, shoots up in such 
rich, fresh and pure rays. 1 have to squeeze everything 
out of me by pressure and pipes. * * * I have there- 
fore always been shamed or vexed, when I have heard or 
read anything in dispraise of criticism. It has been said 
to stifle genius; and I had flattered myself that I derived 
from it something which approaches very near to Genius. 
I am a cripple, and cannot possibly be edified by a philip- 
pic against crutches. But, to be sure, as the crutch may 
help the lame man to move from place to place, but can 
never make him a nmner, so it is with criticism " 



LESSING. 



83 



genuine representative of the national mind. 
Germany has produced no greater critic than 
Leasing. And when we say this, we place 
him at the head of that " group" in the " Pha- 
lanx" of Letters. Herder testifies of him, that 
" no modern writer has exercised a greater in- 
fluence on Germany, in matters of taste and of 
refined and profound judgment on literary sub- 
jects." '■ Lessing's judgments have, for the 
most part, been confirmed by time. What then 
seemed sharp, is now thought Just ; what was 
then hard, is now sober truth." I know scarce 
any one who could speak of himself, as a writer, 
with greater modesty and dignity than Lessing. 
And generally, he is, without question, in ex- 
tent of reading, in critical acumen, and in many- 
sided, manly understanding, the first critic of 
Germany."* His dissertation on the Fable is 
affirmed by the same author, to be the " most 
concise and philosophic theory concerning any 
species of composition, that has been written 
since Aristotle." 

But Lessing wrought even more powerfully, 
by his character and example, as the fearless 
advocate of truth, and the uncompromising en- 
emy of all narrowness, and false enlightenment, 
and pretence, — of all half- culture and half- 
truth, — than by his critical theories. This is 
Heine's view of him. "Since Luther, Germany 
has produced no greater and better man than 
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. These two are 
our pride and our delight. Like Luther, Les- 
sing acted not only by means of certain specific 
performances, but by stirring the German na- 
tion to its depths, and producing a wholesome 
mental commotion with his criticism and his 
polemics. He was the living criticism of his 
time, and his whole life was polemic. That 
criticism made itself felt in the widest domain 
of thought and feeling; in religion, in science, 
in art. That polemic overcame every adver- 
sary, and grew stronger with every victory. 
Lessing, according to his own confession, re- 
quired such controversy, for the development 
of his own mind. He resembled that fabulous 
Norman who inherited the talents, knowledge, 
and faculties of the men whom he slew in bat- 
tle, and, in this way, at last, was endued with 
all possible advantages and excellences. It 
may be supposed that such a battle - loving 
champion must occasion no small noise in Ger- 
many, quiet Germany, which, at tiiat time, was 

* Herder's Zerstreutc Bliitter. 11. Th. "Gotrhold Eph- 
raim Lessing." 



more sabbath-still than now-a-days. People 
were confounded at his literary boldness. But 
this very quality was of great service to him. 
For ^'■oser''' is the secret of success in literature 
as well as in revolutions — and in love. At 
Lessing's sword trembled all. No head was 
secure from him. * * * Whom his sword 
could not reach, he slew with the arrows of his 
wit. * * * Lessing's wit is not like that 
Enjnuemenl, that Gaite, those springing saillies 
which are known in this country. His wit 
was not the little French grey-hound, that runs 
afler its own shadow ; it was more like a great 
German cat, that plays with the mouse before 
devouring it. * * * Thus, by his contro- 
versies, he has rescued many a name from well- 
deserved oblivion. Several tiny authors he has, 
as it were, spun round with the most genial 
ridicule, with the most costly humor; and now 
they are preserved to endless ages in his works, 
like insects caught in a piece of imber. While 
killing his adversaries, he made them immortal. 
Who of us would ever have heard of that Klotz 
on whom Lessing has expended so much ridi- 
cule and acutenessl The rocks which he 
hurled upon that poor antiquary, and with 
which he crushed him, are now his indestruc- 
tible monument. 

It is worthy of note that the wittiest man in 
Germany was also, at the same time, the most 
honest. Nothing can equal his love of truth. 
Lessing made not the slightest concession to 
falsehood, even when, after the usual fashion 
of the worldly wise, he could promote the cause 
of Truth by it. He could do everything for the 
truth except to lie for it. Whoso thinks, said 
he once, to recommend Truth by all sorts of 
masks and paints, would fain be her pimp; but 
her lover he never was. 

To no one is the beautiful saying of Buffon — 
"the style is the man" — more applicable than 
to Lessing. His manner of writing is entirely 
like his character, true, firm, unadorned, beau- 
tiful and imposing by its inherent strength. 
His style is the style of Roman architecture ; 
the greatest solidity with the greatest simpli- 
city." 

His influence in Theology has been as great, 
perhaps, as in Criticism and Art, although less 
generally acknowledged, and although most 
vehemently resisted at the time. In Theology, 
as in every other department, he was a refor- 
mer, at war with the prevailing opinions of his 
time ; and was persecuted, as only theological 



B4 



LESSING. 



reformers are. He published some fragments 
of an anonymous skeptic, found in the library 
at Wolfenbiattel, containing doubts which Les- 
sing wished to have solved, but which he was 
accused of circulating with impious designs 
against the essential truths of Christianity. In 
the storm of abuse occasioned by these publica- 
tions he appeals from Lutheran Divines to Lu- 
ther himself. "O ! that he could judge me ; — 
he whom I would prefer of all others for my 
judge ! Luther, thou ! Great misunderstood ! 
And by none more misunderstood than by these 
short-sighted, head.strong men who, with thy 
slippers in their hands, saunter screaming or 
indifferent along the path prepared by thee. 
Thou hast delivered us from the yoke of Tra- 
dition : who shall deliver us from the more in- 
tolerable yoke of the Letter! Who shall bring 
us at last a Christianity such as thou wouldst 
now teach, such as Christ himself would teach !"* 
That judgment, in the spirit of Luther, which 
he so vainly craved during his life, was libe- 
rally accorded to him, by all the best minds of 
Germany, after his death ; and by none more 
liberally than by Herder, than whom he could 
not have wished for himself — among the living 
— a fitter judge. " Lessing's last days," says 
this writer,f " were destined to be embittered 
by a theological controversy from which, if the 
Public has not yet derived all the benefit which 
he certainly expected and intended, it can 
hardly be considered his fault.J He published 
the ' Fragments, by an anonymous Author,' re- 
lating to the Resurrection and other points of 
biblical history. I, who knew Lessing person- 
ally, who knew him at the time when the 
above-mentioned pieces had probably come into 
his hands, and, as I now infer from many ex- 
])ressions of his, were then exercising his mind 
intensely; I, who also heard him converse on 
subjects of this kind, and believe myself to be 
sufficiently acquainted with his character in 
what relates to manly love of truth ; — lam 
convinced, for my own part, (for others, 1 nei- 
ther pretend nor care to be,) that he procured 
the publication of these pieces solely and purely 



*"Diirch c'ie FrazniPnte des Wolfenbuttelischen Un- 
gennnnten veianlasste Schriften." 
t Zfrsireute Bliitter. 11. " Gntthoirt Ephraim Lessincr." 
I The strictest theolcigjnn will scarcely deny at present 
that the piililication of tlie fragments has been of service. 
The surest proof of which is that if they were to appear 
now they would scarcely attract the attention which men 
then involuntarily bestowed upon them. A sign that 
we have advanced. 



for the interests of Truth, tor the sake of freer 
and manly inquiry, examination and confirma- 
tion on all sides. He has affirmed this himself 
so often, so strongly, so plainly; — the whole 
manner in which he published these Fragments, 
and, as a layman, gave here and there his 
thoughts upon them, sometimes in the way of 
refutation ; — Lessing's general character, as it 
must have impressed every one who knew him 
(and those who did not should be cautious in 
their judgment of it) ; — all this is to me a pledge 
of his pure philosophical conviction, that hereby 
also he should occasion and effect something 
useful, to wit, — I repeat it again, — free inves- 
tigation of the truth, — of truth so important, as 
this history must be to every one who believes 
it, or who believes on it. If, of all truths and 
histories, this truth and this history alone may 
not be investigated, — may not be investigated 
in relation to every doubt and every doubter, — 
that is not Lessing's fault. But, in our day, no 
theologian and no religionist will maintain this. 
If we grant this one proposition, — that Truth 
must and can be investigated; — that Truth 
gains with every free and earnest examination, 
precisely in thatdeg'ree and proportion in which 
it is cognizable by us, and consequently, only 
in such measure binding upon us; — if we grant 
this proposition, which the history of all times, 
and religions, and peoples, especially the his- 
tory and truth of the Christian religion, wher- 
ever it has been questioned and assailed, incon- 
trovertibly proves: then Lessing has won. And 
then, instead of talking of crooked, malicious, 
wicked designs, we should thank him that he 
has given us occasion for the investigation and 
confirmation of the most important truths; in 
short, for triumph. 

I thanked him, always, for making me ac- 
quainted wth doubts whicli occupy me and 
bring me farther; which develope thoughts in 
me, although not in the smoothest way. 
#» ****** 

And where art thou now, noble truth-seeker, 
truth-perceiver, truth-defenderl What seest, 
what discernest thou now ] Thy first glance 
beyond the bounds of this darkness, of this 
earth -mist; in what a different, higher light 
did it reveal to thee all which thou sawest and 
soughtest on earth ! To seek the truth, not to 
have discovered it; to strive for the good, not 
to have already embraced all goodness; — this 
was here thy contemplation, thy serious em- 



LESSING. 



85 



ployment, thy study, thy life. Eye and heart 
thou souorhtest ever to keep awake and sound ; 
and to no vice wast thou so opposed, as to vague, 
creeping hypocrisy, to our customary, daily 
half-lie and half-truth, to the false politeness 
which is never helpful, to dissembling philan- 
thropy which never desires to be, or can be be- 
neficent ; — but most of all (agreeably to thy 
office and vocation) to that wearisome, drowsy, 
half-truth which, in all our knowing and learn- 
ing, like rust and cancer, gnaws, from early 
childhood, in human souls. This monster, with 
all its frightful brood, thou assailedst like a 
hero, and bravely hast thou fought thy fight. 
Many passages in thy books, full of pure truth, 
full of manly, firm sentiments, full of golden, 
eternal goodness and beauty, will encourage, 
instruct, confirm, awaken men who, also, like 



thee, shall serve the truth entirely ; so long as 
truth is truth and the human mind is what it 
was created to be ; who shall serve every 
truth ; even though, at first, it may seem dread- 
ful and hateful; — persuaded that, in the end, it 
will prove, nevertheless, to be wholesome, re- 
freshing, beautiful. Wherever thou hast erred, 
where thy acuteness and thine ever active, 
lively mind lured thee aside into by-ways ; — in 
short, where thou wast a man, thou erredst, 
assuredly not willingly, and strovest ever to 
become a whole man ; a progressive, growing 
spirit." 

Vitis ut arboribus decori est, ut vitibus uvae, 
Tu decus omne tuis : postquam te fata tulere 
Ipsa Pales asros, afque ipse reliquit Apollo. 
Spansrite humuni foliis inducite fontibus umbras, 
Et tumulum facite et tumulo siiperaddite carmea. 
"Caudidus isriotum miratur lumen Olynipi 
Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis." 



"FROM LAOCOON.'"* 

LAOCOON, OR THE UMIT3 OP PilNTlNQ AND POETBT. 
PREFACE. 

The first one who compared Painting v/irh 
Poetry, was a man of refined feeling, who had 
experienced in himself a similar effect from 
tliese two arts. Both, he perceived, represent 
absent tilings as present, appearances as reality. 
Both deceive, and the deceptions of both give 
pleasure. 

A second sought to penetrate into the interior 
of this pleasure, and discovered that, in both 
cases, it flows from the same source. Beauty, 
the first notion of which we derive from cor- 
jjoreal objects, has general rules which will 
bear application to various objects, — to actions, 
to thoughts, as well as to forms. 

A third, who reflected on the value and dis- 
tribution of these general rules, observed that 
some of them obtain most in Painting, others in 
Poetry, and that in regard to one class there- 
fore Painting may assist Poetry, in regard to 
the other, Poetry Painting — with illustrations 
and examples. 

The first was the Amateur, the second the 
Philosopher, the third the Critic. 

* The Laocoun of Lessing 18 the masterpiece of German 
criticism, as his Emilia Galotti is the masterpiece of Ger- 
ntai) Tragedy. It unites, with extensive erudition and 
rare penetration, a poet's feeling fur beauty and art. The 
general subject is announced in the preface, the greater 
part of which is given above. But, in addition to the 
arguments which hear directly on that subject, it contains 
many general reflirtionson art and poelry, of great value. 
The brief extract which is h(^r« ofT.red, contains Lessing's 
atipwer to the question, why l.aocoon does not 'cry," in 
the representation of the sculptor, as well as in that of 
the poet? 



The two first were not likely to make a false 
wse, either of their feelings or their conclusions. 
In the observations of the critic, on the other 
hand, the principal point is the correctness of 
the application to specific cases; and since 
there are fifty witty critics to one of penetra- 
tion, it would be a wonder if this application 
were always made with that caution which is 
necessary to maintain a just balance between 
the two arts. 

If ApeJIes and Protogenes, in their lost works 
on painting, confirmed and illustrated the rules 
of that art by the already established rides of 
poetry, we may rest assured that they did it 
with that moderation and accuracy with which 
we still see Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, Quinti- 
lian, in their works, apply the principles and 
experiences of Painting to Eloquence and Po- 
etry. It is the prerogative of the ancients, in 
nothing, to have done, either too much or too 
little. 

But we moderns have thought to surpass 
them in many things, by converting their little 
pleasure-paths into highways, although the 
shorter and safer highways have dwindled, by 
that means, into bypaths that lead through wil- 
dernesses. 

The dazzling antithesis of the Greek Vol- 
taire, that painting is silent poetry, and poetry a 
speaking picture, would scarcely be found in 
any text-book. It was one of those conceits in 
which Simonides abounded, in which that por- 
tion which is true is so obvious, that men think 
they must overlook what is indefinite and false 
in them. 

The ancients, however, did not overlook it. 

On the contrary, while they limited the saying 

of Simonides to the effects prodticed by the two 

arts, they did not forget to insist that, notwitti. 

8 



86 



LESSING. 



standing the perfect simila,rity of these effects, 
they differed, nevertheless, as well in the ob- 
jects as in the manner of their imitation. (T^j; 

But just as if no such difference existed, many 
of the latest critics have drawn from that coin- 
cidence between painting and poetry, the most 
crude conclusions. At one time, they force 
poetry into the narrow bounds of painting ; at 
another, they give to painting the entire dimen- 
sions of the wide sphere of poetry. All that is 
lawful in the one they concede to the other; all 
that pleases or displeases in the one must needs 
be pleasing or displeasing in the other also. 
Full of this idea, they pronounce the most shal- 
low judgments with the most confident tone. 
They treat the differences observed between 
the works of a poet and a painter handling the 
same theme, as faults which they charge upon 
the one or the other, according as their taste 
inclines more to the one or the other art. 

And this false criticism has, to some extent, 
misled the virtuosi themselves. It has engen- 
dered a fondness for sketching in poetry, and 
introduced allegory into painting. Men have 
attempted to make the former " a speaking 
picture," without properly understanding what 
Poetry can or ought to paint ; and to make the 
latter "a silent poem," not considering in what 
degree Painting is capable of expressing univer- 
sal conceptions, without departing too far from 
her destination and becoming a kind of arbi- 
trary writing. 

To counteract this false taste and these un- 
founded judgments is the principal design of 
the following essays. Their origin is accidental, 
and their growth has followed rather the order 
of my reading than the methodical development 
of general principles. They are, therefore, not 
so much a book, as irregular collectanea for a 
book. 

As I make the " Laocoon" my point of de- 
parture, and often recur to it, I have determined 
to give it a share in the title. 

I. 

The universal and principal characteristic of 
the Greek master-pieces in painting and in 
sculpture, according to Herr Winkelmann, is a 
noble simplicity and a quiet grandeur, as well 
m the attitude as in the expression. "As the 
depth of the sea," he says, "remains for ever 
quiet, however the surface may rage, so the ex- 
pression, in the figures of the Greeks, discovers, 
in the midst of passion, a great and calm soul. 

" This soul paints itself in the face of the Lao- 
coon and not in the face alone, under the most 
venemeiit suffering. The pain apparent in all 
the muscles and sinews of the body, and which, 
without considering the face and other parts, 
we seem almost to feel ourselves, in the painful 
drawing in of the abdomen alone, — this pain, I 
say, manifests itself nevertheless with no degree 
of violence in the face, or in the whole attitude. 



He raises no such fearful cry as Virgil sings of 
his Laocoon ; the opening of the mouth does not 
permit it; it is rather an anxious and oppressed 
sigh, as described by Sadolet. The pain of the 
body and the greatness of the soul are expressed 
with equal force in the narrow structure of the 
figure, and, as it were, weighed, the one against 
the other. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers like 
the Philoctetes of Sophocles; his misery touches 
our soul, but we wish, at the same time, to re- 
semble this great man in his capacity of endur- 
ance. 

" The expression of so great a soul far transcends 
the imitation of mere natural beauty. The artist 
must have felt in himself the strength of mind 
which he has impressed upon his marble. Greece 
possessed artists and philosophers in the same 
person, and had more than one Metrodorus. 
Wisdom joined hands with Art, and breathed 
into her figures a more than common soul, &c." 

The observation on which this criticism is 
based, that the pain of Laocoon does not show 
itself in his countenance with that degree of 
vehemence which might be expected from its 
intensity, is perfectly correct. Further, it is in- 
disputable that, ill this very circumstance, in 
which a half-critic might judge the artist to 
have fallen below Nature and not to have 
reached the true pathos of pain, his wisdom is 
most conspicuously manifest. 

But, in regard to the reason which Herr 
Winkelmann assigns for this wisdom, and in 
regard to the universality of the rule which he 
deduces from this reason, I venture to be of a 
different opinion. 

I confess, the depreciating side-glance which 
he throws at Virgil, first caused me to doubt; 
and then the comparison with Philoctetes. 

" Laocoon suffers like the Philoctetes of 
Sophocles." How does this character suffer? 
It is singular that his sufl^ering should have left 
such a different impression upon our minds. 
The complaints, the screams, the wild execra- 
tions with which his pain filled the camp, in- 
terrupting the sacrifices and all solemn acts, 
sounded not less terribly through die desert 
island. They were the cause of his being 
banished thither. What tones of impatience, 
of misery, of despair ! The poet made the 
theatre resound with his imitation of them. 

A cry is the natural expression of bodily 
pain. Homer's wounded warriors fall, not 
seldom, with a cry to the ground. Venus, when 
injured, shrieks aloud,* not that she may be 
characterized by this cry as the luxurious God- 
dess of pleasure, but that Nature may have her 
due. For even the iron Mars, when he feels 
the lance of Diomed, cries so horribly, " as if 
ten thousand mad warriors were shrieking at 
once," that both armies are terrified. f Not- 
withstanding Homer elevates his heroes so far 
above human nature m some things, they al- 
ways remain true to it, when it comes to the 
feeling of pain or affront, and to the expression 



* Iliad, E. V. 343. 



t Iliad, ib. 859 



LESSING. 



87 



of that feeling by cries or tears or by railing. 
In their deeds they are beings of a higher 
order ; but, in their sensations, they are veritable 
men. 

I know, we more refined Europeans, of a 
wiser posterity, understand better how to govern 
our mouth and our eyes. Courtesy and grace 
forbid cries and tears. The active courage of 
the first, rude age of the work! has transformed 
itself, with us, into a suffering one. Yet even 
our ancestors were greater in the latter, than in 
the former kind. But our ancestors were bar- 
barians. To suppress all pain, to look with 
unflinching eye on the stroke of death, to die 
laughing under the bites of adders, to mourn 
neither one's own sin nor the loss of one's 
dearest friend, — these are traits of the old 
Northern heroism. Palnatoko gave the citizens 
of Joms command, to fear nothing, nor so much 
as to name the word fear. 

Not so the Greek ! He felt and he feared. 
He gave utterance to his pains and his grief. 
He was not ashamed of any human weakness; 
but he allowed none to withhold him from the 
path of honour, or to hinder him in the fulfil- 
ment of his duty. What was savageness and 
callousness with the barbarians, was, with 
him, the result of principle. Heroism, with 
him, was like the hidden sparks in the flint, 
which sleep peacefully so long as they are not 
awakened by external force ; and neither take 
from the stone its smoothness nor its coldness. 
With the barbarian, heroism was a bright, de- 
vouring flame which raged without ceasing, de- 
stroying or blackening, at least, every other good 
quality in his nature. When Homer leads the 
Trojans to battle, with wild shouts, and the 
Greeks, or; the other liand, in resolute silence, — 
the commentators remark well, that the poet 
intended hereby to describe the former as bar- 
barians, and the latter as civilized nations. I 
wonder they have not noticed a similar cha- 
racteristic contrast in another passage. The 
hostile armies have concluded an armistice. 
They are occupied with the burning of their 
dead, — an employment which does not pass 
without hot tears on both sides; Saxpva ^fp/ua 
X^ovm- But Priam forbids his Trojans to weep ; 
k6' iM zXaifir nptauoj /tfyaj. He forbids them 
to weep, says Madame Uacier, because he fears 
that they will make themselves too tender, and 
enter tlie conflict with less courage, on the mor- 
row. Good! but I ask why must Priam alone 
fear this? Why does not Agamemnon also 
give the same command to his Greeks? The 
meaning of the poet lies deeper. He designs 
to teach us, that only the civilized Greek can 
weep and be brave at the same time; whereas 
the Trojans, in order to be so, must first extin- 
guish every feeling of humanity. Ntfieaaufiai, 
yi jA-iv ubiv xtjutm, he makes the intelligent son 
of the wise Nestor say, in another place. 

It is worthy of note, that among the few 
tragedies that have come down to us from 
antiquity, there are two in which bodily pain 



constitutes not the least part of the misery, 
with which the hero suffers. The Philoctetes 
and the Dying Hercules. The latter, also, like 
the former, is represented by Sophocles as wail- 
ing, moaning, weeping, and crying. Thanks 
to our decent neighbours, those masters of pro- 
priety, a howling Philoctetes, a crying Hercules, 
would now be most ridiculous and intolerable 
characters on the stage. True, one of their 
newest poets* has ventured upon Philoctetes. 
But did he dare to show them the true Phi- 
loctetes? 

Even a Laocoon is numbered among the lost 
pieces of Sophocles. Would that Fate had 
spared us this Laocoon ! From the very slight 
notices of it, which the ancient grammarians 
have given, it is impossible to determine how 
the poet handled this subject. But of this I am 
sure, that he did not represent Laocoon as more 
stoical than Philoctetes and Hercules. Every- 
thing stoical is untheatrical, and our compas- 
sion is always commensurate with the sufler- 
ing expressed by the object that interests us. 
It is true, if we see that object bear his misery 
with a great soul, that greatness of soul will 
provoke our admiration. But admiration is a 
cold feeling which precludes every warmer 
sentiment and every clear representation, with 
its vacant stare. 

And now I come to my inference. If it is 
true that cries, under the infliction of bodily 
pain, — more especially, according to the old 
Greek view of the subject, — are perfectly con- 
sistent with greatness of soul; then the desire 
of representing such a soul, cannot be the rea- 
son why the artist was nevertheless unwilling 
to imitate those cries in his marble. On the 
contrary, there must be some otlier reason why, 
in this particular, he departs from his rival, the 
])oet, who expresses these cries with the most 
deliberate intention. 

n. 

Whether it be fable or history, that the first 
essay in the plastic arts was made by Love. — 
this much is certain, that she was never weary 
of guiding the hand of the great, old masters. 
For, whereas, at the present day, painting is 
pursued, in its whole extent, as that art which 
imitates bodies in general, upon surfaces, the 
wise Greek confined it within much narrower 
limits. He restricted it to the imitation of those 
boilies whi<.-h are beautiful. Their artists paint- 
ed nothing but the beautiful. Even vulgar 
beauty, the beauty of inferior orders, was, v\'iih 
them, only an incidental theme, — their exercise, 
their recreation. Their works aimed to please 
by the perfection of the object itself. They 
were too great to dcmatul of the spectator, that 
he should content himself with the mere cold 
enjoyment arising from a successful likeness,— 
from the contemplation of their own skill. 
Nothing in their art was dearer to them, no- 

• Chateaubrup. 



S8 



LESSING. 



thing seemed to them more noble, than the aim 
of the art. 

" Who would wish to paint thee, since no one 
akes to look upon thee 1' said the ancient epi- 
grammatist,* of a very deformed person. Many 
a modern artist would say: "Be thou as de- 
formed as it is possible to be ; I will paint thee 
notwithstanding. Though no one loves to look 
upon thee, yet shall men look with pleasure on 
my painting, not because it represents thee, but 
as a proof of my art which knows how to copy 
such a scarecrow so accurately." 

True, the propensity to glory in mere skill, 
undignified by the worth of its object, is too na- 
tural not to have produced, among the Greeks 
also, a Pausonius and a Pyreicus. They had 
such painters, but they rendered them strict 
justice. Pausonius, whose department was be- 
low the beauties of ordinary nature, — whose 
depraved taste loved best to represent the un- 
sightly and defective in the human form, — lived 
in the most contemptible poverty. And Pyreicus 
who painted barbers-rooms, dirty workshops, 
asses and kitchen-herbs, with all the diligence 
of a Dutch artist, — as if things of that sort were 
so charming and so rare in nature, acquired the 
name of Rhyparographer, or painter of filth ; 
although the luxurious rich purchased his pic- 
tures for their weight in gold, as if to help their 
nothingness by this imaginary value. "j" 

The magistrates, themselves, did not think it 
unworthy their attention, to detain the artist 
forcibly within liis proper sphere. The law of 
the Tliebans, which required the imitation of 
the beautiliil and forbade the imitation of the 
deformed, is well known. It was not a law 
against bunglers, as it is generally, and even by 
Junius liirnself,^ considered to be. It con<lemned 
the Greek Gliezzi, — the unworthy artifice of 
obtaining a resemblance by exaggerating the 
deformities of the originals; in a word, — cari- 
cature. 

We laugh when we are told that even the 
arts were subject to civil laws, with the an- 
cients. But we are not always right when we 
laugh. Unquestionably, the laws must not 
arrogate to themselves any power over the 
sciences, for th» object of the sciences is truth. 
Truth is necessary to the soul, and it is tyranny 
to place the slightest restriction on the gratifica- 
tion of this essential want. But the object of 
the arts, being pleasure, is not indispensable. 
Therefore it may well depend on the legislator, 
what kind of pleasure he will allow, and in 
what degree he will allow it. 

'J'he plastic arts especially, besides the in- 
evitable influencr which they exert on the 
character of a nation, are capable of an effect 
which dennands the close inspection of the Law. 
If beautiful men produced beautiful statues, 

* Antitichus. (Antholoj;. Lib. ii. Cap. iv.) 

fHenci; Aristotle advises tliat his pictures should not 
be shdwri to young people, that their iiriaL'ination might 
lie k.pt pure from ugly images. Aristot. I'olit. L. 8. C.5. 

* De Pictura. vet. lib. ii. cap. iv. 



these again reacted upon those ; and the state 
was indebted to beautiful statues, among othei 
causes, for its beautiful men. With us, the 
sensitiveness of maternal imagination appears 
to express itself only in nionsters. 

From this point of view, I think, I see a truth 
in certain ancient traditions which have been 
rejected, without qualification, as lies. The 
mothers of Aristomenes, of Aristodamas, of 
Alexander the Great, of Scipio, of Augustus, of 
Galerius, — all dreamed, during their pregnancy, 
of serpents. The serpent was a symbol of god- 
head, and the beautiful statues and paintings 
of Bacchus, of Apollo, of Mercury, of Hercules, 
were seldom without a serpent. The honest 
women had feasted their eyes on the god, during 
the day; and the confounding dream awakened 
the image of the beast. Thus I rescue the 
dream, and surrender the explanation which 
the pride of their sons, and the impudence of 
flatterers have made of it. There must have 
been some reason why the adulterous fancy 
was always a serpent. 

But I wander out of my way. I only wished 
to establish this point, that with the ancients 
beauty was the highest law of the plastic arts. 

And, this point established, it follows neces- 
sarily, that everything else, to which the plastic 
arts might likewise extend, must yield, alto- 
gether, where it was found incompatible with 
beauty; and where it was compatible with 
beauty, must, at least, be subordinated to that. 

I will go no farther than the expression. 
There are passions and degrees of passion 
which manifest themselves in the countenance, 
by the ugliest distortions, and throw the whole 
body into such violent attitudes, that all the 
beautiful lines which define it in a state of 
rest, are lost. Accordingly, the ancient artists 
either abstained altogether from the representa- 
tion of these passions; or they reduced tliem to 
a lower degree,^-one in which they are suscep- 
tible of some measure of beauty. 

Rage and despair disfigured none of their 
works. I venture to affirm that they have never 
represented a Fury.* 

They reduced anger to earnestness. With 
the poet, it was the angry Jupiter who hurled 
the lightning; with the artist, it was only the 
earnest. 

Lamentation was softened into concern. And 
where this could not be done, — where lamenta- 
tion would have been as belittling as it was 
disfiguring, — what did Timanthes in that case? 
His picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, — 
wherein he apportions to each of the spectators 
the degree of sorrow, proper to each, but covers 
the face of the father, which should have ex- 
hibited the most intense of all; — is well known, 
and many handsome things have been said con- 
cerning it. One says: "the painter had so ex- 
hausted himself in sad countenances, that ho 



* Except on coins, whose figures belong not to Art, but 
to the language of symbols. 



LESSING. 



8d 



defpaired of his ability to give the father a 
saililer one.'* "He confessed by this," says 
another, "that the grief of a father, in such a 
case, is beyond all expression. 'j" For my part, 
I see here neither the incompetence of the 
artist, nor the incompetence of the art. With 
the increase of the passion, the traits of coun- 
tenance corresponding to that passion are pro- 
portionally marked. The highest degree of it 
has the most decided expressioji; and nothing 
ill art is easier than to represent what is decided. 
But 'I'imandies knew the limits which the 
Graces have assigned to his art. He knew that 
the degree of lamentation which became Aga 
memnon, as father, manil'ests itself in distor- 
tiiins, which are always ugly. He carried the 
expression of grief only so far as beauty and 
dignity couUI be combined with it. Wliat was 
ngly he would fain have passed over, or would 
fain have soflened ; but since his composition 
did not allow of both, wlial else reniained but 
to conceal it? — What he might not paint, he left 
to be conjectured. This concealment is a sacri- 
fice which the artist made to beauty. It is an 
example showing, not how expression may be 
carried beyond the bounds of art, but liow it 
must be made subject to the first law of art, the 
law of beauty. 

Now, applying this to the Laocoon, we see 
clearly the reason which I am seekiiig. The 
master laboured for the highest beauty possible, 
under the given conditions of bodily pain. Bodily 
pain, in all its deforming veheinence, was in- 
compatible with that beauty. It was necessary 
therefore, that he should reduce it, — that he 
should soften cries into sighs. Not because 
crying betrays an ignoble soul, but because it 
disligures the countenance, in a manner which 
is disgusting. Do but tear open the mouth of 
Laocoon, in imagination, and judge I Let him 
scream and see! Before, it was a creation which 
inspired compassion, because it united pain with 
beauty. Now, it has become an unsightly, an 
abominable creation, from which we are fain to 
tiuii away our faces, because the sight of pain 
awakens displeasure; anil that displeasure is 
not converted into the sweet sentiment of pity 
by the beau'y of the sutfering object. 

'I'he mere wide opening of the mouth, setting 
aside the violent and disgusting derangement 
and distortion of the other parts of the counte- 
lui nee, produced by it, — causes, in painting, a 
S|)i)i and in sculpture, a cavity, which produces 
the most disagreeable effect in the world. 
Alonlfaucon discovered little taste when he de- 
cared an ohl. bearde<l head, wiih wide, gaping 
miinih, to be a Jupiter delivering an oracle.4; 
jVIust a god scream when he discloses the fu- 
ture ; Would an agreeable outline of the mouth 
render his speech suspicious? Neither do I 
believe Valerius, when he says that Ajax, in the 

* Pliii.v, lib XXXV. sect. 35. 
I Valerius Maxiiiiiis, lili. viii. cap. 2. 
t Aiiliq. expl. T. I. \>. 50. 
M 



abovementioned picture of Timanthes, is repr*" 
sented as screaming.* Far inferior masters, and 
that too, in times when art had already dege- 
nerated, do not let even the wildest barbarians, 
when suffering the terrors of death beneath the 
sword of the conqueror, open the moutlisowide 
as to scream. 

It is certain that this reduction of extreme 
bodily pain to a lesser degree of feeling wa-s 
observable in various ancient works of art. The 
suffering Hercules in the poisoneil garment, by 
an unknown master, was not the t^oplioclean 
Hercules, who shrieked so dreadfully, that the 
Locrian rocks and the Eubcean Cape resounded 
with his cries. He was more gloomy than uild. 
The Philoctetes of Pythagoras Leontinus seeme'd 
to cojnmunicate his sufferings to the beholder, 
an effect wliiidi the slightest touch of the horri- 
ble would have prevented. 

- HL 

But, as has been hinted, art, in modern times, 
has had its limits greatly enlarged. It is ccn- 
tendeil that the sphere of its imitations embraces 
the whole extent of visible nature, of which fho 
beautiful is only a small part. Truth and ex- 
pression are said to be its first law; and as 
Naiure herself always sacrifices beauty to higher 
ends, so the artist also is required to subordinate 
the beautiful to his general calling, ami to pursue 
it no further than truth and expression permit. 
Enough that by truth and expression, deformi- 
ties of Nature are changed into beauties of Art 

Suppose we leave uncontested, for the pre 
sent, the worth or unworthiness of these views, 
may there not be other considerations, indepen- 
dent of these, which should induce the artist to 
set bounds to expression, and not to take it from 
the extreme point of the action represented? 

I think that the single moment of time, to 
which the material limits of art confine all its 
imitations, will lead to such considerations. 

Since the artist can use but one moment of 
everchangiiig nature, and the painter, more 
especially, can use that moment only from a 
sin^le poii:t of view; and since their works are 
maile, not to be seen merely, but to be contem- 
plated, and to be contemplated repeatedly and 
long, it is evident that in the selection of that 
single moment and that single point of view, 
too much care cannot be had to choose the most 
fruitful. But oidy that is fruitful which gives 
the imagination free play. The more we see, 
the more we must be able to in)agine; and the 
more we imagine, the more we must think we 
see. Now, in the whole course of a passion, 

* He enumerates the degrees of grief expressed by 
Timanthes as follows: — Cakhanteiii tristem, iiinestuiii 
Ulyssem.clainantem Aj:iceni, laiiienlanlem Meiielaiuii.— 
A screaming Ajax would liave been an ugly figure; and 
since Cicero and <^uintilian du not inenliou it in tlvir 
descriptions of this work, I am the rather Jiislilied in 
regarding it as an aildition, with which Valerius has 
enriched it, out of his own head. 
8* 



90 



LESSING. 



there is no one moment which possesses this 
advantage in so slight a degree, as the cliinax 
of that passion. Tliere is nothing beyond it ; 
and to exhibit to the eye the uttermost, is to 
bind the wings of Imagination, and to compel 
her, since she is unable to exceed the sensible 
impression, to occupy herself witli feebler 
images, below that impression, shunning, as 
limitation, the visible fulness expressed. When, 
tlierefore, Laocoon sighs. Imagination can hear 
him cry ; but when he cries, she can neitlier 
rise one step above that representation, nor sink 
one step below it, without beholding him in a 
more tolerable, and, consequently, less interest- 
ing condition. She hears him merely groan, or 
she sees him already dead. 

Further, since this single moment receives 
from art an unchangeable duration, it should 
express nothing that can be conceived only as 
transient. All phenomena to whose essence, 
according to our notion, it belongs, to break 
forth suddenly, and suddenly to vanish, — to be 
what they are for one moment only, — all such 
phenomena, whether pleasing or terrible, ac- 
quire, through the prolongation given to them 
in works of art, so unnatural an aspect, that the 
impression is weakened each time we look 
upon it, until, at last, the whole subject pro- 
duces only shuddering or disgust. La Metric, 
who caused himself to be painted and engraved 
as a second Democritus, laughs but the first 
time he is seen. If we look at him often, the 
philosopher becomes a burtbon, and the laugh 
changes to a grin. So of cries. The violent 
pain which extorts the cry is either soon re- 
lieved, or else it destroys the sufferer. Although, 
therefore, a man of the greatest patience and 
fortitude may cry, he does not cry unceasingly. 
And it is only this appearance of perpetuity in 
the material imitations of art, that makes his 
crying seem like feminine impotence or like 
childish petulance. This, at least, the author 
of the Laocoon was bound to avoid, even 
though the act of crying were not incompatible 
with beauty, or though his art would allow him 
to express suffering without beauty. 

Among ancient painters, Timomachus seems 
to have delighted most in scenes of vehement 
passion. His raving Ajax and his infanticide 
Medea were celebrated paintings. But, from 
the descriptions we have of them, it appears 
that he well understood and knew how to seize 
that point, where the beholder does not so much 
see as imagine the uttermost, — that appearance 
with which we do not so necessarily connect 
the idea of transitoriness, that we are displeased 
with the prolongation of it. The Medea he did 
not represent at the moment when she is ac- 
tually slaying her children, but at the moment 
previous to that, when maternal love is yet 
contending with jealousy. We foresee the result 
of this conflict. We tremble in anticipation of 
beholding soon the cruel Medea only, and our 
imagination far surpasses all that the painter 
could exhibit to us of that dread moment. But 



for that very reason, the continued irresolution 
of Medea is so far from displeasing, in a work 
of art, that we even wish it had been so in 
reality, — that the conflict had never been de- 
cided, or had been protracted, until time and 
reflection should have assuaged the fury of 
passion, and secured to the maternal sentiment 
the victory. Timomachus earned great and 
frequent praises by this proof of wisdom, which 
gave him a decided superiority over another 
unknown painter, who was foolish enough to 
exhibit Medea at the very height of her mad- 
ness, and thus to give that fleeting and transient 
fit of extreme rage, a permanence which is an 
outrage against Nature. A poet who reproaches 
him with this want of judgment, says wittily, — 
addressing the picture itself, — "Dost thou then 
forever thirst after the blood of thy children? 
Is there ever a new Jason, ever a new Creusa 
jnoessantly irritating thee? To the Devil witL 
thee, then, even in the picture," he adds, full 
of disgust. 

Of the Raving Ajax of Timomachus, some 
judgment may be formed from the account of 
Philostratus.* Ajax was not represented in it, 
as he storms among the herds, chaining and 
slaying oxen and rams instead of men. But 
the master exhibits him, on the contrary, as he 
sits exhausted there, after these mad exploits, 
and revolves the intention of destroying him- 
self And that is truly the " raving Ajax," not 
because he raves at this moment, but because 
it is evident that he has been raving, and be- 
cause the extent of his madness is seen most 
vividly in the shame and despair which over- 
whelm him at the recollection. The storm is 
inferred from the wrecks and the corpses which 
it has cast upon the strand. 

IV. 

I review the reasons assigned, why the au 
thor of the Laocoon was obliged to observe a 
certain measure in the representation of bodily 
pain ; and I find that th'ey are all derived from 
the peculiar nature of his art, and its necessary 
limits and requirements. They will hardly be 
found applicable to poetry. 

Without inquiring at present, how far the 
poet can succeed in depicting corporeal bea ity, 
it is indisputable that, as the whole immea- 
surable domain of perfection is open to him, so 
the visible form, by means of which perfection 
becomes beauty, is only one of the least of 
those aids by which he contrives to interest us 
in his characters. Oftentimes he neglects this 
aid altogether, assured that when his hero has 
once obtained our good-will, we shall be so 
much occupied with his nobler qualities, that 
we shall not think of his personal appearance; 
or so won by them, that, if we do think of the 
person, we shall give it, of our own accord, a 
beautiful, or at least an indifierent look. At all 
events, he will not find it necessary to consuU 

* Vita Apoll. lib ii. cap. 22. 



LESSING. 



91 



the eye in each particular trait, which is not 
expressly designed for the eye. When Virgil's 
Latjcoori cries, who considers that a large mouth 
is necessary for this purpose, and that a large 
mouth is not becoming. Enough that " Clamo- 
res horrendos ad sidera tollit' is sublime to the 
ear, whatever it may be to the eye. If any 
one requires here a beautiful image, he has 
entirely missed the impression which the poet 
intended. 

Again, the poet is not required to concentrate 
his sketch into a single moment. He can, if he 
pleases, take each action at its origin and carry 
it tlirough to its termination. Each of those 
variations, which would cost the painter a 
separate picture, costs him but a single stroke. 
And though this one stroke, in itself consider- 
ed, might offend the imagination of the hearer, 
it is so well prepared by what preceded, or so 
qualified and compensated by what follows, 
that it loses its individuality, and, taken in con- 
nection with the rest, ])roduces the most charm- 
ing etfect. Although, therefore, it were really 
unbecoming for a man to cry out in the ex- 
tremity of pain; how can this trifling, transient 
impropriety injure, in our estimation, one whom 
we have already learned to know and to love, 
as the most careful of patriots, and the most 
devoted of fathers ? We refer his cries, not to 
his character, but solely to his intolerable pain. 
This is all that we hear in liis cries; and it 
was only by means of them, that the poet could 
make that pain apparent to his readers. 

Who then will reproach him? Who will 
not rather confess that, if the artist did well 
not to represent I^aocoon as crying, the poet 
did equally well to let him cry. 



FROM "THE EDUCATION OF THE 

HUMAN RACE.'* 

What education is to the individual, revela- 
tion is to the whole human race. 

Education is a revelation which is made to 
the individual; and revelation is an education 
which has taken place and is still taking place 
with the whole human race. 

Whether any advantage may accrue to the 
science of education, by considering education 
from this point of view, I shall not here inquire. 
But unquestionably, it may be of great use in 
theology, and may help to resolve many diffl- 



* This Essay is considered as one of great importance 
in speculative theoIo!;y. It contains the germ of all that 
ia most valuable in subsequent speculations on these 
subjects 'I'he greater part of it is given above, 'i'lie 
little that lias been omitted seemed not to be es.«ential to 
the fair presentation of the author's idea, 'i'he original 
is divided into formal pro[>ositions, numbering one liun- 
dred. It was thought besi to omit the formality of the 
numbers in tlie translation. 



culties, to regard revelation as an education of 
the human race. 

Education gives man nothing which he might 
not have had from himself; it only gives liim 
that, which he might have had from himself, 
more rapidly and more easily. So too, revela- 
tion gives mankind nothing which the human 
reason, left to itself, might not also have at- 
tained to; but it gave (hem and gives them 
what is most important, sooner. 

And as, in education, it is not a matter of in- 
difl^erence, in what order tlie faculties of man 
are unfolded, as education cannot communi- 
cate all things at once, — even so God, in his 
revelation, has found it necessary to observe a 
certain order, a certain measure. 

Although the first man had been furnished, 
at the outset, with the notion of an only God, 
yet this notion, being not an acquired, but an 
imparted one, could not possibly continue, in 
its purity, for any length of time. As soon as 
human reason, left to itself, began to work upon 
it, it separated the one Immeasurable into 
several Immeasurables, and gave to each of 
these parts its own peculiar characteristic. 

Thus arose, in a natural way, polytheism and 
idolatry. And 'who knows liow many million 
years human reason might have wandered 
about in these aberrations, notwithstanding 
everywhere and at all times, individual men 
perceived that tliey were aberrations; had it 
not pleased God, by a new impulse, to give it 
a better direction? 

But since he could not and would not reveal 
himself again to each individual, he selected a 
single nation for his special training: and that 
the most rude and savage of all, in order to 
begin with them from the foundation. 

This was the Israelitish nation, concerning 
which, it is not even known, what kind of 
worship they had in Egypt. For slaves so 
degraded, as they were, were not allowed to 
take part in the worship of the Egyptians; and 
the God of their fathers had become wholly 
unknown to them. 

Perhaps the Egyptians had expressly forbid- 
den them any god or gods, had taught them 
to believe that they had no god or gods, that 
to have a god or gods was a prerogative of the 
superior Egyptians. Perhaps they had taught 
them this in order to tyrannize over them with 
the greater show of justice. Do not Christians 
at the present day pursue very much the same 
course with their slaves? 

I'o this ru<le people, therefore, God caused 
himself at first to be proclaimed as the God of 
their fathers, in order first to familiarize them 
with the idea, that they too had a God of their 
own. 

By means of the miracles with which he 
brought them out of Egypt, he proved himself, 
in the next pl'dce, a God who was mightier than 
all other gods. And while he continued to 
manifest himself as the mightiest of a'l, a dis- 
tinction wliich only one can possess, iie accua 



955 



L E S S I N G. 



tomed them gradually to the notion of an only 
God. 

But how far was this conception, of an only 
God, below the true transcendental idea of 
unity, which reason, so long afterward, learned 
to deduce, with certainty, from the idea of in- 
finity. 

The nation was very far from being able to 
raise itself to the true conception of the One, 
altliough the more enliglitened among the people 
had already approximated more or less nearly 
to this idea. And this was the true and only 
cause why they so often (brsook their own, and 
thought to find the only, that is, the most power- 
ful God, in some other diviiuty, of another nation. 

But what kind of moral training was possible 
for a nation so rude, so unskilled in abstract 
thought, so completely in its childhood 1 Only 
such a one as corresponds with the period of 
childhood ; an education by means of immediate, 
sensual rewards and punishments. 

So here again, education and revelation coin- 
cide. As yet, God could give his people no 
other religion and no other law than one, by the 
keeping or transgressing of which, they might 
hope to be happy or fear to be wretched, here 
on earth. For, as yet, their thoughts extended 
no further than the present life. They knew 
of no immortality of the soul; they longed for 
no future state of being. To have revealed to 
them those things to which their reason as yet 
■was so little adequate, what else would this 
have been, on the part of God, but to commit 
the fault of the vain pedagogue, who would 
rather urge his pupil forward and make a dis- 
play of his proticiency, than instruct him tho- 
roughly ? 

But wherefore, it may be asked, wherefore 
this education of so rude a people, with whom 
it was necessary to begin thus at the very be- 
ginning? I answer, to the end that intlividuals 
among tliem might, in process of time, be used, 
with so much the greater safety, as educators 
of other nations. God educated in them die 
future teachers of mankind. This the Jews 
became; and only they could become this, — 
only men of a nation so trained. 

For, further. When the child had grown up, 
under blows and caresses, and was now arrived 
to years of discretion, all at once, the Father 
sent it abroad. And there, at once, it acknow- 
ledged the advantages it had enjoyed without 
acknowledging them in its Father s house. 

During the time that God had led his chosen 
people tlirough all the stages of a childish dis- 
cipline, the other nations of the earth had ad- 
vanced, in their own way, by the light of rea- 
son. Most of diem had remained far behind 
the chosen people, but some of them had out- 
stripped it. Anil thus it happens with children 
who are suffered to grow up by themselves. 
Many remain quite rude, but some cultivate 
themselves to an astonishing degree. 

But these favoured few prove nothing against 
the use and the necessity of education. And 



so the few heathen nations which, up to this 
period, seemed to have got the start of the cho- 
sen people, even in the knowledge of God, 
prove nothing against revelation. The child of 
education begins with slow but certain steps; 
it is late in overtaking many a more happily 
organized child of Nature, but it does overtake 
it at last, and, thenceforward, can nevermore 
be overtaken by it. 

As yet die Jewish nation had worshipped, in 
their Jehovah, rather the mightiest than the 
wisest of all the gods; as yet they had feared 
him, as a jealous God, rather than loved him. 
And this too may serve as a proof, that the con- 
ceptions they had formed of their highest and 
only God, are not exactly the true conceptions, 
those which we ought to have of God. But now 
the time had arrived when these conceptions 
of theirs were to be enlarse<l, ennobled, rectified. 
For this purpose, God made use of a quite 
natural method; — a better and more correct 
standard, by which they had now the oppor- 
tunity of estimating hiin. 

Hitherto, they had measured him only with 
the miserable idols of the small and rude na- 
tions, their neighbours, with whom they had 
lived in a state of perpetual jealousy : but now, 
in their captivity, under the wise Persians, they 
began to measure him with the Being of all 
beings, whom a more disciplined reason had 
learned to acknowledge and to adore. 

Revelation had guided their reason, and now, 
all at once, reason threw light upon their reve- 
lation. 

This was the first mutual service which both 
rendered to each other; and so far is this reci- 
procal influence from being derogatory to the 
author of both, that, without it, one of the two 
would be superfluous. 

The child, sent into foreign lands, saw other 
children, who knew more and behaved better 
than himself. Mortified, he asked himself why 
do not I know that too? Why do not 1 also 
live thus? Might not this have been taught to 
me also in my Father's house ? Might not I 
also have been held to this? Then he looks up 
his elementary books once more, with which 
he had long been disgusted, for the sake of 
casting the blame upon them. But behold! he 
recognizes that it is not the fault of the books, 
but purely his own fault, that he did not long 
ago possess the same knowledge and live in the 
same manner. 

Thus enlightened respecting their own na- 
tional treasures, the Jews returned and became 
an entirely different people, whose first care 
was to make this light permanent among them- 
selves. Soon there was no more thought of de- 
fection or idolatry. For one may become faith- 
less to a national god, but never to God, when 
once a true knowledge of him has been attained. 

Theologians have sought to explain this entire 
change of the Jewish people, in different ways. 
And one who has well exposed the insufficiency 
of these different explanations, assigns, as the 



LESSING. 



93 



true reason of this change, the visible fulfilment 
of the prophecies uttered and written respecting 
the Bibyloiiish captivity and the restoration 
from ;he same. But this reason, too, can be 
true only as it supposes more elevated concep- 
tions of God, now first attained to. Now, for 
the first time, the Jews must have perceived, 
that working miracles and foretelling the future 
belonged to God alone. Hitherto, they had as- 
cribed both to the false idols; and this was the 
reason that miracle and prophecy had hitlierto 
made so feeble and transient an impression on 
their minds. 

Without doubt, too, the Jews became more 
familiar with the doctrine of immortality, under 
the Chaldeans and Persians. They obtained a 
still more intimate acquaintance with it, in the 
schools of the Greek philosophers in Egypt. 

But it was not with this doctrine, in their sa- 
cred writings, as it was with that of the unity 
and the attributes of God. And therefore the 
belief in the immortality of the soul, could never 
be the belief of the whole people. It was and 
continued the belief only of a particular sect. 

A preparation for the doctrine of the immor- 
tality of the soul may be found in the divine 
threat to visit the sins of the fathers upon the 
children, to the third and fourth generation. 
This accustomed the fathers to live, in imagina- 
tion, with their latest posterity, and to feel, in 
anticipation, the misery they might bring upon 
their innocent heads. An allusion to this doc- 
trine is found in whatever woidd excite curi- 
osity and give occasion for questions ; as, for 
example, the often recurring phrase, "gathered 
to his fathers," as synonymous with dying. An 
indication of it is found in whatever contained 
a germ from which the unrevealed truth could 
be developed. Of this character, was the in- 
ference which Christ drew from the expression, 
" the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob." 
This indication, indeed, seems to me capable 
of being developed into a strict demonstration. 

In these preparations, allusions, and indi- 
cations, consists the positive perfection of an 
elementary book. Its negative perfection con- 
sists in this, that the way to those truths which 
are still kept back, is not closed or obstructed. 

But every elementary book is suited only to a 
particular age. For the child, that has outgrown 
it, to linger over it longer than was intended, is 
injurious. For, in order to connect any kind of 
Use with this detetjtion, it is necessary to sup- 
pose more in the book than it actually contains, 
to import into it more than it will bear. It is 
necessary to seek and to make too many allu- 
sions and hints, to shake out* the allegories too 
assiduously, to interpret the examples too mi- 
nutely, to press the words too far. In this way, 
the cliild acquires a narrow, perverted, hair- 
sjilitting mind, becomes fond of mystery, super- 
stitious, and impatient of everything that is 

* ». e. As one shakes a vessel or cloth, to empty it com- 
pletely of its conlents, Tr. 



easy and intelligible. This is the way in which 
the Rabbins treated their sacred books. This 
was the kind of character which they, thereby, 
impressed on the mind of their people. 

A better teacher must come and snatch the 
elementary book, which he has exhausted, out 
of the pupil's hands. — Christ came. 

God designed to embrace, in one plan of 
education, only that portion of the human race 
which was already united in itself, by language, 
by action, by government, and by other natural 
and political relations. And this portion was 
now ripe for the second great step in the pro 
gress of their education. That is, this portion 
of mankind had advanced so far in the exercise 
of their reason, as to be capable of and to re- 
quire nobler and worthier motives for their 
moral conduct, than the temporal rewards and 
punishments which had guided them hitherto. 
The infant becomes a boy. Sweetmeats and 
toys give place to the growing desire to be as 
free, as honoured and as happy as he sees his 
older brothers and sisters. 

The better sort among that portion of man- 
kind had long been accustomed to be governed 
by a shadow of these nobler motives. The 
Greek and the Roman did everything, that they 
might continue to live in the memory of their 
fellow-citizens, after death. It was time that 
another, actual life, to be expected after this, 
should influence their actions. And thus Christ 
became the first reliable, practical teacher of 
the immortality of the soul. 

The first reliable teacher — reliable, on ac- 
count of the prophecies which seemed to be 
fulfilled in him, on account of the miracles 
which he performed, on account of his own 
resurrection from the dead, with which he 
sealed his doctrine. Whether we are able, at 
this day, to demonstrate this resurrection and 
these miracles, I shall leave out of view. I 
shall also leave out of view the question, what 
was the person of Christ? All this may have 
been important to secure the reception of his 
doctrine then, but it is no longer so necessary 
to the understanding of his doctrine now. The 
first practical teacher. For to suppose, to wish, 
to believe the immortality of the soul, as a phi- 
losophical speculation, is one thing; to conform 
one's inward and outward life to it, is another 
thing. And this, at least, was first taught by 
Christ. For, though it was the belief of many 
nations, before him, that evil actions would be 
punished in the life to come, it was only those 
actions which were injurious to society, and 
which therefore had a penalty attached to them 
already by society. It was reserved for him 
alone to recommend inward purity of heart 
with a view to another life. 

His disciples faithfully disseminated this doc- 
trine. And if they had rendered no other ser 
vice than to procure the more general diffusion, 
among various nations, of a truth which Christ 
seemed to have designed for the Jews alone 
they ought, even on this account, to be reckoned 



f4 



LESSING. 



among the educators and benefactors of the 
fiuinaii race. True, tliey iniujiled this one great 
doctrine with other doctrines, the truth of which 
was less apparent, and tlie use of which was 
less edifying. How could it be otherwise'? Let 
us not, tljerefore, reproach them. Rather let us 
seriously inquire whetlier even these associated 
doctrines did not give a new impulse and direc- 
tion to human reason. 

This much, at least, is matter of experience, 
that the books of the New Testament, in which 
these doctrines, after some time, found a repo- 
sitory, have furnished and still furnish the 
second better elementary book for the human 
race. For seventeen hundred years they have 
occupied the human understanding more than 
all other books. More than all other books, 
they have enlightened it, even though it were 
by means of that liglit which the human under- 
standing itself has carried into it. No other 
book could possibly have become so generally 
known among ditierent nations. And, unques- 
tionably, the converse of such entirely dissimi- 
lar modes of thought, with the same book, has 
aided the human understanding more than if 
each nation had had an elementary book of its 
own, peculiar to itself. 

Moreover, it was highly essential that each 
nation should, for a time, regard this book as 
the Non plus uUra of its knowledge. For the 
boy, too, must look upon his elementary book, 
in this light, at first, that his eagerness to finish 
may not hurry him on to things for which he 
has laid as yet no sufficient foundation. And, 
what is still of the highest importance, beware, 
you of superior ability, who statnp and glow 
with impatience at the last page of this element- 
tary book ; beware of betraying to your school- 
mates what you suspect, or begin already to 
discern. Until they have come up with you, 
these weaker brethren, rather look back your- 
self once more into this elementary book, and 
examine if that which you regard as a pecu- 
harity in the method, or as intended to fill up 
a gap in the didactic portions, be not something 
more than that. 

You have seen, in the infancy of mankind, in 
the doctrine of the unity of God, that mere 
truths of reason are taught, at first, as truths 
directly revealed, in order to diffuse them more 
rapidly, and to ground them more firmly. You 
experience the same thing in the boyhood of 
mankind, in the doctrine of the immortality of 
the soul. This doctrine is preached, in the se- 
cond, more perfect elementary book, as revela- 
tion ; not taught as die result of human reason- 
ing. As it no longer needs the Old Testainent 
to teach the unity of God, and as we gradually 
begin to be able to dispense with the aid of the 
.Vew, in regard to the doctrine of the immortal- 
ity of the soul, inay there not be mirrored the;-e 
still otiier doctrines which it is designed that 
we shall wonder at as revelations, until reason 
has learned to deduce them from and to con- 
ned them with other established truths? 



For example, the doctrine of the Trinity. What 
if this doctrine were designed to guide the human 
understanding at last, after numberless aberra- 
tions to the right and to the left, to the recogni- 
tion of the truth that God cannot be one in the 
same sense in which finite things are one, — 
that even his unity must be a transcendental 
unity, not excluding a kind of plurality ■? Must 
not God at least have the most perfect concep- 
tion of himself? t. e. a conception in which 
everything is contained, that is contained in 
himself. But could everything be contained in 
that conception which is contained in hiinself, 
if, of his necessary actuality,* as of his other 
qualities, there were merely a conception, a 
bare possibility? This possibility exhausts the 
essence of his other qualities, but does it also 
of his necessary actuality? I think not. Con 
sequently, either God can have no perfect con- 
ception of himself, or this perfect conception is 
just as necessarily actual, as he is himself My 
reflection in the mirror is an empty image of 
me, and nothing more; because it has only that 
of me, from which rays of light are thrown 
upon the surface of the mirror. But if this 
image contained everything, without exception, 
that is contained in me, it would no longer be 
a mere image, but an actual duplicate of my- 
self. If I think I see the same duplication of 
the being of God, it is not so much an error of 
mine, perhaps, as it is the inability of language 
to express my conception. This much is indis- 
putable, that those who wished to make this 
idea popular, could hardly have chosen a more 
appropriate and intelligible expression than that 
of a Son whom God generates from all eternity. 

And the doctrine of hereditary sin. How, 
if everything should convince us, at last, that 
man, in the first and lowest stage of his hu- 
manity, is not sufficiently master of his actions, 
to be capable of obeying a moral law? 

And the doctrine of the satisfaction made by 
the Son. How, if everything should force us, 
at last, to assume that God, notwithstanding 
that original incapacity of man, chose rather to 
give him moral laws and to pardon all trans- 
gressions of the same, in consideration of his 
Son, that is, in consideration of the self-subsis- 
tent extent of all his perfections, before which 
and in which, every imperfection of the in- 
dividual vanishes; that he chose rather to do 
this, I say, than not to give hiin moral laws, 
and thereby to exclude him from that moral 
felicity which cannot be conceived as possible, 
without those laws? 

Let it not be objected, that this kind of rea- 
soning concerning the mysteries of religion is 
forbidden. The word mystery signified, in the 
first ages of Christianity, something very dif- 
ferent from that which we understand by it 
now ; and the development of revealed truths 
into truths of reason is absolutely necessary, if 

* The copy before me has fVirksamkeil (activity) which 
I take to be a misprint for WirklUkkeit. Tr 



LESSIJNG. 



95 



ever men are to be helped by them. At the 
time when they were revealed, they were not 
yet truths of reason ; but tliey were revealed 
ill order to become so. They were the Facit, 
as it were, which the arithmetical teacher tells 
his scholars beforehand, in order that they may 
have some regard to it, in their reckoning. If 
the scholars were to content themselves with 
the Facil announced to them beforehand, they 
would never learn to reckon, and so fail to 
fulfil the purpose for which the good master 
i;ave them a clue in their labours. 

And why may we not be guided by a re- 
ligion, with whose historical truth, if you please, 
there are so many difficulties, to nearer and 
better conceptions of the Divine Being, of our 
own nature and our relations to God, concep- 
tions to which human reason would never 
iiave attained of itself? 

It is not true, that speculations concerning 
these things have ever done mischief or proved 
injurious to society. Not the speculations them- 
selves, but the folly, the tyranny, of attempting 
to suppress them, of not allowing their own 
to those who had their own, is liable to this 
reproach. On the contrary, these speculations, 
whatever may be their result in individual 
cases, are unquestionably the most fitting exer- 
cise of the human understanding, generally, as 
long as the human heart, generally, is only 
capable, at the utmost, of loving virtue for the 
sake of its eternally happy consequences. For, 
with this self-interestedness of the human heart, 
to exercise the human understanding, also, on 
those things only, which concern our bodily 
necessities, would tend rather to blunt than to 
sharpen it. It needs, positively, to be exer- 
cised with spiritual objects, if ever it is to 
attain its perfect illumination, and produce that 
purity of heart which shall make us capable 
of loving virtue for its own sake. 

Or is the human race destined never to 
reach this highest grade of culture and purity? 
Never? Let me not imagine this blasphemy, 
thou All-good ! Education has its aim, with 
the race, not less than with the individual. 
That which is educated is educated for some 
end. The flattering prospects which are opened 
to tlie youth, the honour and attluence which 
are hell up before him, — what are these, but 
means by whicli he is educated to become a 
man, a man who, though these prospects of 
affluence and honour should fail, shall still be 
capable of doing his duty? Is this the aim of 
huuian education? And does the Divine educa- 
tion fall short of this? What Art can accom- 
plish with the individual, shall not Nature ac- 
complish with the whole? Blasphemy! Blas- 
phemy! 

No! it will come! it will surely come, the 
period of perfection, when, the more convinced 
his understanding is of an ever better Future, 
the less man will need to borrow from that 
Future the motives of his actions; when he 
will -choose the good because it is good, and 



not because arbitrary rewards are annexed to 
it which are only to fix and strengthen his 
wandering gaze, at first, until he is able to ap- 
preciate the interior and nobler reward of well- 
doing. It will surely come, the period of a 
new, eternal gospel, which is promised us, even 
in the elementary books of the New Covenant. 
Proceed in thine imperceptible course. Eternal 
Providence ! Only let me not despair of thee, 
because imperceptible. Let me not despair of 
thee, even though thy steps, to me, should seem 
to retrograde. It is not true, that the shortest 
way is always a straight one. Thou hast, in 
thine eternal course, so much to take along 
with thee ! So many sidelong steps to make ! 
And what if it be now, as good as proved, that 
the great, slow wheel which brings the race 
nearer to its perfection, is put in motion, only 
by smaller, quicker wheels, of which each con- 
tributes its part to the same end ? 

Not otherwise! The path, by which the race 
attains to its perfection, each individual man — 
some earlier, and some later — must first have 
gone over. "Must have gone over in one and 
the same life? Can he have been a sensual 
Jew and a spiritual Christian in the same life ? 
Can he, in the same life, have overtaken both 
these?"' Perhaps not! But why may not each 
individual man have existed more than once 
in this world? Is this hypothesis, therefore, so 
ridiculous, because it is the oldest ? because it 
is the one which the human understanding im- 
mediately hit upon, before it was distracted and 
weakened by the sophistry of the schools? Why 
may not I, at one time, have accomplished, 
already here on earth, all those stejas tow ard 
my perfection, which mere temporal rewards 
and punishments will enable man to accom- 
plish ; and, at another time, all those, in 'vhich 
we are so powerfully assisted by the prospect 
of eternal compensations? Why should I not 
return as often as I am able to acquirn new 
knowledges, new talents? Is it because I .;^rry 
away so much, at one time, as to make it not 
worth the while to return? Or, becausf 1 for- 
get that I have been here before? It ]\ \vo!l 
for me that I forget it. The remembraiue of 
my former states would allow me to ma.ie but 
a poor use of the present. Besides, whal 1 am 
necessitated to forget now, have I forgoltfii it 
forever? Or because, on this suppositior, foo 
much time would be lost to me? Lost? IVhat 
have I then to delay? Is not the whole eternity 
mine ? 



FABLES. 



2EU8* AND THE SHEEP. 

Tbe sheep was doomed to suffer much from 
all the animals. She came to Zeus and prayed 

*The Father of the Gods is, by German writers, more 
often desigiialed liy his Greek than by his Latin name. 
The translator has thought best to retain this apjiellation 
where it occurs in the ori|;inal. 



96 



LESSING. 



hirr to lighten her misery. Zeus appeared 
willing, and said to the sheep: I see indeed, my 
good creature. I have made thee too defenceless. 
Now choose in what way I may best rennedy 
this defect. Shall I furnish thy mouth with ter- 
rible teeth and thy feet with claws? 

All ! no, said the sheep, I do not wish to have 
anything in common with the beasts of prey. 

Or, continued Zeus, shall I infuse poison into 
thy spittle? 

Alas! replied the sheep; the poisonous ser- 
pents are so hated. 

What then shall I do ? I will plant horns in 
thy forehead, and aive strength to thy neck. 

Nut so, kind Father ! I might be disposed to 
bntt like the he-goat. 

And yet, said Zeus, thou must, thyself, be 
able to injure others, if others are to beware of 
injuring thee. 

Must I? sighed the sheep. 0! then, Kind 
Father, let me be as I am. For the ability to 
injure will excite, I fear, the desire. And it is 
better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. 

Zeus blessed the good sheep, and from that 
time forth, she forgot to complain. 

THE BLIND HEW. 

A hen which had become blind continued to 
scratch for food as she had been used. What 
availed it the industrious fool? Another hen, 
that could see, but wished to spare her tender 
feet, never forsook the side of the former, 
and without scratching enjoyed the fruit of 
scratching. For as often as the blind hen turned 
up a corn, the seeing one devoured it. 

Tlie laborious German compiles the collectanea 
which the witty Frenchman uses. 

THE WOLF ON HIS DEATHBED, 

A wolf lay at the last gasp, and was review- 
ing liis past life. It is true, said he, I am a 
sinner, but yet, I hope, not one of the greatest. 
I have done evil, but I have also done much 
good. Once, I remember, a bleating lamb that 
had strayed from the flock, came so near to me, 
that I might easily have throttled it; but I did 
it no harm. At the same time, I listened with 
the most astonishing indifference to the gibes 
and scoffs of a sheep, although I had nothing to 
fear from protecting dogs. 

I can testify to all that, said his friend the 
fox, who was helping him prepare for death. I 
remember perfectly all the circumstances. It 
was just at the time when you were so dread- 
fully choked with that bone, which the good- 
natured crane afterwards drew out of your 
throat. 

.ESOP AND THE ASS. 

Said the ass to .iEsop : The next time you tell 
a story about me, let me say something that is 
right rational and ingenious. 

You something ingenious! said JEsop ; what 
propriety would there be in that? Would not the 
people say you were the moralist and I the ass? 



When Hercules was received into heaven he 
paid his respects to Juno before all the other 
divinities. The whole Heaven and Juno were 
astonished. Dost thou show such preference to 
thine enemy? Yes, replied Hercules, even to 
lier. It was her persecution alone, that furnished 
the occasion of those exploits, with which I have 
earned Heaven. 

Olympus approved the answer of the new 
God, and Juno was reconciled. 

THE BOY AND THE SEEPENT. 

A boy played with a tame serpent. My dear 
little animal, said the boy; I would not be so 
familiar with thee had not thy poison been 
taken from thee. You serpents are the most 
malicious and ungrateful of all animals. I have 
read how it fared with a poor countryman who, 
in his compassion, took up a serpent, — perhaps 
it was one of thy ancestors, — which he found 
half-frozen under a hedge, and put it into his 
bosom to warm it. Scarcely had the wicked 
creature begun to revive, when it bit its bene- 
factor; and the poor, kind countryman was 
doomed to die. 

I am amazed, said the serpent. How partial 
your historians must be ! Ours relate the affair 
very differently. Thy kind man thought the 
serpent was actually frozen, and, because it 
was one of the variegated sort, he put it into 
his bosom, in order, when he reached home, to 
strip off its beautiful skin. Was that right? 

Ah! be still! replied the boy. When was 
there ever an ingrate who did not know how 
to justify himself? 

True, my son, said his father, who had listened 
to the conversation. Nevertheless, when you 
hear of an extraordinary instance of ingratitude, 
be sure to examine carefully all the circum- 
stances, before you brand a human beiiig with 
so detestable a fault. Real benefactors have 
seldom had ungrateful debtors; — no! I will 
hope, for the honour of humanity, — never. But 
benefactors with petty, interested motives, — 
they, my son, deserve to reap ingratitude in- 
stead of acknowledgments. 

THE YOUNG SWALLOW. 

What are you doing there? demanded a 
swallow of the busy ants. We are collecting 
stores for the winter, was the ready answer. 

That is wise, said the swallow; I will do so 
too. And immediately she began to carry a 
number of dead spiders and flies into her nest. 

But to what purpose is that? asked her mother 
at last. To what purpose? Stores for the ugly 
winter, dear mother. Do thou gather likewise. 
The ants have taught me this providence. 

O! leave to earthly ants this small wisdom; 
replied the old one. That which befits them, 
befits not the nobler swallows. Kind Nature 
has destined us for a happier fate. When the 
rich Summer is ended, we go hence; we gra- 
dually fall asleep on our journey, and then 



LESSING. 



97 



warm marshes receive us, where we rest with- 
out wants, until a new Spring awakens us to a 
new life. 

THE APE AND THE FOI. 

Name to me an animal, tliough never so sUil- 
fiil. that I cannot imitate! So bragged the ape 
to the fox. But the fox replied: And do thou 
name to me an animal so humble as to think of 
imitating thee ! 

Writers of my country! Need I explain my- 
self more fully ! 

ZEBS ASD THE HORSE. 

Father of beasts and of men ! — .=o spake the 
horse, approaching the throne of Zeus, — I am 
sail! to be one of the most beautiful animals 
with which thou hast adoriie 1 the world ; and 
my self-love leads me to believe it. Neverthe- 
less, might not some things in me still be im- 
proved ? 

An<l what in thee, thinkest thou, admits of 
improvement? Speak! I am open to instruc- 
tion, said the indulgent god with a smile. 

Perhaps, returned the hor.^e, I should be 
fleeter if my legs were taller and thinner. A 
long swan -neck would lot disfigure me. A 
broader breast would add to my strength. And, 
since thou hast once for all destined me to bear 
thy favourite, man, — the sachlle which the we 1- 
meaning rider puts upon me miglit be created 
a [lai t of me. 

Good ! replied Zeus, wait a moment. Zeus, 
with earnest countenance, pronounced the cre- 
ative word. Then flowed life into the dust; 
then organized matter combined ; and suddenly 
stood befcire the throne, the ugly camel. 

The horse saw, shuddered and trembled with 
fear and abhorrence. 

Here, said Zeus, are taller and thinner legs; 
here is a long swan -neck; here is a broader 
breast; here is the created saildle! Wilt thou, 
horse ! that I should transform thee after this 
fashion? 

'J he horse still trembled. 

Go! continued Zeus. Be instructed, for this 
once, without being pin)islied. But to remind 
thee, with occasional compunction, of tliy pre- 
sumption. — do thou, new creation, continue ! — 
Zeus cast a preserving glance on the camel ; — 
and never shall the horse behold thee without 
shuddering. 

THE EAVEH. 

The fox saw how the raven robbed the altars 
of the gods, and lived, like them, upon their 
sacrifices. And he thought within himself: I 
would like to know, whether the raven par- 
takes of the sacrifices because he is a propheiic 
bird ; or whether he is considered a prophetic 
bird, because he is so bold as to partake of the 
sacrifices. 

THE EAGLF A.NI) THE FOX. 

Be not so proud of thy flight ! said the fox to 
the eagle. Tliou mouritest so high into the air 
N 



for no other purpose but to look farther about 
thee for carrion. 

So have I known men who became deep- 
thinking philosophers, not from love of truth, 
but for the sake of lucrative offices of instruction. 

THE SWALLOW. 

Believe me, friends! the great world is not 
for the philosopher, — is not for the poet. Their 
real value is not appreciated there; and often, 
alas! they are weak enough to exchange it for 
a far inferior one. 

In the earliest times, the swallow was as 
tuneful and melodious a bird as the nightingale. 
But she soon grew tired of living in the solitary 
bushes, heard and admired by no one but the 
industrious countryman, and the innocent shep- 
lier<less. She forsook her humbler friend and 
moved into the city. What followed ? Because 
the people of tlie city had no time to listen to 
her divine song, slje gradually forgot it, and 
learned, instead thereof, to — build ! 

THE RAVEN. 

The raven remarked that the eagle sat thirty 
days upon her eg<rs. "And that, undoubtedly," 
said she, "is the reason why the young of the 
eagle are so all-seeing and strong. Good! I 
will do the same.'" 

And since then, the raven actually sits thirty 
days upon her eggs; hut, as yet, she has liatched. 
nothing but miserable ravens. 

THE SPIRIT OF SOLOMON. 

An honest old man still bore the burden and 
heat of the day. With his own hands he 
ploughed his field; with his own hand he cast 
the pure seed into the loosened bosom of the 
willing earth. 

Suddeidy under the broad shadow of a Lin- 
den-tree, there stood before him a godlike ap- 
parition. The old. man was astounded. I am 
5?olomon, said the phantom, with a voice which 
inspired confidence. What dost thou here, old 
man 1 

If thou art Solomon, replied the old man, how 
canst thou ask? In my youth, thou sentest me 
to the ant: I considered her ways, I learned 
from her to be diligent and to hoard. What I 
then learned, I still practise. 

Thou hast learned thy lesson but half, re 
turned the Spirit. Go to the ant again! And 
now learn from her, also, to rest in the wmtet 
of thy days, and to enjoy what thou hast ga- 
thered ! 

THE SHEEP. 

When Jupiter celebrated his nuptials, and 
all the animals brought hiin gifts, Juno missed 
the sheep. 

Where is the sheep? asked the goddess. 
Why does tlie good sheep delay to bring us her 
well-meant offering? 

The dog took upon himself to reply, and said • 



9S 



LESSING. 



Be not angry, Goddess! It is but to-day that I 
saw the sheep. She was very sad, and lamented 
aloud. 

And why grieved the sheep? asked the God- 
dess, beginning to be moved. 

Ah wretched me! she said; I have, at pre- 
sent, neither wool nor milk. What shall I bring 
to Jupiter? Shall I, I alone, appear empty before 
him? Rather will I go and beg the shepherd 
to make an offering of me. 

Al this moment, — together with the prayer 
of the shepherd, — the smoke of the offered sheep 
ascended to Jupiter through the clouds,^ a 
sweet-smelling savour. And now had Juno 
wept the first tear, if ever tears bedewed im- 
mortal eyes. 

THE POSSESSOR OF THK BOW. 

A man had an excellent bow of ebony, with 
which he shot very far and very sure, and which 
he valued at a great price. But once, after con- 
sidering it attentively, he said: "A little too 
rude still ! Your only ornament is your polish. 
It is a pity! However, that can be remedied," 
thought he. " I will go and let a first-rate artist 
carve something on the bow." He went, and 
the artist carved an entire hunting-scene upon 
the bow. And what more fitting for a bow 
than a hunting-scene? 

The man was delighted. " You deserve this 
embellishment, my beloved bow." So saying 
lie wished to try it. He drew the string. The 
bow broke ! 

THE AGED WOLF* 

The mischievous wolf had begun to decline 
in years, and conceived the conciliating resolu- 
tion of living on a good footing with the shep- 
herds. Accordingly, he took up his march and 
came to the shepherd whose folds were nearest 
to his den. Shepherds ! said he, you call me a 
blood-thirsty robber, which I really am not. To 
be sure, I must hold by your sheep, when I am 
hungry ; for hunger hurts. Protect me from 
hunger; only give me enough to eat, and you 
shall be very well satisfied with me ; for really, 
I am the tamest and most gentle of creatures, 
when I have had enough to eat. 

When you have had enough? Very likely; 
replied the shepherd. But when will that be? 
You and avarice never have enough. Go your 
ways! 



* From '• The History of the aged Wolf," in seven fa- 
Vies.— The first fable. 



I want to ask you something, said a young 
eagle to a contemplative and profoundly learned 
owl. They say there is a bird called Merops, 
who, when he ascends into the air, flies with 
the tail first, and with the head turned toward 
the earth. Is that true? 

No, indeed! answered the owl; it is a silly 
invention of man. He may be a Merops him- 
self; for he is, all the time, wishing to fly to 
heaven, but is not willing, for one moment, to 
lose sight of the earth. 

THE WASFS. 

Foulness and corruption were destroying the 
proud fabric of a war-horse which had been 
shot beneath its brave rider. Ever-active Na- 
ture always employs the ruins of one creation 
for the life of another. And so there flew forth 
a swarm of young wasps from the fly-blown 
carrion. Ah ! cried the wasps, what a divine 
origin is ours! The most superb horse, the fa- 
vourite of Neptune, is our progenitor. 

The attentive fabulist heard the strange boast, 
and thought of the modern Italians, who con- 
ceive themselves to be nothing less than the 
descendants of the ancient, immortal Romans, 
because they were born among their graves. 

THE PEACOCKS AND THE CROW. 

A vain crow adorned herself with the feathers 
of the richly-tinted peacocks, which they had 
shed, and when she thought herself sufficiently 
tricked out, mixed boldly with these splendid 
birds of Juno. She was recognized, and quickly 
the peacocks fell upon her with sharp bills, to 
pluck from her the lying bravery. 

Cease now ! she cried at length, you have 
your own again! But the peacocks, who had 
observed some of the crow's own shining wing- 
feathers, replied : Be still, miserable fool ! these 
too cannot be yours ! And they continued to 



EXTRACT 

FROU LESSIKCS THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS. 

If God should hold all truth inclosed in his 
right hand, and in his left only the ever-active 
impulse to the pursuit of truth, although with 
the condition that I should always and forever 
err; and should say to me: Choose! I should 
fall with submission upon his left hand, and 
say : Father, give ! Pure Truth is for Thee alone ! 




Engraved "by A.B .Walter, 



mm \s)EL^&®n 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



Born 1729. Died 1786. 



A Jew by birth and conviction, this able 
writer and excellent man is celebrated, not 
less for the services rendered to his own peo- 
ple, his "kinsmen according to the flesh," 
by his labors as a Hebraist and expositor of 
Jewish affairs, than for those which literary 
Germany associates with his honored name. 
No man has done more to soften the rigor of 
that hostility which embittered the lot of the 
German Israelite, a century ago. Since 
Maimonides, no Jewish writer, not excepting 
the famous Manasseh Ben Israel, has exerted 
a greater influence on the Jewish mind.* 
Since Nathaniel, no one has better deserved 
the commendation bestowed on that disciple : 
"An Israelite, indeed, in whom there is no 
guile !" He was one of those who have 
wrought even more by what they were than 
by what they did. His writings are a valuable 
contribution to the literature of liis country ; 
but his character, as an upright, magnanimous 
and religious man, is a legacy to his brethren, 
more valuable than his writings, and "richer 
than all his tribe." 

Mendelssohnf was a native of Dessau. His 
father Mendel who taught the Jews' school in 
that city was wretchedly poor and could give 
him nothing but the Mishna and the Gemarra ; 
himself more familiar with Hebrew roots than 
with any more substantial nourishment. He 
speaks of being roused at three o'clock, A. M., 
in the winter, wrapped in a cloak and carried 
to the " seminary," when only seven years 
old. 

At an early age he fell in with the More 
Nebochim, or Guide of the Perplexed, a work 
of Maimonides, the intense study of which 
made an era in his life ; and that in two ways. 
It laid the foundation of his mental culture, 
and also of his bodily disease and suffering. 

* I speak only of those whom Israel has acknowledged 
and retained. Spinoza, unquestionably the greatest in- 
tellect that has sprung from the seed of Abraham since 
the dispersion, can hardly be mnked as a Jewish writer. 

t The following sketch is taken chiefly from the " Me- 
moirs of Moses Mendelssohn, &c.," by M. Samuels. 
Second Edition, London. 1827. 



" Maimonides," he said, "is the cause of my 
deformity,* he spoiled my figure, and ruined 
my constitution; but still I doat on him for 
many hours of dejection, which he has con- 
verted into hours of rapture. And if he has 
unwittingly weakened my body, has he not 
made ample atonement by invigorating my 
soul with his sublime instructions 1" 

At fourteen, we find him an adventurer al 
Berlin, without the means of procuring a singlf 
meal. In his distress, he applied to Rabbi 
Frankel, who had been his teacher at Dessau . 
"and there he happened to meet with Mr, 
Hyatn Bamberg, a benevolent man, and ar 
encourager of aspiring young Jews, who al- 
lowed him, on the Rabbi's intercession, ar 
attic to sleep in, and two days' board weekly.' 
His first object was not to get a living but tc 
get an education. He had come to Berlin foi 
this purpose, and to this he devoted several 
successive years of intense application, undei 
all the difficulties and discouragements which 
may be supposed to hamper a youth so circum- 
stanced ; without teachers, without books, with 
seldom enough to satisfy his hunger, and to 
whom a belly- full was, as Lamb says, 'a 
special Providence.' The manner in which 
he studied Latin illustrates his indomitable 
energy in the pursuit of knowledge. Having 
mastered the nouns and the verbs and procured 
an old second-hand dictionary, he set himself 
to translate into Latin Locke's " Essay on the 
Human Understanding," a task which he ac- 
tually accomplished, at that early stage of his 
progress ; fighting his way through difficulties, 
metaphysical and philological, with a painful 
laboriousness unknown, out of Germany, in 
modern times. 

His only means of support during this 
period, in addition to the charity of //err Bam- 
berg, was an occasional gruschen obtained by 
copying Hebrew for his old master. He sub- 
sisted principally on dry brown bread, anu 
when purchasing a loaf, " he would notcli it 

* Mendels>ohn was hump-backed and extremely sma I 
and feeble in person. 

(991 



100 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



according to the standard of his means, into 
so many meals; never eating- according to his 
appetite, but according to his finances." 

In this way he spent several years of hard- 
ship and suffering, during which, however, he 
had by dint of incredible exertions, made him- 
self thoroughly acquainted with the principal 
languages and the mathematics. But now a 
kind Providence brought him acquainted with 
a wealthy manufacturer of the Jewish faith, 
who received him into his house, as the tutor 
of his children, then into his counting-room, as 
clerk, and finally into his silk-manufactory, 
first as manager, and soon after as partner. 
A new tide in his affairs set in with this con- 
nection. An immediate support, not ample at 
first, but sufficient for his wants, was secured 
to him, and he now commenced his career as 
an author, devoting his days to business, and 
his nights to Letters. About this time, he 
became acquainted with Abbt, Nicolai and 
Lessing. With the latter, he formed an inti- 
mate friendship, from which he derived incal- 
culable benefit in the way of literary and 
philosophic culture, and which he always re- 
garded as among the most fortunate circum- 
stances of his life. "Lessing loved Men- 
delssohn," says his biographer, " for his excel- 
lent heart and highly cultivated understanding, 
and Mendelssohn was no less attached to Les- 
sing tor his inflexible consistency and his tran- 
scendent abilities. A union founded on esteem 
and friendship was cemented between them, 
which neither time nor long separation, nothing 
indeed but death could dissolve. The noble 
monument of their mutual affection, preserved 
to posterity in the latter pages of the Murgen- 
sluiitten, will endure as long as virtue and 
science are cherished ard cultivated among 
mankind." In Lessing, ti m whom no man 
was ever more free from .'ie prejudices of 
creed and nation, Mendelssohn fiiund a hearty 
sympathy and an effective fellow-laborer in his 
various projects for bettering the condition of 
the German Jews; an object, which, then and 
at all times, lay nearest his heart. Indeed the 
known friendship of so eminent a man for one 
of that tribe, in defiance of all the prejudices 
of his age, was scarcely less important to the 
Jews in general than it was to Mendelssohn 
in particular. 

One of the first, perhaps the very first lite- 
rary effort by which he became distinguished 
heyond the pale of his own communion, was 



his " Philosophical Dialogues," a work which 
owed its origin to the following circumstance. 
" Lessing once brought to Mendelssohn a work 
written by a celebrated character, to hear his 
opinion upon it. Having given it a reading, 
he told his friend that he deemed h.mself a 
match for the author, and would refute him. 
Nothing could be more welcome to Lessing, 
and he strongly encouraged the idea. Ac- 
cordingly, Mendelssohn sat down and wrote 
his "Philosophical Dialogues," in which he 
strictly redeemed his pledge of confuting the 
author ; and carried the manuscript to Lessing 
for examination. ' When I am at leisure,' 
said Lessing, ' I will peruse it' Affer a con- 
venient interval, he repeated his visit, when 
Lessing kept up a miscellaneous conversation, 
without once mentioning the manuscript in 
question ; and the other, being too bashful to 
put him in mind of it, was obliged to de- 
part. The same thing happened at several 
subsequent meetings. At last, he mustered 
sufficient resolution to inquire after it Want 
of leisure was pleaded as before, but now "he 
would certainly read it. Mr. Mendelssohn 
might in the mean while, take yonder small 
volume home with him, and let him know his 
opinion of it" On opening it, Mendelssohn 
was not a little surprised to see his own Dia- 
logues in print "Put it into your pocket," 
said Lessing, good-naturedly, " and this Mam- 
mon along with it It is what I got for the 
copyright ; it will be of service to you." He 
afterward, at the instigation of Nicolai and 
Lessing, collected all his philosophical lucu- 
brations, and published them under the title 
" Philosophische Schriftcn." Three editions 
of this work which appeared, anonymously at 
first, but afterward with the author's name, 
were exhausted in a short time. 

Through his connection with Herr Bernard, 
Mendelssohn soon became rich, as a Jew should 
be, and, being rich, he married, as a rich Jew 
should do. His wife was a daughter of Abra- 
ham Gavgenheim of Hamburg. By her he had 
several children, among them a son who gave 
rise to one of his most celebrated works — 
the " Morgenstunden," (Morning-hours.) This 
book consists of lectures on the existence of 
God, — the resultof many years' inquiry on that 
subject — the original design of which was to 
instruct his oldest son, Joseph, his son-in-law 
and other Jewish youths in the rudiments of 
religion. The lessons were given before the 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



101 



hours of business, whence the title Morgen- 
stunden. The work is a frag-ment, the death 
of the author arresting its progress soon after 
the publication of the first volume. 

The most popular of his works and that 
which contributed most to his celebrity abroad, 
was his Phaedon, a work on the immortality of 
the soul, based on Plato's dialogue of that name 
— in fact a translation of Plato, with much ad- 
ditional matter of his own.- In less than two 
years it went through three large German edi- 
tions and was translated into the English, 
French, Dutch, Italian, Danish, and Hebrew. 

Mendelssohn's fame was at its height, and zea- 
lous Christians were wondering that so enlight- 
ened and exemplary a man should retain the faith 
of his Fathers, when his peace and religious li- 
berty were somewhat rudely assailed — though 
with no imkind intentions — by a challenge from 
Lavater, who, with an obtuse zeal which knew 
no scruple on the score of delicacy, sought to 
drag him into theological controversy. The 
good Lavater, with all his humanity, was a 
little intolerant in matters of religion. A re- 
ligious man and not a Christian by profession, 
was an idea for which he could find no room 
m his philosophy. It was not enough that Men- 
delssohn was all that a Christian should be; 
he insisted on a formal and public renunciation 
of Judaism in favor of Christianity. In order 
to bring about this result, he dedicated to him 
his translation of Bonnet's "Inquiry into the 
evidences of Christianity," with the request 
that he would refute it, in case he should find 
the argument untenable ; and that, if it should 
seem to him conclusive, he would "do what 
policy, love of truth and probity demanded, 
what Socrates doubtless would have done, had 
he read the work and found it unanswerable;" 
thus offering him the alternative, either to in- 
cur the odium of his own people by formally 
abjuring the faith of his Fathers, or to draw 
down upon himself the wrath of the Christian 
clergy by a public assault on their religion. 

To a timid and sensitive nature like Men- 
delssohn's, constitutionally averse from all con- 
troversy and especially from controversy in 
religion, such a challenge was perfectly over- 
whelming. Prostrate with ill health at the 
time, he suffered intensely from this attempt to 
drag him fonh from the strict reserve which he 
had always maintained on these subjects. But 
rallying himself to reply, he adroitly put by 
both horns of the threatened dilemma, in a 



letter which satisfied all parties and which 
drew from Lavater a public apology and re- 
tracttation of his peremptory challenge. 

The agitation caused by this transaction 
aggravated Mendelssohn's constitutional com- 
plaints and brought on a severe sickness which 
threatened his life and, for a long time, incapa- 
citated him for intellectual labor. After his 
recovery, he published his commentary on Ec- 
clesiasticus ; soon after, his translation of the 
Pentateuch, "a work," says his biographer, 
"which forms an epoch in the history of mo- 
dern Judaism, and which, for its vast utility 
and the immense good it has wrought, entitles 
the author to the eternal gratitude of his na- 
tion." To this was added a metrical transla- 
tion of the psalms. Then followed a work 
which excited a good deal of attention in Ger- 
many, at the time, entitled "Jerusalem, oder 
iiber religiose Machl und Judenthum."* It 
contained a plea for toleration founded on the 
principles of the social compact, together with 
an able defence of Judaism. It is still the best 
treatise on these subjects. 

Mendelssohn was doomed to experience an- 
other severe trial of his sensibility, in an attack 
on his friend Lessing, by Friedrich Heinrich 
Jacobi. This eminent author published a 
volume of" Letters to Mr. Mendelssohn on the 
Doctrine of Spinoza," in which he charged 
Lessing with being an "implicit Spinozist." 
Mendelssohn endeavored to refute the charge 
in a work entitled " Moses Mendelssohn to the 
friends of Lessing." The answer was con- 
sidered triumphant and drew from Kantt the 
remark, " It is Mendelssohn's fault that Jacobi 
thinks himself a philosopher." 

But the excitement of a controversy so re- 
pugnant to his gentle nature, acted fatally on 
his long enfeebled constitution and reduced him 
to that degree that a trifle sufficed to snap the 
slender thread which bound him to this world. 
Returning from the synagogue one frosty 
morning, he took a cold of which he died with 
in four days; on the 4th January 1786, in his 
fifty-eighth year. 

"Mendelssohn died as he dad uvea, calm 
and placid, and took an earthly smile with him 

* Jerusalem, nr on religious power and Judaism. 

t Speaking of Kant, it is worthy of note that Mendels- 
sohn, in the earlier part of his career, was the snccesslbl 
coinpelitor of this distinguished philosupher in a contedt 
for the prize awarded by the Royal Academy of Berlin, ti 
the best essay on the question: "Are metaphysics pu» 
ceptible of maihemalical demorrstration ?" 
9* 



102 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



into eternity. When his death became known, 
the whole city of Berlin was a scene of un- 
feigned sorrow. The citizens of all denomina- 
tions looked on his death as a national cala- 
mity." 

" Mendelssohn was of a short stature, very 
thin, and deformed in the back. His com- 
plexion was very dark and sallow ; hair black 
and curly; nose rather large and aquiline. A 
gentle smile played around his mouth which 
was always a little open. Nothing could ex- 
ceed the fire of his eyes, and there was so 
much kindness, modesty, and benevolence por- 
trayed on his countenance that he won every 
heart at first sight. His vaulted brow and the 
general cast of his features bespoke a vast in- 
tellect and a noble heart." 

" From sensual gratification he abstained 
firmly to the end. It was inconceivable that 
the quantity of food to which he restricted him- 



self Cuuld nourish a human body. Yet Provi- 
dence had blessed him with afiluence; his 
fortune enabled him to live genteelly and keep 
a hospitable table; and it was affecting to see 
him press his guests to partake of viands and 
liquors which he himself, though never so de- 
sirous, durst not venture to taste." 

His disinterestedness was without limits and 
his beneficence corresponded with his means. 

Professor Rammler erected to him a monu- 
ment with this inscription : 

XOSKS MEKDElSSOHir, 

BORir AT DKSSAU OF HEBREW PARENTS, 

A 8A0E LIRE SOCRATES, 

FAITHFUL TO THE ANCIENT CREED, 

TEACHING IMMORTAIITI, 

HIMSELF IMMORTAL. 

Besides the works which have been men- 
tioned, he published several others in German 
and some in Hebrew. 



LETTER TO J. C. LAVATER,* 

IK ANSWER TO A CHALLENGE EITHER TO REFUTE BONNET'S EVI. 
DEMCES OF CHRISTIANITY, OR ELSE TO ADOPT THE CHRISTIAN 
RELIGION. 

Honoured Philanthropist, 

You were pleased to dedicate to me your 
translation from the French of Bonnet's Inquiry 
into the Evidences of the Christian Religion, 
and most publicly and solemnly to conjure me 
" to refute that work, in case I should find the 
main arguments in support of the facts of Chris- 
tianity untenable, or should I find them con- 
clusive, to do what policy, love of truth, and 
probity bid me, what Socrates would have done 
had he read the work, and found it unanswer- 
able ;" which, 1 suppose, means, to renounce 
the religion of my fathers, and embrace that 
which 'Mr. Bonnet vindicates. Now, were I 
ever mean-spirited enough to balance love of 
truth and probity against policy, I assure you I 
should, in this instance, throw them all three 
into the same scale. 

I should deem myself beneath a worthy 
man's notice, did I not acknowledge, with a 
grateful heart, the friendship and kindness you 
manifest for me in that dedication, which I am 
fully persuaded flowed from a pure source, and 
cannot be ascribed to any but benevolent and 
philanthropic motives. Yet I must own that it 
appeared to me exceedingly strange, and I 
should have expected anything rather than a 
public challenge from a man like Lavater. 

It seems you still recollect the confidential 

* From the "Memoirs of Moses Mendelssohn," by M. 
Samuels. For chi account of this correspondence, see the 
liographical sketch given above. 



conversation I had the pleasure of holding with 
yourself and your worthy friends in my apart- 
ment. Can you then possibly have forgotten 
how frequently I sought to divert the discourse 
from religious to more neutral topics, and how 
much yourself and your friends had to urge me 
before I would venture to deliver my opinion 
on a subject of such vital importance ? If I am 
not mistaken, preliminary assurances were even 
given that no public use should ever be made of 
any remarkable expression that might drop on 
the occasion. Be that as it may, I will rather 
suppose myself in error than tax you with a 
breach of promise. But as I so sedulously 
sought to avoid an explanation in my own 
apartment amidst a small number of worthy 
men, of whose good intentions I had every rea- 
son to be persuaded, it might have been reason- 
ably inferred that a public one would be ex- 
tremely repugnant to my disposition ; and that 
I must have inevitably become the more em- 
barrassed when the voice demanding it hap- 
pened to be entitled to an answer at any rate 
What then, sir, could induce you to single me 
thus, against my well-known disinclination, out 
of the many, and force me into a public arena 
which I so much wished never to have occasion 
to enter ? If even you placed my reserve to the 
score of mere timidity and bashfulness, these 
very foibles would have deserved the modera- 
tion and forbearance of a charitable heart. 

But my scruples of engaging in religious con- 
troversy never proceeded from timidity or bash- 
fulness. Let me assure you that it was not only 
from the other day that I began searching into 
my religion. No, I became very early sensible 
of the duty of putting my actions and opinion) 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



103 



to a test. That I have from my early youth 
devoted my hours of repose and relaxation to 
philosopliy and the arts and sciences, was done 
for the sole purpose of qualifying myself for 
this important investigation. What other mo- 
tives could I have had? In the situation I was 
then in, not the least temporal benefit was to 
be expected from the sciences. I knew very 
well that I had no chance of getting forward in 
the world through them. And as to the gra- 
tification they might afford me — alas! much 
esteemed philanthropist! — the station allotted 
to my brethren in the faith, in civil society, is 
so incompatible with the expansion of the mind, 
that we certainly do not increase our happiness 
by learning to view the rights of humanity 
under their true aspect. On this point, too, t 
must decline saying any more. He that is ac- 
quainted with our condition, and has a human 
heart, will here feel more than I date to ex- 
press. 

If, after so many years of investigation, the 
decision of my mind had not been completely 
in favour of my religion, it would infallibly 
have become known through my public con- 
duct. I do not conceive what should rivet me 
to a religion to appearance so excessively se- 
vere, and so commonly exploded, if 1 were not 
convinced in my heart of its truth. Let the 
result of my investigation have been what it 
may, so soon as I discovered the "-eligion of my 
fathers not to be the trtte one, I must of course 
have discarded it. Indeed, were I convinced 
in my heart of another religion being true, there 
could not, in my opinion, be a more flagitious 
depravity than to refuse homage to truth, in 
defiance of internal evidence. What should 
entice me to such depravity ? Have I not 
already declared, that in this instance, policy, 
love of truth, and probity, would lead me to 
steer the same course ? 

Were I indifferent to both rf^ligions, or derided 
and scorned, in my mind, revelation in general, 
I should know well enough what policy sug- 
gests, when conscience remains neutral. What 
is there to deter me? Fear of my brethren in 
the faith ? Their temporal power is too much 
curtailed to daunt me. What then? Obstinacy? 
Indolence ? A predilection for habitual notions ? 
Having devoted the greatest portion of my life 
to the investigation, I may be supposed to pos- 
sess sufficient good sense not to sacrifice the 
fruit of my labours to such frivolities. 

Thus you see, sir, that, but for a sincere con- 
viction of my religion, the result of my theologi- 
cal investigations would have been sealed by a 
public act of mine. Whereas, on the contrary, 
they have strengthened me in the faith of my 
fathers; still I could wish to move on quietly 
without rendering the public an account of the 
state of my mind. I do not mean to deny that 
1 have detected in my religion human additions 
and base alloy, which, alas! but too much tar- 
nish its pristine lustre. But where is the friend 
of truth that can boast of having found his reli- 



gion free from similar corruptions? We all, 
who go in search of truth, are annoyed by the 
pestilential vapour of hypocrisy and supersti- 
tion, and wish we could wipe it off without 
defacing what is really good and true. Yet of 
the essentials of my religion I am as firmly, as 
irrefragably convinced, as you. sir, or Mr. Bon- 
net, ever can be of those of yours. And I here- 
with declare, in the presence of the God of 
truth, your and my creator and supporter, by 
whom you have conjured me in your dedica- 
tion, that I will adhere to my principles so long 
as my entire soul does not assume another na- 
ture. My contrariety to your creed, which I 
expressed to yourself and to your friends, has 
since, in no respect, changed. And as to my 
veneration for the moral character of its founder! 
had you not omitted the reservations which I so 
distinctly annexed to it, I should concede as much 
now. We must finish certain inquiries once in 
our life, if we wish to proceed further. This, 1 
may say, I had done, with regard to religion, 
several years ago. I read, compared, reflected, 
and — made up my mind. 

Yet, for what I cared, Judaism might have 
been hurled down in every polemical compen- 
dium, and triumphantly sneered at in every 
academic exercise, and I would not have enter- 
ed into a dispute about it. Rabbinical scholars, 
and rabbinical sinatterers, might have grubbed 
in obsolete scribblings, which no sensible Jew 
reads or knows of, and amused the public with 
the most fantastic ideas of Judaism, without so 
much as a contradiction on my part. It is by 
virtue that I wish to shame the opprobrious 
opinion commonly entertained of a Jew, and 
not by controversial writings. My religious 
tenets, philosophy, station in civil society, all 
furnish me with the most cogent reason for 
abstaining from theological disputes, and for 
treating in my publications of those truths only 
which are equally important to all persuasions. 

Pursuant to the principles of my religion, I 
ain not to seek to convert any one who is not 
born according to our laws. This proneness to 
conversion, the origin of which some would fain 
tack on the Jewish religion, is, nevertheless, 
diametrically opposed to it. Our rabbins una- 
nimously teach, that the written and oral laws, 
which form conjointly our revealed religion, are 
obligatory on our nation only. "Moses com- 
manded us a law, even the inheritance of the 
congregation of Jacob." We believe that all 
other nations of the earth have been directed 
by God to adhere to the laws of nature, and to 
the religion of the patriarchs. Those who regi'- 
late their lives according to the precepts of this 
religion of nature and of reason, are called vir- 
tuous men of other nations, and are the children 
of eternal salvation. 

Our rabbins are so remote from Proselytomi.. 
nia, that they enjoin us to dissuade, by forcible 
remonstrances, every one who comes forward 
to be converted. We are to lead him to reflect, 
that, by such a step, he is subjecting himself 



104 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



needlessly, to a most onerous burthen; that, in 
his present condition, he has only to observe the 
precepts of a Noachide, to be saved ; but the 
moment he embraces the religion of the Israel- 
ites, he subscribes gratuitously to all the rigid 
rites of that faith, to which he must then strictly 
conform, or await the punishment which the 
legislator has denounced on their infraction. 
Finally, we are to hold up to him a faithf. 1 pic- 
ture of the misery, tribulation, and obloquy, in 
which the nation is now living, in order to guard 
hiin from a rash act, which he might ultimately 
repent. 

Thus, you see, the religion of my fathers does 
not wish to be extended. We are not to send 
missions to both the Indies, or to Greenland, to 
preach our doctrine to those remote people. 
The latter, in particular, who, by all accounts, 
observe the laws of nature stricter than, alas ! 
we do, are, in our religious estimation, an envi- 
able race. Whoever is not born conformable 
to our laws, has no occasion to live according 
to them. We alone consider ourselves bound 
to acknowledge their authority; and this can 
give no otl'ence to our neighbours. Let our no- 
tions be held ever so absurd, still there is no 
need to cavil about them, and others are cer- 
tainly at liberty to question the validity of laws, 
to which they are, by our own admission, not 
amenable; but whether they are acting manly, 
socially, and charitably, in ridiculing these laws, 
must be left to their consciences. So long as 
we do not tamper with their opinions, wrangling 
serves no purpose whatsoever. 

Suppose there were amongst my contempo- 
raries, a Confucius or a Solon, I could, consis- 
tently with my religious principles, love and 
admire the great man, but I should never hit 
on the extravagant idea of converting a Confu- 
cius or a Solon. What should I convert him 
for 1 As he does not belong to the congregation 
of Jacob, my religious laws were not legislated 
for him ; and on doctrines we should soon come 
to an understanding. Do I think there is a 
chance of his being saved ? I certainly believe, 
that he who leads mankind on to virtue in this 
world, cannot be damned in the next. And I 
need not now stand in awe of any reverend col- 
lege, that would call me to account for this opi- 
nion, ds the Sorbonne did honest Marmontel. 

1 hni so fortunate, as to count amongst my 
friends, many a worthy man, who is not of my 
faitli. We love each other sincerely, notwith- 
standing we presume, or take for granted, that, 
in matters of belief, we ditfer widely in opinion. 
I enjoy the delight of their society, which both 
improves and solaces me. Never yet has my 
heart whispered, "Alas! for this excellent man's 
soul !"' — He who believes that no salvation is to 
be found out of the pale of his own church, 
must often feel such sighs rise in his bosom. 

It is true, every man is naturally bound to 
diffuse knowledge and virtue among his fellow- 
creatures, and to eradicate error and prejudice 
us much as lies in his power. It migi;' there- 



fore be concluded, that it is a duty, publicly to 
fling the gauntlet at every religious opinion, 
which one deems erroneous. But all prejudices 
are not equally noxious. Certainly, there are 
some which strike directly at the happiness of 
the human race ; their eflect on morality is ob- 
viously deleterious, and we cannot expect even 
a casual benefit from them. These must be 
unhesitatingly assailed by the philanthropist. 
To grapple with them, at once, is indisputably 
the best mode, and all delay, from circuitous 
measures, unwarrantable. Of this kind are 
those errors and prejudices which disturb man's 
own, and his fellow-creatures' peace and hap- 
piness, and canker, in youth, the germ of bejie- 
volence and virtue, before it can shoot forth. 
Fanaticism, ill-will, and a spirit of persecution, 
on the one side, levity, Epicurism, and boasting 
inR<lelity, on the other. 

Yet the opinions of my fellow-creatures, erro- 
neous as they may appear to my conviction, do 
sometimes belong to the higher order of theo- 
retical principles, and are too remote from prac- 
tice, to become immediately pernicious; they 
constitute, however, from their generality, the 
basis, on which the people who entertain them 
have raised their system of morality and social 
order; and so they have casually become of 
great importance to that portion of mankind. 
To attack such dogmas openly, because they 
appear prejudices, would be like sapping the 
foundation of an edifice, for the purpose of ex 
amining its soundness and stability, without 
first securing the superstructure against a total 
downfall. He who values the welfare of man- 
kind more than his own fame, will bridle his 
tongue on prejudices of this description, and 
beware of seeking to reform them prematurely 
and precipitately, lest he should overset, what 
he thinks a defective theory of morality, before 
his fellow-creatures are firm in the perfect one, 
which he means to substitute. 

Therefore, there is nothing inconsistent in my 
thinking myself bound to remain neutral, under 
the impression of having detected national pre- 
judices and religious errors amongst my fellow- 
citizens, — provided these errors and prejudices 
do not subvert, directly, either their religion or 
the laws of nature, and that they have a ten- 
dency to promote, casually, that which is good 
and desirable. The morality of our actions, 
when founded in error, it is true, scarcely de- 
serves that name ; and the advancement of 
virtue will be always more efficaciously and 
permanently eH'ected through the medium of 
truth, where truth is known, than through that 
of prejudice or error. But where truth is not 
known, where it has not become national, so as 
to operate as powerfully on the bulk of the 
people as deep-rooted prejudice — there prejudice 
will be held almost sacred by every votary of 
virtue. 

How much more imperative, then, does this 
discretion become, when the nation, which, in 
our opinion, fosters such prejudices, has rendered 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



105 



itself otherwise estimable through wisdom and 
virtue, when it contains numbers of eminent 
men, who rank with the benefactors of man- 
kind ! Tlie human errors of such a noble por- 
tion of our species, ought to be deferentially 
overlooked by one, who is liable to the same ; 
he should dwell on its excellences only, and 
not insidiously prowl to pounce upon it, where 
he conceives it to be vulnerable. 

These are the reasons which my religion and 
my philosopliy suggest to rne, for scrupulously 
avoiding polemical controversy. Add to tliem, 
my local relations to my fellow-citizens, and 
you cannot but justify me. I am one of an op- 
pressed people, who have to supplicate shelter 
and protection of the ascendant nations ; and 
these boons they do not obtain everywhere, in- 
deed nowhere, without more or less of restric- 
tion.* Rights granted to every other human 
being, my brethren in the faith wilhngly forego, 
contented with being tolerated and protected ; 
and they account it no trifling favour, on the 
part of the nation, who takes them in on bear- 
able terms, since, in some places, even a tem- 
porary domicile is denied them. Do the laws of 
Zurich allow your circumcised friend to pay you 
a visit there? No. — What gratitude then do 
not my brethren owe to the nation, which in- 
cludes them in its general philanthropy, suffer- 
ing them, without molestation, to worship the 
Supreme Being after the rites of their ancestors? 
The government under which I live, leaves 
nothing to wish for in this respect; and the 
Hebrews should therefore be scrupulous in ab- 
staining from reflections on the predominant 
religion, or, which is the same thing, in touching 
their protectors, where men of virtue are most 
tender. 

By those principles, I have resolved invaria- 
bly to regulate my conduct ; unless extraordinary 
inducements should compel me to deviate from 
them. Private appeals, from men of worth, I 
have taken the liberty tacitly to decline. The 
importunities of pedants, who arrogated to 
themselves the right of worrying me publicly, 
on account of my religious principles, I con- 
ceived myself justified in trealing with con- 
tempt. But the solemn conjuration of a La -"ter, 
demands at any rate this public avowal of n./ 
sentiments: lest too pertinacious a silence should 
be construed into disregard, or — into acquies- 
cence. 

I have read, with attention, your translation 
of Bonnet's work. After what I have already 
stated, conviction becomes, of course, foreign to 
the question; but, even considered abstractedly, 
as an apology of the Christian religion, 1 must 
own, it does not appear to me to possess the 
merit which you attach to it. I know Mr. Bon- 
net from other works, as an excellent author; 
but I have read many vindications of the same 

•Justice and yratitiide require nie to observe, that this 
was written in the middle of the last century. Enlightmcd 
Europe presents in our days, but one state to verify it. 



religion, I will not only say by English writers, 
but by our own German countrymen, which I 
thought much more recondite and philosophical 
than that by Boimet, which you are recom- 
mending for my conversion. If I am not mis- 
taken, most of your friend's hypotheses are even 
of German growth ; for the author of the Essai 
de Psyrhologie, to whom Mr. Bonnet cleaves so 
firmly, owes almost every thing to German phi- 
losophers. In the matter of philosophical prin- 
ciples, a German has seldom occasion to borrow 
of liis neighbours. 

Nor are the general reflections premised by 
the author, in my judgment, the most profound 
part of the work; at least the application and 
use which he makes of them, for the vindica- 
tion of his religion, appear to me so unstable 
and arbitrary, that I scarcely can trace Bonnet 
in them. It is unpleasant, that my opinion hap- 
pens to be so much at variance with yours; but 
I am inclined to think, that Bonnet's internal 
conviction, and laudable zeal for his religion, 
have given to himself a cogency in his argu- 
ments, which, for my own part, I cannot dis- 
cover in them. The major part of his conse- 
quents flow so vaguely from the antecedents, 
that I am confident I could vindicate any re- 
ligion by the same ratiocination. After all, this 
may not be the author's fault; he could have 
written for those only who are convinced like 
himself, and who read merely to fortify them- 
selves in their belief When an author once 
agrees with his readers about the result, they 
will not fall out about the argument. But at 
you, sir, I may well be astonished ; that you 
should deem that work adequate to convince a 
man, who, from his principles, cannot but be 
prepossessed in favour of its reverse. It was 
probably ijnpossible for you to identify the 
thoughts of a person, like me, who is not fur- 
nished with conviction, but has to seek it. But 
if you have done so, and believe, notwithstand- 
ing, what you have intimated, that Socrates 
himself would have found Mr. Bonnet's argu- 
ments unanswerable, one of us is, certainly, a 
remarkable instance of the dominion of pre- 
judice and education, even over those v/lio go, 
with an uiiright heart, in search of truth. 

I have now stateil to you the reasons why I 
so earnestly wish to have no more to do with 
religious controversy; but I have given you, at 
the same time, to understand that I could, very 
easily, bring forward something in refutation of 
Mr. Bonnet's work. If you should prove peremp- 
tory, I must lay aside my scruples, and come to 
a resolution of publishing, in a counter-inquiry, 
my thoughts, both on Mr. Bonnets work, and on 
the cause which he vindicates. But, I hope 
you will exonerate me from this irksome task, 
and rather give me leave to withdraw to that 
state of quietude, which is more congenial to 
my disposition. Place yourself in my situation; 
take my view of circumstances, not yours, and 
you will no longer strive against my reluctance. 
I should be sorry to be led into the teinptaiioii 



106 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



of breaking through those boundaries, which I 
have, after such mature deliberation, marked 
out to myself 

I am, with most perfect respect, 
yours sincerely, 

MOSKS MENDElSSOHIf. 

Berlin, the 12th of December, 1769. 

To this Lavater replied in a second Letter, 
which gave rise to another publication on the 
part of Mendelssohn, entitled, 

SUFPLEMENTART RGMAHKS. 

4:4:%4i * * * * 

* * * As to what regards Bonnet's 
work, I confess, that my judgment on it referred 
entirely to the purpose for which it was recom- 
mended to me by Mr. Lavater. I might, it is 
true, have taken for granted, that it was not at 
all Mr. Bonnet's aim to oppugn, by his Incjuiry, 
any religious persuasion whatsoever, least of all 
Judaism ; but that he had only the benevolent 
intention of leading, by means of a more whole- 
some philosophy, back into the paths of truth, 
the sceptics and weak in faith of his own 
church, who have been deluded by a false 
philosophy, to laugh at religion. Providence, 
the immortality of the soul, the resurrection, 
and retribution, as absurd superstitions. In this 
light I should have considered Mr. Bonnet's 
work, ia order to form a more correct estimate 
of its merits. 

But the unlucky dedication had at once de- 
ranged the proper aspect of things. And as 
that was tlie point from which I started, and 
not knowing that the author had disapproved 
of the translator's proceeding, I read the whole 
performance under the impression, that it was 
levelled against myself, and those of my per- 
suasion. In this view, then, the use and ap- 
plication which Mr. Bonnet maK.-» Oi puilosophi- 
cal principles, could not but appear to me loose 
and arbitrary; and 1 could say, with propriety, 
that I was confident I could vindicate, in the 
same manner, any religion one pleases. * ''' 
* * * I will mention a single point by way 
of illustration. 

Mr. Bonnet constitutes miracles the infallible 
criterions of truth; and maintains that if there 
be but credible testimony that a prophet has 
wrought miracles, his divine mission is no 
longer to be called in question. He then 
actually demonstrates, by very sound logic, 
that there is nothing impossible in miracles, 
and that testimony concerning them may be 
deserving of credit. 

Now, according to my religious theory, mira- 
rles are not, indiscriminately, a dislinctive mark 
of truth ; nor do they yield a moral evidence 
of a prophet's divine legation. The public 
giving of the law, only, could, according to our 
creed, impart satisfactory authenticity; because 
the ambassador had, in this case, no need of 
credentials, the divine commission being given 



in the hearing of the whole nation. Here no 
truths were to be confirmed by actual proceed- 
ings, no doctrine by preternatural occurrences, 
but it was intended it should be believed, that 
the divine manifestation had chosen this very 
prophet for its legate, as every individual had 
himself heard the nomination. Accordingly, 
we read (Exod. xix. 9.), " And the Lord said 
unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick 
cloud, that the people may hear when I speak 
unto thee, and believe thee forever :" (Exod. 
iii. 12.) "And this shall be a token unto thee. 
When thou hast brought forth the people out 
of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this moun- 
tain.' Our belief in a revealed religion is, 
therefore, not founded in miracles, but on a 
public legislation. The precept to hearken to 
a wonder-working prophet (Deut. xviii. 15.) is, 
as our rabbins teach, a mere implicit law, as 
given by the legislator, and quite independent 
of the intrinsic evidence of such wonders. So 
does a similar law (Deut. xvii. 6.) direct us to 
abide, in juridical cases, by the evidence of two 
witnesses, though we are not bound to consider 
the-r evidence as infallible. Further informa- 
tion on this Jewish elemental law will be 
found in Mainiotiides' Elements of the Law, 
chap. 8, 9, 10. And there is an ample illustra- 
tion of this passage of Maimonides, in Rabbi 
Joseph Albo, Sepher Ikkarim, sect, i., cap. 18. 

I also meet with decisive texts in the Old 
Testament, and even in the New, showing that 
there is nothing extraordinary in enticers and 
false prophets performing miracles;* whether 
by magic, occult sciences, or by the misapplica- 
tion of a gift truly conferred on them for proper 
purposes, I will not pretend to determine. So 
much, however, appears to me incontrovertible, 
that, according to the naked text of Scripture, 
miracles cannot be taken as absolute criteriom 
of a divine mission. 

I could, therefore, perfectly well maintain 
that an argument, founded on the infallibility 
of miracles, does not decide any thing against 
the believers in my religion, since we do not 
acknowledge that infallibility. My Jewish 
principles will fully bear me out in the asser- 
tion, that I would undertake to vindicate, by 
similar reasoning, any religion one pleases; 
because I do not know any religion which has 
not signs and miracles to produce ; and surely 
every one has a right to place confidence in his 
forefathers. All revelation is propagated by 
tradition and by monuments. There, I sup- 
pose, we agree. But, according to the funda- 
mentals of my religion, not miracles only, but 

* How are we, for instance, to account for the Egyp- 
tian magicians? In the Old Testament (Deut. xiii. 2.), 
a case is laid down, when we are not to hearken to a 
prophet or a dreamer of dreams, even if he give a sign 
or a wonder, but put him to death. In the New Testa- 
ment, it is distinctly said (Matt. xxiv. 24.), " For there 
shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall 
show great signs and wonders," &c. Not to mention 
other texts. 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



107 



a public giving of the law, must be the origin 
of tradition. 

It will now be seen that the assertion of 
mine, which Mr. Lavater calls singular, is not 
only compatible with the belief in a revelation, 
but that it even emanates from the very ele- 
ments of my religion. As an Israelite, I have 
argued on Israelitish principles. How could I 
ha\ 5 done otherwise, under the impression that 
Mr. Bonnet meant to controvert those principles ? 
But now that I am aware that this excellent 
author's design was to oppugn the unbelievers 
of his own church only, ai:d to show thcni that 
the doctrines which they revile, are, by far, 
more reconcilable with sound reason than their 
own fantastic deliration, many difficulties which 
I have met with on reading the German trans- 
lation, of course vanish of themselves j and I 
must own, that, so far as its scope goes, the 
work is more important, and more worthy 
of Mr. Bonnet's pen, than I had, at first, an 
idea of. 



ON THE SUBLIME AND THE NAIVE IN 
POLITE LITERATURE.* 

In reading Longinus his treatise on the sub- 
lime, one cannot but regret that the work of 
Caecilius, treating of the same matter, has been 
lost. Longinus, it is true, says of him, that " he 
merely laboured to give us an idea of the 
sublime, by an infinite number of examples, as 
if no one knew what it was, but wholly omit- 
ted what is most essential, that is, the method 
by which we may accustom our minds to a 
true elevation." But as Longinus occupied 
himself exclusively with the latter, — taking the 
former for granted, either as something which 
every one, as he thought, must be acquainted 
with, or as known to his Terentian, at least, 
out of Ccecilius; we are in want of a very 
necessary part of the knowledge of the sublime, 
to wit, a lucid explanation of it; and those 
translators and commentators of Longinus who 
have endeavoured to supply this defect, do not 
appear to have been very successful in their 
attempts. 

Perhaps the idea of the sublime, which, as 
Longinus says, constitutes the highest perfec- 
tion in writing, may be rendered somewhat 
clearer by the principles which liave been 
established in the foregoing essaysf on the 
nature of the sentiments and on the sources of 
the fine arts in general. 

We have seen that the strictly beautiful has 
its own determinate limits which it may not 

* Belles lettres, Schone fVissenschaflen, literally Beauti- 
ful Bciences. I prefer the above as being more English and 
customary, while it answers more exactly to the subject 
matter of this treatise. Tr. 

t See "Mendelssohn's philosophische Schriften," in 
two vols., Berlin, 1T77, from which this essay is taken. 
Tr. 



pass. \yhen the whole extent of the ob- 
ject is not taken in by the senses at once, ii 
ceases to be sensuously beautiful and becomes 
monstrous or disproportionately great in extension. 
The sensation which is then awakened is one 
of a mixed character indeed, but one which 
has something repulsive for well-educated 
minds accustomed to order and symmetry 
The senses discover the boundaries at last, but 
cannot, without difficulty, embrace and com- 
bine them in one idea. 

When the limits of this extension are still 
farther removed, they may vanish entirely, at 
last, to the senses, and then arises the sensuous 
immeasurable. The senses, perceiving some- 
thing connected, wander about to discover its 
limits and lose themselves in the illimitable. 
Thence, as was shown in the first treatise,* 
arises, at first, a shuddering which comes over 
us, and then something like giddiness which 
often obliges us to take our eyes from the 
object. The vast ocean, a far extended plain, 
the innumerable host of the stars, every height 
or depth whose limits are not discoverable, and 
other like objects of Nature, which seem im- 
measurable to the senses, awaken this kind of 
sensation, which, as is there set forth more 
minutely, is, in some cases, exceedingly plea- 
sant, but, in others, may occasion discomfort. 

The artist also avails himself of these sensa- 
tions on account of their agreeableness, and 
endeavours to produce them by imitation. The 
imitation of the sensuous immeasurable is de- 
nominated, in general terms, the grand. By this 
term is understood not a limited magnitude, but 
one which seems to be limitless, and is adapted 
to produce an agreeable awe. There is, in art, 
a particular method of producing this sensation, 
where the immeasurable itself cannot be repre- 
sented. It is to repeat, at equal intervals of 
time or space, a single impression, unaltered, 
uniform, and very often. The senses, in that 
case, detect no symmetrical process, no rule of 
arrangement from which the end of this repeti- 
tion might be inferred; they are thrown into a 
state of restlessness which resembles the awe 
produced by the immeasurable. An instance, 
in architecture, is a straight colonnade in which 
the columns are like and separated from each 
other by equal distances. A colonnade of this 
kind has something grand which immediately 
disappears when the uniformity of the repeti- 
tion is interrupted and a prominent contrast 
introduced at certain intervals. The monotonous 
iteration of a single sound after equal pauses 
has the same effect in music, and is used to 
express veneration, the terrible, the awful. In 
literary composition there are arts of speech 
which produce the same effect. Sometimes il 
is done by the multiplication of conjunctions, — 
of the connecting and : 

Unddas Gcschrei undder todtenden Wiith und 
der doniiernde Himmel. 

* ZusHtze zu den Briefen viber die £mphndungeii, p. 
30. Tr. 



108 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN, 



So too, 



■ und ist noch and denkt noch und fluchet. 



Sometimes too by the multiplication of verbs 
or nouns without the connecting and. Lonjrinus 
gives an example from Xenophon : They dashed 
their shields against each other, they crowded, 
they struggled, they slew, they fell. * * 

• •••••«• 

The climax which increases in regular gra- 
dations has a similar effect; but this pleases 
also for other reasons, wliicli it would be out 
of place to enlarge upon here. 

As there is an illimitable in extended magni- 
tude, whose effects we have just described, so 
there is an illimitable in intensity, or unextend- 
ed magnitude, which produces similar effects. 
Power, genius, virtue, have their unextended 
immeasurable, which also awakens a sensation 
of awe, and which has at the same time this 
advantage, that it does not, by tedious uniform- 
ity, terminate at last in satiety and disgust, as 
is apt to be the case with the immeasurable in 
extension. They are various as they are great, 
and, as it was remarked in the passage already 
referred to, the sensation which they excite is 
unmixed on the part of the object ; and there- 
fore it is that the soul affects these with so much 
eagerness. We commonly call tlie intensively 
great, powerful ; and the powerful, in its per- 
fection, we designate with the special appella- 
tion of sublime. We may say then, generally, 
that everything which is, or appears immeasrir- 
able in the degree of its perfection, is called 
sublime. We call God the most sublime of be- 
ings. We call a truth sublime, which concerns 
a very perfect nature, as God, the universe, the 
human soul; which is of immeasurable value 
to human kind, or for the discovery of which a 
great genius was required. In the fine arts and 
in letters, the sensuously perfect representation 
of the immeasurable will be grand, powerful or 
sublime, according as the magnitude relates to 
extension or number, to a degree of strength, or 
particularly to a degree of perfection. 

The sensation produced by the sublime is a 
compound one. The greatness arrests our at- 
tention ; and since it is the greatness of perfec- 
tion, the soul clings with pleasure to that object, 
and all collateral ideas are thrown into obscu- 
rity. The illimitableness awakens an agreeable 
awe which pervades us wholly, while the va- 
riety prevents us from being satiated, and gives 
the imagination wings to penetrate farther and 
ever farther. All these sensations blend toge- 
ther in the soul; they flow into each other, and 
grow to a single sentiment which we call ad- 
miration. If, therefore, we wished to describe 
the sublime according to its effects, we might 
say it is the sensuously perfect in art which is 
capable of exciting admiration. 

Every perfection which, by its greatness, sur- 
passes our ordinary conceptions, which exceeds 
the expectation we had of a certain object, or 
which outdoes all that we had imagined of per- 



fection, is an object of admiration. The deter- 
mination of Regulus to rer-'rn to Carthage, al- 
though well advised of the tortures which 
awaited him there, is sublime, and excites 
admiration, because we had not supposed that 
the duty of keeping one's promise, even with 
an enemy, could exert such power over the 
human heart. The unexpected reconciliation 
of Augustus with Cinna, in the celebrated tra- 
gedy of Corneille, produces the same effect, 
because the character of this prince had pre- 
pared us for a very different course of conduct. 
In Canute, the mercy shown to Ulfo does not 
create so sudden a sensation, because it was 
not so unexpected in view of the character of 
the ever merciful Canute. 

Finally, the attributes of the Supreme Being, 
as recognized in his works, awaken the most 
extatic admiration, because they surpass all that 
we can imagine of greatness, perfection, subli- 
mity. 

Since the great and the sublime are so nearly 
related, we see why artists so often maintain 
the sublime by means of the great, and, as it 
were, by sensible impressions of the great, pre- 
pare us for the intellectual conception of the 
sublime. They magnify the measure or the 
proportions of those things which they desire to 
represent as sublime. They make use of a 
bright lustre which dazzles by its intensity, or 
of an obscurity which causes the boundaries of 
objects to disappear, but never of a moderate 
light. The image of the sublime is never fully 
drawn ; single traits are hyperbolically exag- 
gerated, and the rest left indefinite, in order 
that the imagination may lose itself in their 
vastness. 



■ " I stretch my head ioto the clouds, 



My arm intti eteriiily." 

We accompany the sublime in poetry with 
the great in music, with the artificially immea- 
surable in iteration, &c. ; not because all that is 
great is also sublime, as is generally supposed, 
but because similar sensations mutually support 
each other, and because the great is precisely 
the same in respect to the e.xternal senses, that 
the sublime is in relation to the inner sense. 
Therefore, the impression on the inner sense 
must needs be strengthened when the external 
senses are, by means of similar impressions, 
attuned in harmony with it. 

Admiration in regard to the productions of 
the fine arts, as well as the perfection which is 
expressed by it, may be of two different kinds. 
Either the object to be represented possesses in 
and of itself qualities which are admirable; in 
which case the admiration of the object be- 
comes the dominant idea in the sold ; or the 
object is not particularly remarkable in and of 
itself, but the artist possesses the skill to bring 
out its qualities and to place them in an un- 
common light; and then the admiration is di- 
rected rather to the imitation than to the arche- 
type, rather to the excellences of art than to the 
excellences of the object. And as every work 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



10» 



is an embodying of the perfections of the mas- 
ter, so the admiration, in tlie latter case, regards 
more especially the artist and his characteristic 
excellences. We admire his great wit, his ge- 
nius, his imagination, and other faculties of the 
soul which harmonize together for so worthy 
an end ; and whose invisible nature he has 
found means to manifest in his work. That 
which especially pleases us in art, considered 
as art, refers to the intellectual endowments of 
the artist, which are brought to view in his 
works. When these exhibit the marks of genius 
or of extraordinary talent, they excite our admi- 
ration. 

This classification will furnish opportunities 
of deciding how far the sublime is compatible 
with ornate expression, and in what cases it 
rejects such expression. We will begin with 
tliat species in which the admiration arises im- 
mediately from the object itself 

Perfections of the external condition are of too 
little worth to excite the admiration of a man 
of understanding. Hence riches, splendour, 
authority and power without merit are justly 
excluded from the province of the sublime. 

" Those things," says Longinus very strikingly, 
"the contempt of which is considered as some- 
thing great, can never possess real sublimity in 
themselves." In fact we admire not so much 
those who possess great wealth or hohl distin- 
guished posts of honour, as those who might 
have these things, but who, from a noble mag- 
nanimity, reject them. Therefore the repre- 
sentation of these things in architecture and the 
arts of embellishment, where advantages of ex- 
ternal condition coine into consideration, may 
be showy, proud, splendid ; — but true sublimity 
is attained only by means of a noble simplicity, 
i.e. by the avoidance of all which would seem 
to place much value on those advantages. Not 
the lavish use of wealth and splendour, but a 
wise indifference toward them exalts the soul 
and teaches us to know its real dignity. They 
must be objects of importance with the spend- 
thrift, if he wishes to shine with them. 

Physical perfections, as, for example, uncom- 
mon strength or bravery, a beautiful form in an 
insignificant posture, a beautiful countenance 
whose features indicate neither intellect nor 
sentiment, an extraordinary niinbleness in the 
motions of the limbs without grace or attraction, 
&c., may indeed excite a slight degree of admi- 
ration, but we are never so charmed as we are 
in contemplating great mental perfections. A 
great intellect, great and noble sentiments, a 
happy imagination combined with penetrating 
sagacity, generous and vehement emotions 
which rise above the conceptions of ordinary 
minds, whether they liave a tiue or only an 
apparent good for their object, and, in general, 
all great qualities of mind which surprise us 
unexpectedly, ravish our soul and lift it, as it 
were, above itself. The immeasurably great 
which is there implied, and which seems new, 
because unsuspected, fixes the attention of the 



mind and enfeebles all collateral ideas, uncon- 
genial with it, to such an extent that the soul 
finds no transition to other objects, but, for 
awhile, is lost in wonder. When this inability 
to quit the object continties for a time, that state 
of mind is called astonishment. 

This admiration, however, may be likened 
almost to a flash of lightning, which dazzles us 
for a moment and disappears, unless its flame 
is maintained and nourished by the fire of a 
gentle sentiment. When we love the object 
which we admire, or when, by undeserved 
suffering, it merits our compassion, then admi- 
ration alternates with a more affectionate senti- 
ment, in our minds; we wish, we hope, we 
fear for the object of our love or of our compas- 
sion ; and we admire his great soul which is 
raised above hope and fear. Wlien the artist, 
by his magic power, can transport us into this 
frame of mind, he has reached the sutnmit of 
his art, and satisfied art's worthiest aims. It is 
a spectacle pleasing to the gods, says an ancient 
philosopher, v\ hen they behold a good man 
struggling with fate, sacrificing everything but 
his virtue. Ecce spectacuhim dignuin, ad quod 
respiciat intentus operi suo Dens: ecce par Deo 
dignum, vir fortis cum mala fortuna compositus !* 

These then are the principal kinds of admi- 
ration which flow directly from the object itself 
without reference to the perfections of the artist. 
We will examine how far external embellish- 
ment of expression is compatible with them. 

The truly sublime, as has been stated in tho 
foregoing remarks, occupies the faculties of the 
soul to such an extent, that all collateral ideas 
connected with it must needs disappear. It is 
a sun which shines alone and eclipses all feebler 
lights with its splendour. Moreover in the 
moment when we perceive the sublime, neither 
wit nor imagination can perform tlieir functions, 
to turn our thoughts in any other direction ; for 
no other similar idea was ever connected in our 
mind with the object of admiration, so as to 
follow naturally in its own train according to 
the laws of the imagination. Whoever doubts 
this, let him consider that, according to our ex- 
planation, the unexpected, the new is an es.sen- 
tial condition of the sublime. It is this, pre- 
cisely, that causes the strong impression which 
admiration makes on our minds, and which is 
not unfrequently succeeded by astonishment, or 
even by a kind of stupor — a loss of consciousness 

Hence it is evident that excessive ornament 
is incompatible with the sublime of the first 
class. Any amplification, by means of collate- 
ral ideas, is unnatural; for all such ideas are 
necessarily thrown, as it were, into the darkest 
shade. The analysis of the main idea would 
weaken admiration by its slowness; it would 
allow us to feel the sublime only by little and 
little. On the other hand, comparisons and 
other ornaments of speech are still more out of 
place, since wit and imagination, from whicb 

♦Seneca, de Providentia, C. II. 
10 



no 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



they spring, suspend their functions during the 
contemplation of the sublime, and allow the 
soul the repose which is necessary to dwell on 
that idea and to think it over in all its grandeur. 
The main idea of the sublime is properly that, 
" Judicis argrutura quod non formidat acumen." 

We may say of it, volet hoc sub luce videri ; 
whereas of collateral ideas it may be said, hoc 
amat obscurum. Therefore the artist, in the 
representation of this species of the sublime, 
should cultivate a naive, inartificial expression, 
which leaves the reader or spectator to imagine 
more than is said. Nevertheless, the expression 
must be derived from actual vision (^anschatiend), 
and if possible refer to particular instances, in 
order that the mind of tlie reader may be 
roused and inspired to meditation. 

We will illustrate these thoughts by some 
examples. This proposition, what God willed, 
that came to pass, contains the same lofty idea 
which we admire in the well-known "God said. 
Let there be light, and there was light." But the 
former expression is abstract and therefore not 
sufficiently inspired. This sensuous act, "said,'' 
— this individual object, light, make the idea an 
intuition, and give it life. 

Regres in ipsos imperium Rst Jovis 
Ciincta supercilio moventi3, 

is an unusually sublime conception; but sub- 
stitute mente or vcluntate instead of supercilio, 
or regnantis instead of morventis, and a portion 
of the sublimity vanishes, because the concrete 
ideas are changed to abstract ones. The omni- 
potent wink, supercilio, the sensuous action, 
moventis, produce in our imagination the sub- 
lime image of the Jupiter of Phidias. We see 
the omnipotent, if I may use the expression, face 
to face, Qui totum nutu tremefacit Olympum. 
In the following passage of Horace, 

Si fractus iliKbatur orbis 
Impavidurn ferieut ruin£e, 

the danger which threatens the wise man is 
perfectly painted, while the state of his soul by 
which it is more particularly designed to excite 
our admiration, is indicated by only one word, 
impavidurn. Substitute 

Si fractus illabatur orbis. 

Justum et tenacem propositi vinim 

Impaviduni ferient ruinae; 
and where then is the admired sublimity? The 
misplaced circumlocution has detained the im- 
patient mind of the spectator, eager for the is- 
sue, too long, and suffered the fire of expectation 
to become extinct. The same remark will ap- 
ply to the sacred psalmist, in reference to that 
passaiie in which he carried out a similar idea 
more worthily perhaps than Horace. "There- 
fore will we not fear though the earth be 
removed and t' ough the mountains should be 
carried into tlie midst of the sea." The danger, 
in this case, is dpsoribed as minutely, but with 
fat greater t-'*l[ than in Horace. But how could 
tlie influence of trust in God be expressed more 
simply and artlessly, — " we will not fear" — for 
*rhich the Hebrew needs but three syllables. 



Observe, by the way, the careful selection of 
phrases in both these great poets, if it may be 
allowed us to compare them together. Horace 
describes the quality of mind of a Stoic philc 
sopher, whom the thought, that destiny is neces- 
sary and immutable, has rendered insensible to 
all imtoward accidents. He may anticipate 
every evil ; the ruins of the world actually smite 
him, feriunt ruins, — but he is not dismayed. 
No calamity can overtake liim unprepared. He 
has armed himself against every stroke of Fate. 
The sacred poet, on the other hand, is speaking 
of the state of mind of a good man, who reposes 
entirely on God and places his trust in him. He 
may be alarmed when sudden danger threatens, 
but his thoughts recur to God. Therefore he is 
not afraid. 

Some objects are, in their nature, so perfect, 
so sublime, \\\a\. they cannot be reached by any 
finite thought, nor correctly indicated by any 
sign, nor represented as they are by any pic- 
tures; such are God, the universe, eternity, &c. 
Here the artist must strain all the powers of his 
mind to find the worthiest figures by which 
these infinitely sublime ideas may be brought 
sensuously before the mind. He may do so the 
more safely that the thing signified must always 
remain greater than the sign he employs; and 
consequently his expression, however full he 
may make it, will always be naive in compari- 
son with the thing. The sacred poet sings: 
Lord, thy mercy reaches above the iieavens, 
And thy truth above the clouds. 
Thy justice is like ttie mountains of God, 
And tliy right an unfathomable deep 1 
***** * 

The sublime in sentiment, or the heroic, 
which, as we remarked above, is an inferior 
variety of the sublime of the first class, consists 
in those perfections of the affective powers 
which excite admiration. When the hero him- 
self is introduced and made to utter such senti 
ments in person, he should express himself as 
briefly and as inartificially as possible. A great 
soul utters its sentiments gracefully and empha- 
tically, but without parade of diction. It argues 
greater perfection when our noble sentiments 
have become, as it were, a second nature ; when 
we think greatly and act greatly widiout know- 
ing it or without making any particular merit 
of it. Hence we are pleased with the emphatic 
brevity of the old Horatius, '-Quil mourut;"^ 
of Brutus in Voltaire, " Brutus I'eut immole"— 
and the artless offer of friendship in Corneille, 
" soyons amis, Cinna I" 

To this class belongs the answer of that Spar- 
tan who, when a Persian soldier boasted that 
the arrows and javelins of the Persian army 
would cover the sun, replied. Then we shall 
fight in the shade. The epitaph of Siinonides 
on the Lacedsemonians, who fell in battle at 
TherinopylEe, is of the same kind ; 

Die hospes Spartse nos te hie vidisse jacentes 
Dum Sanctis patrite le^bus obsequimur.* 

* Cicero. Tuscul. Quxst. L. I. 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



Ill 



These patriotic men considered their death as 
Bufficiently compensated, if Sparta learned that 
they had fallen, while obeying the sacred laws 
of their country. 

But though the heroic soul is thus immovable 
in its sentiments and thus brief and emphatic 
in the expression of them, when the determina- 
tion has once been formed ; it must show itself 
rich and inexhaustible in tliouglit, when deli- 
berating on its actions, and while yet uncertain 
which the path is that virtue' prescribes. It 
must be neither obstinate nor rash, and, in 
doubtful cases, must weigh the reasons for and 
against its purposed course with great caution, 
before it inclines to one or the other side. Then, 
the sublime in sentiment admits of the richest 
ornament in expression. All the fire of rhetoric 
is brought into requisition, in order to exhibit 
the motives, on both sides, in the strongest light. 
The undetermined soul wavers as if driven by 
waves from one side to tlie other, and carries 
the hearer with it in every direction, until it 
recognizes the voice of virtue which puts an 
end to its irresolution. 

Immediately, all doubts are removed, all ob- 
stacles overcome, the resolve stands firm and 
nothing can cause it to vacillate again. 

Frc m the sublime of this last description have 
arisen the monologues in tragedies, which, in 
modern times, since the Chorus is done away, 
have corne very much into vogue. The mono- 
logue of Augustus in the tragedy of Cinna, (Act 
VI. so. III.) that of Rodoguue in the tragedy of 
that name, (Act III. sc. 3.) of Agamemnon in 
the tragedy of Iphigenia, (Act IV. sc. 3.) ofCato 
in Addison, (Act. V. sc. 1.) of .^Eneas in the 
Dido of Metastasio, (Act. I. sc. 19.) are master- 
pieces in their kind. But they are all outdouo 
by the celebrated soliloquy of Shakspeare's 
Hamlet, Act. III. sc. 2. 

* ****** 

Among all the varieties of the sublime, the 
sublime of passion, — when the soul is suddenly 
stunned with terror, remorse, anger, and des- 
pair, — requires the most artless expression. A 
mind in commotion is occupied singly and alone 
with its own passion, and every idea which 
would withdraw it from that, is torture to it. 
The soul labours under the multitude of con- 
ceptions which overwhelm it. In the moment 
of vehement emotion they all press forward for 
utterance, and since the mouth cannot utter 
tliem all at once, it hesitates and is scarce able 
to pronounce the single words which first offer 
themselves. 

What, for example, could (Edipus say, in that 
terrible moment when, by the confession of the 
»ncierit servant, the whole mystery was ex- 
jilained to him, and he felt that the terrible 
imprecation which he had pronounced against 
the murderer of Laius must fall upon himself^ 

Wo ! wo ! now all is plain I 
Sophocles makes him exclaim. (Edipus, to 
whom so many oracles, testimonies and circum- 
•tances were known in relation to this matter, 



which seemed now to contradict each other, 
and now to contradict his own consciousness, 
perceives at length, with horror, that they per- 
fectly agree, and that he is the most miserable 
of men. Wo! wo! is the expression of Nature 
in the first stupor, the sigh which the wretch 
heaves forth when he can find no words. And 
the first idea which could arise again in the 
soul of ffidipus must needs have reference to 
the agreement of the circumstances. " Now all 
is clear." 

Seneca, on the contrary, who seems to have 
thought this much too quiet, makes his (Edipus, 
on the same occasion, rave after a very difierent 
fashion : 

Dehisce tellus tuque tenebrarum potens 
In Tartara ima rector urabrarum rape. 

One sees that the more foaming the words, the 
colder the heart ; for we feel that it is the stilted 
poet, not the wretched (Edipus whom we hear. 

In Shakspeare's Macbeth, Macduff learns 
that Macbeth has seized on his castle and mur- 
dered his wife and children. He falls into a 
profound melancholy; his friend endeavours to 
comfort him, but he hears nothing; he is medi- 
tating the means of revenge, and breaks forth 
at last into those terrible words : 

He hath no children ! 
These few words breathe more vengeance than 
could have been expressed in a whole oration. 

When Joseph could no longer contain himself 
for grief, and had removed all the bystanders, 
in order to discover himself to his brethren, 
what words should he find to express the con- 
dition of his soul? How make known to his 
brethren, in one word, that he was the indivi- 
dual whom they had abused, but their brother 
still ? " / am Joseph" he says ; " doth my Father 
yet live?" "And they could not answer him, 
for they were troubled at his presence." 

Longinus has remarked, that the true sublime 
may sometimes be attained by mere silence. 
"The sublime," he says, in the ninth division 
of his treatise, "is nothing but the echo of a 
great mind. And tVierefore we sometimes ad- 
mire the mere musing of a man, even when he 
utters no word, like the silence of Ajax in Hell,* 
which has in it more sublimity than all which 
he could have saiil." 'i'his eloquent silence is 
imitated by Virgil, "j" who says of Dido, when 
addressed by jEneas in the Elysian fields: 

Ilia solo fixes oculos aversa tenebat, 
Nee magis iiicepto vullum sermone movelur 
Quum si dura sdex aur stet Marpesia cautes. 
Tandem proripuit sese, atque inimica refugit 
In nenms umbriferuni. 

Among the moderns, Klopstock has likewise 
attempted to make use of this sublime silence, 
in that passage where Abdiel is addressed by 
the repentant Abaddon, who was his friend 
before they fell, with what success I will not 
undertake to say. 

Where this dumb rhetoric, if it may be called 



* Odyssee, B. XI. v. 563. 



t jEneid, B. VI. v. 469. 



112 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



so, is connected with the sublime in passion, at 
the right point, it is capable of producing the 
most happy effect on the mind of the attentive 
spectator. In the ffidipus of Sophocles, (Act 
IV. sc. 3.) the Corinthian shepherd says to 
ffidipus in the presence of Jocaste that he may 
return without fear to Corinth ; that Merope is 
not his mother, nor Polybius his father ; that he 
himself, the shepherd, had discovered him on 
the mountain Citheeron, and brought him from 
thence to Corinth. This declaration must needs 
strike the mind of Jocaste like a thunderbolt. 
She is now fully informed with regard to her 
terrible fate. She had caused her son to be 
ex))Osed on that very mountain, for fear that he 
might some time murder his father Laius ac- 
cording to the oracle. QEdipus was found on 
that mountain, and is now her husband. The 
dark sayings of Tiresias and the whole of the 
terrible mystery are suddenly made clear to her 
soul. But she is dumb. Grief lias so stupifled 
her that she stands tliere like a pillar. Her 
husband and son continues to inquire of the 
shepherd. What despair must liave shown 
itself in her looks during this conversation! 
ffidipus, tormented by the most dreadful doubts, 
is impelled by his rashness to put a question to 
her also. Now she suddenly wakes from her 
deatli-siuniber. 

Joe. How, what did he say ? For the sake of heaven, if thou 
lovest tliyself, cease to inquire farther. I am sutlicieiiily misera- 
ble til us. 

(E<IUj. Be calm ' And though I were descended from three-fold 
slaves, it cannot dislionour thee. 

Joe. Nevertlieless, obey me ! Be entreated ! do it not ! 

CEdip. Nay ! I must bring: the trutii to light. 

Joe. Ah ! Knowest tliou what weighty re:isons I have for pre- 
venting tliee ! 

Q^ip. Il is even these secret reasons which double my unea- 
siness. 

Joe. iasNle). Miserable 1 that thou mightest never learn who 
thou art ! 

(Ediji. Bring hither the other shepherd speedily. Let the queen 
be ashamed of my condition if she will, and be proud of her own. 

Joe, Alas! alas! Thou most miserable of all mortals ! This is 
all that 1 have to say to thee. I can endure it no longer. (Exit.) 

So speaks the true sublime in passion. The 
dumbness of Jocaste, so long as the discourse 
was not addressed to her, the wild, despairing 
looks, tlie oppression, the convulsive trembling 
in every joint, with whicli a good actress would 
accompany this dreadful silence, produce the 
utmost terror in the spectators, who are kept in 
a state of constant expectation by the impatience 
of CEdipus, and the near development of the 
great mystery. They are not yet indeed fully 
informed as to the fate of Jocaste; but so much 
tlie more terrible are the anticipations to which 
ner conduct, the responses of the oracles, and 
the sayings of Tiresias, give rise. 

At lengtli, she speaks; but what words ! what 
perplexity! "How? What said he ?' &c. In 
departing, she gives us plainly enough to un- 
derstand what purpose she nourishes in her 
breast, and hastens to execute without wit- 
nesses. " This is all that 1 have to say to thee ; 
1 can endure no longer !" Who does not now 



tremble for her life ? Who does not follow her 
with the eyes, and wish that she might not be 
left to herself, in her despair? QSdipus, only, 
is too much oc:cupied with himself, and appre- 
hends no danger on her part. She departs, and 
we learn, in the beginning of the fifth act, that 
our fear was but too well founded. 

So much for the sublime of the first class, in 
which the ground of ailmiration is to be found 
in the object itself, which is brought before us. 
Perhaps I have dwelt on it too long; but the 
sublime in sentiment required a more detailed 
exposition from the circumstance that, among 
all the examples of the sublime which Longinus 
adduces, there is to be found scarcely one which 
can be ranked in this class. I except the case 
of the silence of Ajax, which really belongs 
here, as also the well-known exclamation of 
thathero: "O! Father Zeus! deliver the Greeks 
from darkness! Let it be light, that our eyes 
may see once more. In the light of day destioy 
us, if thou hast so determined ! ' — which Loiigi- 
nus quotes in his ninth section. 

The second class of the sublime is that in 
which the admiration is directed rather to the 
art of representing than to the representation 
itself; and, therefore, as was shown above, 
recurs, for the most part, to the genius and the 
wonderful abilities of the author. The object 
in itself may contain nothing lofty, nothing ex- 
traordinary; but we admire the great talents 
of the poet, his happy imagination, his power 
of invention, his deep insight into the nature 
of things, into characters and passions, and the 
noble manner in which he has known how to 
express his excellent thoughts. A man rolling 
in the agonies of death, on the field of battle, 
is not, in itself, a remarkable object. But who 
does not admire the genius of a Klopstock in 
describing this circumstance. It was a happy 
conception, in the outset, ^ and one which 
opened a field for great thoughts, — to place an 
atheist instead of an ordinary man in this 
situation. 



- And the victor approaching, 



And the rearing steed, and the din of the sounding armour, 
And the cries and the rage of tlie slaying and the thundering 

heaven 
Storms over him. He lies and sinks with cloven head. 
Stupid and unconscious among the dead, and thinks he is passing 

away. 
Again he lifts himself up and still is, and thinks still, and curses, 
Because he still is, and spurts with his pale dying fingers 
Blood toward heaven ; curses God and would fain yet deny him. 

That which the painters call fracas, — the 
wild tumult on a field of battle, — which is here 
described with admirable traits, throws the 
mind of the reader into the utmost commotion. 
The raving despair of the atheist, who now 
feels that there is a God, in the midst of this 
terrible uproar, attracts our whole attention and 
fills us with disgust and amazement. The 
horrible, the dreadful assails us on every side 
On all hands we have the sensibly immeasur- 
able, which causes a shuddering sensation, one 
after another, and, agreeably to the explanation 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



113 



given above, maintains the feeling of the 
sublime. What a thought, 

Curses God and would fain yet deny him ! 

***** 

But there are also some objects entirely de- 
void of interest in themselves, which give tlie 
artist not the least advantage and leave it 
entirely to the power of his genius, how far 
they shall appear sublime to us, i. e., how far 
they shall excite our admiration. " An example 
of this kind is the passage quoted by Longiiius 
from Demosthenes. " Will ye tlien — confess to 
me — will ye then run back and forth continu- 
ally and ask among yourselves what is there 
new 1 What can be more new than that one 
mat! from Macedonia makes war upon all 
Greece? Is Philip dead? No, by the Gods! 
he is only indisposed. But O! ye Athenians, 
what is that to you 1 Suppose, that which is 
human should happen to him ; assuredly you 
Would make to yourselves another Philip.'" 
What is there great in tliis passage? What 
else awakens the idea of the imrrieasurable 
nere, but the wonderful mind of the orator who 
knows how to avail himself so felicitously of 
the most insignificant circumstances, in order to 
%\ve life, emphasis, and inspiration to his dis- 
course ? 

No one is more happy in taking advantage 
of the commonest circumstances and making 
them sublime, by a fortunate turn, than Shak- 
speare. Ihe effect of this species of the 
sublime must necessarily be stronger, the more 
unexpectedly it surprises us and the less pre- 
pared we were to anticipate such weighty and 
tragic consequences from such trivial causes. 
1 will give one or two examples of this, out of 
Hamlet. The king institutes public entertain- 
ments in order to dissipate the melancholy of 
the prince. Plays are performed. Hamlet has 
seen the tragedy of Hecuba. He appears to 
be in good humour. The company leaves him ; 
and now mark with astonishment the tragic 
consequence which Sliakspeare knows how to 
draw from these trivial common circumstances. 
The prince soliloquizes, ■ 

! what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! 

Is it nut monstrous that tins player here, 

But in a fiction, in a dreani of passion, 

Could force his soul Sf> to Ins own conceit. 

That from her working all his visage wanned ; 

Tears in his eyes, distraction in *s aspect, 

A broken voice and his whole function suiting 

With forms to his conceit! And all Ibr nothing! 

For Hecuha 1 

What 's Hecuha to hi.Ti or he to Hecuba, 

That he should weep for hert What would he do 

Had he the motive and the cue for passion 

That 1 have ! 

What a master-trait ! Experience teaches that 
persons afflicted with melancholy find unex- 
pecteillyin every occasion, even in entertain- 
'nents, a transition to the prevailing idea of 
'heir grief; and the more it is attempted to 
divert them from it, the more suddenly they fall 
Dack. This experience guided the genius of 



Shakspeare wherever he had to depict melaii 
choly. His Hamlet and his Lear are full of 
these unexpected transitions causing terror to 
the spectator. 

In the third act, Guildenstern, a former con- 
fidant of Hamlet, at the instigation of the king 
endeavours to sound him and to ascertain the 
secret cause of his melancholy. The prince 
detects his purpose and resents it. 

Guild. 0, my lord ! if my duty be too bold, ray love is too un- 
mannerly. 

Ham. 1 do not well understand that. Will you play upon this 
pipe? 

Guild. My lord, I cannot. 

Ham. I pray you. 

Guit. Believe me 1 cannot. 

Ham. 1 do beseech you. 

GuU. I know no touch of it, my lord. 

Ham. 'Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your 
finger and thumb, give it breath with your nioutji, and it wiU 
disci)urse most eloquent music. Look you. these are the slops. 

Guil. But these cannot I command to any utterance of har- 
mony ; I have not the skill. 

Hum. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thingdo you make 
of rne ! You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my 
stops; you would sound me from my lowest note to the lop of 
my compass : and there is much music, excellent voice in this 
little organ ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'S blood ! do you 
think 1 am easier to be played cm than a pipe 1 Call me whut 
instrument you will, though you can fret me you cannot play 
upon me. 

None but Shakspeare must venture to intro- 
duce such common matters upon the stage, for 
no one but he possesses the art to use them. 
Must not the spectator, in this case, be as much 
amazed as Guildenstern, who feels the superior 
address of the prince, and withdraws, covered 
with shame ? 

If the artist wishes to give us, in his work, a 
clear and sensible proof of those perfections 
which he possesses in the highest degree, he 
must direct his attention to the highest beauties 
which can aniiiiate his description. The little 
touches of the pencil, it is true, attest the 
finishing hand of the master, his diligence and 
his care to please. But it is not in them, cer- 
tainly, that we are to look for the sublime which 
deserves our admiration. Admiration is a 
tribute which we owe to extraordinary gifts of 
mind. These are what we call genius in the 
strictest sense. Accordingly, wherever, in a 
work of art, there are found sensible marks of 
genius, there we are ready to accord to the 
artist the admiration which is his due. But the 
unimportant adjuncts, the last finish — that 
which belongs indeed to the picture, but does 
not constitute an essential part of the picture — 
exhibits too plainly the diligence and the care 
which it has cost the artist; and we are accus- 
tomed to deduct so much from genius as we 
ascribe to diligence. 

It appears then that, in this cln.ss of the sub- 
lime, the artist is free to use the whole wealth 
of his art in order to place in their true lit;ht 
the beauties which he has introducetl by a 
happy thought. And herein this kind dis- 
tinguishes itself from the former in which the 
naive and inartificial mode of treatment is pre- 
ferable. Nevertheless, even here, the a'tisi 
10* 



114 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



must not honour with too much care and labour 
tbose little beauties which perhaps would oc- 
cupy minds of a lower order for a long time; 
and he may only then not reject them, when 
they offer themselves, as it were, unbidden. 

I shall content myself with adducing a single 
example. The sacred Psalmist says of the Sun, 
(Ps. xix. 6.) 

"He noniefh forth like a brideeToom out of his chamber, 
And rejoiceth like a hero to run a race." 

Both images are uncommonly sublime and in 
the last, especially, Hogarth finds a similarity 
of thought to the celebrated antique — the Apollo 
.^whom the artist has happily characterized, 
as the God of day, by the swiftness with which 
he seems to step forth and to shoot his arrows; 
— if the arrow can be regarded as intended to 
signify the i-ays of the sun. But these great 
beauties, even in the hands of so great a master 
as Rousseau, if not entirely dissipated, are at 
least very much degraded from their sublimity 
by too diligent elaboration. 

Cet astre ouvre sa carriiJre 
Conime uii Epoux glodeux, 
Qui des I'Auhe matiiiaje 
De sa couche nuptiale 
Sort brillant et ndieux. 
L' universe a sa presence 
Senible sortir du neaut. 
n prend sa course, il s'avance, 
Comme un superb geaut. 

Here we find eight words of the original text 
spread out into nine verses ; but how liave they 
suffered by tliis extension! * * * 

For the rest, it is evident from our explana- 
tion, that this second class of the sublime may 
consist in the thoughts as well as the expression; 
and — as it respects the thoughts — in the under- 
standing as well as the imagination, in the 
creative power, in the comparisons, in striking 
st^ntences, sentiments, descriptions of characters, 
passions, the manners of men and objects in 
Nature ; — and, as it respects the expression — in 
the use of ornate diction, in the choice of epithets 
designating the most sensuous qualities, in the 
arrangement and connection of words, and final- 
ly, in the euphony and harmony of the periods. 
For the artist may display his extraordinary 
talents by all these beauties. 

It will not be necessary to remind the reader 
that both kinds of the sublime are often found 
united in works of art. In the essay on the first 
principles of art it has been already observed, 
with respect to imitation, that our pleasure in 
a successful likeness of imitative art is far 
greater than our pleasure in a form produced 
by Nature heiself, because in the former case, 
the idea of the artist comes in and heightens the 
enjoyment. Now t'lis is true not only of imita- 
tion, but of all beauty, as it was also there 
remarked. They please far more when they 
are viewed, at the same time, as expressions of 
the perfections of the artist who produced them. 
Although he must not seek, of himself, to appear 
and to shine, yet there will always remain some 



footprints of genius which occasionally betray 
him and indicate the giant wlio stamped them 
there. Therefore, in many cases, subjective 
sublimity may be united with objective. But 
the expression will admit of more or less orna- 
ment, according as our admiration is directed 
rather to the object itself, or to the skill of the 
artist. This must depend, in particular cases, 
on the nature of the subject to be handled and 
on the design of the artist. 

It would be superfluous, moreover, to illustrate 
all these remarks with examples, since the 
treatise of Longinus, who seems to occupy him- 
self singly and exclusively with the second 
species of the subliine, is in everyone's hands. 
My design was merely to make the idea of the 
sublime, which is often talked about in connec- 
tion with works of the fine arts, a little cleaier; 
and I am satisfied if I have not been wholly 
unsuccessful m this attempt. I shall content 
myself with adding one or two remarks. 

Longinus says, in the seventh division of his 
work, " You inay be assured, in general, that that 
is really beautiful and sublime which pleases 
always and all men." Perrault is not satisfied 
with this proposition of Longinus, and says of 
it, in bis answer to the eleventh observation of 
Boileau on Longinus, diat, according to this pre- 
cept, the sublime would be extremely rare, since 
men of different age, different education and 
mode of life conceive the same thing in very 
different ways. It seems to me that Perrault is 
right, so far as the sublime of the second class 
is concerned. It requires oftentimes a very 
deep insight into the mysteries of art, to be able 
to admire the talents of the artist. And how 
small is the number of the noble ones who pos- 
sess this insight! But the sublime in the object, 
and, especially, the sublime in sentiment, surely 
move men of all classes, as soon as they under- 
stand the words by which it is expressed. 

Nay, men of ordinary minds, whose feeling 
is not entirely perverted, must admire the sub- 
lime in sentiment the more, the more it exceeds 
their way of thinking and the less they had sup- 
posed the human soul to possess such perfec- 
tions. It is objected that the most refined critics 
have disputed with regard to certain passages, 
whether they are to be classed with the sublime. 
For example, the passage from the holy scrip- 
tures, " God said. Let there be liglit, and there 
was light," belongs unquestionably to the sub- 
lime of the first class, and yet its sublimity has 
been doubted by many discerning minds. Where 
then, in this case, is the agreement which we 
are to regard as a criterion of the sublime of the 
first class? But let it be considered that the op- 
ponents of Longinus have never doubted that 
the fact in itself — "God said, Let there be liglit, 
and there was light" — is sublime. Only tliey 
have refused to concede that it was the inten- 
tion of the Lawgiver to say something sublime 
with these words ; that is, they allowed to this 
passage a sublimity of the first class, and only 
doubted whether that of the second class could 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



115 



be ascribed to it. One sees too, with wonder, 
in the controversies respecting this passage, how 
little tlie critics have been willing to under- 
stand one anotlier. The one party appeals con- 
tinually to the sublimity of the act and the 
simplicity of the language, the otiier party is 
silent on this point and speaks only of tlie pur- 
pose of the Lawgiver, who, to speak after the 
manner of men, did not assuredly mean in this 
passage, to tax his mental faculties to say some- 
thing sublime. Had they explained themselves, 
the controversy would have been at an end. 

Longiiius, therefore, is not only rirht in saying 
that what pleases always and all men is really 
beautiful and sublime, but, so far as the sublime 
of the first class is concerned, we may invert 
the proposition and say that the sublime must 
always please and please all men. The words 
of the Greek critic, which immediately follow, 
prove moreover that he is actually speaking of 
the sublime of the first class, when he says that 
it pleases always and all men, although he has 
never expressly pointed out this essential dis- 
tinction. He says: "When people of various 
tastes, of dissimilar habits, differing in know- 
ledge and in years, have been moved by the 
same thing, the consent of so many diversities 
aflbrds us so much the greater certainty, that 
what is so admired must infallibly possess sub- 
limity." 

For the rest, since the sublime is found only 
in connection with great and extraordinary 
powers of mind, ordinary wit or the faculty of 
seeing, in things that differ, unimportant resem- 
blances, is justly excluded, as well from the 
sublime of the first, as of the second class. 
Pointed antitheses, epigrammatic conceits, far- 
fetched and artificial wit, may amuse and en- 
tertain us pleasantly enough for a time, but they 
can never excite admiration. They may even 
hinder it, inasmuch as they are marks of a little 
mind which makes an insignificant relation, 
discovered by it, a matter of importance. The 
smallest soul has something more important to 
do, in a moment of strong emotion, than to no- 
tice insignificant allusions and relations and to 
dwell upon them. Only an indifferent mind 
can be so oppressed with ennui as to find en- 
tertainment in trities. 

All this, however, applies only to common, 
hair-splitting wit. There is a great and noble 
kind founded not in empty likenesses and idle 
allusions at;d relations, but in fruitful truths and 
often in worthy sentiments. This higher wit 
is a fruitful source of the sublime and the ad- 
mirable in the fine arts. Even the most vehe- 
ment passion does not exclude antitheses which 
rest on some important truth or sentiment. The 
good writers of antiquity knew only this genuine 
species of wit, which entertains, moves and in- 
structs at the same time. In the place of this, 
some of their followers introduced an empty 
shimmer, which rather dazzles than illumines. 

The following are examples of sublime 
tlioughts clothed in wit. 



The answer of Alexander when Parmenio 
said to him ; "I would accept the ofler of Da- 
rius if I were Alexander;" "So would I,' re- 
plied the prince, "if I were Parmenio." 

"He who would fear nothing," says an an- 
cient philosopher, "let him learn to fear God." 
From this probably arose the sublime verse of 
Racine: 

Je Grains Dieu, cher Abner, et n'ai point d'autre crainte. 

Athalie, Act I. S& I. 
Omnia terranim sabacta 
Prseter atrocem atiimum Calonis. — Horat. 

Neque Cato post libertatem viiit neque libertas post Catonera. 

Senec. 

Tout etait Diea except*^ Dieu mt'me; etle monde que Dita 
avait fait pour nianifester sa puissance, semblait etre deveuu ua 
temple U'idoles. — Bossuel, Hist. Univ. 

Fern unter ihnen hat das menschliche Geschlecht, 
Ini Hinimel und im Nichts, ein doppelt Bur^errecht. 
Aus ungleich festem Stotf hat Gott es auserlesea, 
Halb zu der Ewiffkeit, halb aher zum Verwesen. 
Zweideutiff Miuelding von Engeln und von Vieh, 
Es uberlebt sich selbst uiid stirbt und stirbet nie. 

HaOer. 



Examples of pathetic or passion-moving anti- 
theses : — 

Hovv doth the city sit solitary that was full of people ! Tlie 
greatest among the nations, the princess of the provinces is be- 
come tnbutar)' l—Jerem. I/im. c. i, v. 1. 

Anibalem p.iter filio meo potui placare. Filium Anibali non 

possum. Vultum ipsius Anibalis quem arniati exercitus susti- 

nere nequeunC. quern horret populus Romunus, — tu sustinebL^ ? 

Deterreri hie sine te potius, quam illic vinci, Valeant apud 

te meiE preces, sicut pro te hodie valuerunt. — Tit. Liv. I. 23. 

Leve toi triste objet d'horreur et de tendresse ; 
Leve toi cher appuj qu'esperait ma vieillesse : 
Viens embrasser ton pere ! 11 t'a du condamner, 
Mais s'll n'etait Brutus il t'allait pardonner. 
Va, ne t'attendris ponit; sols plusRomain que moi; 
Et que Rome t'admire en se vengeant de toi. 

SnUus, Act V. Sc. 7. 

The sublime, in general, and especially that 
of the first class, stands in such close connection 
with the naive in expression, as has been al 
ready suggested above, that it may not be un- 
suitable to inquire here wherein the naive con- 
sists, and how far it may be used in the Works 
of the fine arts. 

We have no German word to denote this pro- 
perty. 'Natural,' 'artless,' expresses too little. 
Men often, in common life, express themselves 
naturally and artlessly without being naive. 
'Noble simplicity,' on the other hand, expresses 
too much and denotes only a certain species of 
the naive. We often say of certain comical 
expressions, that they are naive, aliho. gh they 
are anything but noble. We must, therefore, 
make use of this outlandish word; but we will 
endeavour to ascertain the idea which is usually 
connected with it. 

Simplicity is unquestionably a necessary in- 
gredient of naivete. As soon as an expression 
becomes profound, vivid, highly ornate, naivete 
must be altogether denied it; and, so far, the 
sublime in expression is oppostii *o the naive. 
But mere simplicity is not enougi. Beneath 
this simple exterior there must lie a '^eau^jf!i; 



116 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



thought, an important truth, a noble sentiment 
or passion, which utters itself in an inartificial 
manner. A merely simple expression leaves 
us unaffected, but when a beautiful thought 
dwells, like a lofty soul, in this unadorned body, 
our heart is touched with a soft emotion, and 
we exclaim with pleasure. How naive! The 
country manners prevalent in our times are ex- 
tremely simple; but are they naive like the 
manners of the Arcadian shepherds and other 
citizens of the golden age, which probably never 
existed except in the imagination of tlie poet? 
And what other reason is there for this differ- 
ence, but the noble sentiments imputed to tlie 
latter, in addition to their external simplicity? 
Perhaps then, we may establish the following 
definition: When an object is noble, beautiful, 
or is associated witlr important consequences, 
and is indicated by a simple sign, we call the 
designation naive. 

This definition would be perfectly applicable 
to all those cases in which the person, into 
whose mouth the naive saying is put, has really 
beautiful, noble or significant thoughts, and only 
makes use of simple expressions. For example, 
Virgil says in his third eclogue, 

Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella, 
Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri. 

This is uncominonly naive. The hiding of 
Galatea appears to be mere innocent sport; but 
there is a tender affection at the bottom of it. 
She provokes the shepherd by this agreeable 
play to pursue her behind the willows. She 
could not more happily signify to him her secret 
passion. 

The epigrammatic inscription on ihe brazen 
cow of Myron, 

Herdsman, wlierefore hurriest thou 

Back so far for me ? 

Wliy thy goad upUftest now 

And urgest nie to flee ? 

I ani the artist Myron's cow 

And cannot go with thee, 

is naive for the same reason ; because, at first 
sight, it seems to be a mere narrative, but, in 
reality, contains a very flattering compliment to 
the artist. 

Derision also sometimes assumes the air of 
nnocetit narrative in order to conceal its design. 
And thereby to make the satire more biting. 
Praise and blaine are both the more emphatic, 
'he less <lesigiied and the more accidental they 
appear. 

On dit que I'Abhe Roquette 

Aeclie les sermons d'autrui : 
Moi qui scais qu'il les anhete, 

Je soutiens qu'ils sont a lui. 

Boileau. 

Huissiers, qu'on fasse silence I 
Dit en tenant audience 
Un President de Bauge ; 
C'est un bruit a tete ftjndre, 

Nous avons deja juge 
Dix causes suns les entendre. 

J. B. Rousseau. 



Praise sometimes wears the mask of reproach, 
and is all the more flattering : 

Helas qu'est devenu ce terns, cet heureui temps 
Ou les Rois s'honoraient du nom de faineans! 

And so, inversely, blaine sometimes takes the 
guise of eulogy, whereby the irony is rendered 
more severe. 

******* 

La Fontaine loses his benefactress, Madame 
de Lasabliere, and meets his friend, M. d'Her- 
vart. "My dear La Fontaine," said his honest 
friend, "I have heard of the misfortune which 
has befallen you. You resided with Madame 
de Lasabliere ; she is dead. I wished to pro- 
pose to you to come and live with me." " I 
was just going there," answered La Fontaine. 

Generally, the naive in moral character con- 
sists in an external simplicity, which uninten- 
tionally discovers internal worth ; in ignorance 
of the world's ways; in unconcern about false 
interpretation, in that confiding manner which 
is not founded in stupidity and want of ideas, 
but in magnanimity, innocence, goodness of 
heart, and an amiable persuasion that others 
are not worse disposed toward us, than we 
are toward them. If, therefore, we regard the 
external conduct of men as the sign of their 
internal character and worth, the naive, here 
too, will require simplicity of expression, toge- 
ther with dignity and significance in the thing 
expressed. 

It is the same with the naive in the human 
countenance, which is so essential to the painter 
and sculptor. It is always the unstudied, the 
artless in exterior, undesignedly evincing inter- 
nal excellence. Since the features, the airs and 
gestures of men are signs of their propensities 
and sentiments; since every feature in the 
countenance expresses a propensity, and every 
mien an emotion corresponding to it, a naive 
character is ascribed to the tout ensemble of all 
the features and gestures, when, as it were, 
without design, without pretence, without self- 
consciousness, they discover a happy and harmo- 
nious combination of tendencies and sentiiuents. 
Hence the naive in the character of a child, 
when, amidst the otherwise monotonous fea- 
tures of a childish face, tender germs of meek 
ness, love, innocence and graciousness appear. 

Grace, or elevated beauty in movement, is 
also coimected with the naive, inasmuch as the 
movements which charm -us are natural, have 
an easy flow, and slide gently one into another, 
and unintentionally and unconsciously indicate 
that the motive forces in the soul, from which 
these voluntary motions flow, sport and unfold 
themselves in the same unstudied, harmonious, 
and artless manner. Hence, the idea of inno- 
cence and of moral simplicity is alw^ays asso- 
ciated with a lofty grace. The more this beauty 
of motion is coinbined with consciousness and 
appears to be the work of design, the more it 
departs from the naive and acquires a studied 
character; and, when the accompanying inter- 
nal emotions do not agree with it, an affected 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



117 



character. Nothing is so disgusting as insipid 
naivete, or an outward simplicity which ap- 
pears to have designs and makes pretensions. 

On the other hand, when simplicity in mo- 
tion betrays, at the same time, want of thought 
and want of feeling, it is called stupidity; and 
when inactivity is added, we have the tiiais. 
In general, then, according to these considera- 
tions, it requires, in all cases, an artless external 
simplicity, together with internal worth or signi- 
ficance, to constitute the naive. 

There are cases, however, where he who 
speaks naively has really nothing more in his 
mind than the words he makes use of express, 
and consequently discovers, on his part, no 
more of internal worth than appears outwardly, 
but where the hearers, by means of other cir- 
cumstances, are enabled to connect a good deal 
more with those words which seem so in<lif- 
ferent, or to draw important consequences from 
them. 

******* 

The well-known passage in Gellert:*^ 

"What did you say, Papa? You made a mistake; 

You said I was only fourteen years old." 
"No! fourteen years and seven weeks," 

is uncommonly naive, because the speaker, 
(Fiekchen), without perceiving it, betrays the 
secret wishes of her heart. She means to set 
her father right, to show him that he has mis- 
calculated by seven weeks, and, in doing so, 
shows how carefully she must have calculated 
herself. Contrary to her purpose, therefore, she 
says more than she meant to say; and yet we 
call her answer naive. 

Thus we sometimes, from haste, let fall a 
naive word, whereby we betray an important 
secret. 

• •••••• 

When this takes place in the heat of passion, 
a naive betrayal of the most secret thoughts 
may have a very tragic effect. There is a trait 
of this kind in the Romeo and Juliet of Herr 
Weisse. Tne Countess Capulet, who is far from 
suspecting that her Juliet is in love with Romeo, 
but, on the contrary, has reason to suppose that 
she hates this Montague, as all her family hate 
and prosecute him, because he has killed her 
cousin Tybalt, (on account of whose death Juliet 
pretends to be inconsolable, while the absence 
of Romeo is the real cause of her grief) — this 
Countess Capulet comes to cheer her daughter, 
and to inlbrm her tliat the Count of Lodrona 
has applied for her liand. 

Mad Capulet. I brinff you joyful news, Juliet; joyful for u.s 
all, especiuUy joyful fur you. 

Jutkt (quickly). Has Romeo been pardoned T — {Frightened). 
Alas ! how weak my head is. Is Romeo punished ! 

A French writer (Diet. Encycl. Art. Naivet6) 
makes a distinction, wliich seems to be war- 
ranted by the use of language, between naivete 
and a <iaivet6. A naivete, he says, is the name 
we give to a thought, a trait of the imagination, 



* Fabein und Erziihiungen, 2 B. 8. 115, 



a sentiment which escapes us against our will 
and may sometimes injure us; an expression 
originating in vivacity, carelessness, inexperi- 
ence of the ways of the world. Of this de- 
scription is the answer of a wife to her dying 
liusband, who was designating the person 
whom he wished her to marry after liis death: 
"Take him," said he, "you will be happy with 
him!" " Ah, yes," replied she, "I have often 
thought of it." 

Naivete, on the other hand, is the language 
of fine genius and of discerning simplicity. It 
is the most simple picture of a refined and in- 
genious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in 
whom it is not natural. 

But, since both kinds of the naive liave cer- 
tain marks in common, it will be necessary, in 
order not to exclude any of them, to extend our 
definition of the naive somewhat. When, by 
a simple expression, something is understood 
to be designated, which is important in itself 
or may have important consequences, whether 
it be the design of the speaker to imply more 
than he says, or whether without purpose, and, 
sometimes, against his purpose, he betrays more 
than he says, the expression is called, in each 
of these cases, naive. 

» • • » • 

The effects of the naive are, first, an agree- 
able astonishment, a slight degree of wonder 
at the unexpected significance which lay con- 
cealed beneath an outward simplicity. We 
love to fix our attention on an object which re- 
veals to us more and more, the longer we dwell 
upon it, which performs, as it were, more than 
it seemed to promise. If now, this interior 
significance arises from a high degree of per- 
fection, there ensues the feeling of awe which 
accompanies the sublime; but combined with 
a joyous sensation which approaches very 
nearly to laughter. For the simplicity of the 
expression forms a kind of contrast with the 
importance of the thing signified, or with the 
consequences flowing from it, which tempts to 
laughter, and the sense of this contrast, if not 
suppressed by stronger sentiments, manifests it- 
self in actual laughter. When ovei-powered by 
the sublime, it is no longer laughter, which the 
contrast produces, but the trace of a gracious 
smile which plays about the lips and loses itself 
in lofty admiration. This is always the feeling 
which we have when surprised by the naive in 
moral character. The man devoid of sentiment, 
who judges according to appearance, will not 
witness the morally naive without laughing, 
for he sees nothing more than the contrast with 
the customs of the world which he knows 
better, and the strangeness of that too certain 
confidence in the goodness of others, which 
provokes him to loud laughter. TKe man of 
sensitive heart, on the contrary, sees through to 
the iimer worth, recognises the magnanimity 
from which that indecision and seeming strange- 
ness spring; and while his lips move th ;in- 
selves to laugh, a feeling of awe comes ovei liia 



Its 



MOSES MENDELSSOHN. 



heart and resolves the laugh into wondering 
meditation. The naive in the features of the 
countenance produces a similar effect, only that 
the inclination to laugh, in this case, will mani- 
fest itself with much weaker indications, be- 
cause the contrast here is not so obvious. The 
man devoid of sentiment will contemplate it 
with indifferent eyes because the air and the 
features seem to him unmeaning; and, with 
the more discerning, the contrast produces no 
other effect than a gentle opening of the lips 
and an almost imperceptible lengthening of the 
mouth, which is rather an approval than a 
smile. 

If the essence of the naive is an evil, — not a 
dangerous one, — a weakness, an error, a folly 
which is not followed by any perceptible mis- 
fortune, the naive is merely ludicrous. In this 
case, the effect will differ according as the in- 
dividual, from whom it comes, intends that 
more should be understood than he says, or, 
unintentionally, betrays more than he says. In 
the former case, he makes us laugh; in the 
latter, he makes himself ridiculous. Of this 
examples enough have been given above, and 
the application is so easy that we may reason- 
ably leave it to the reader. 

But when the essence of the naive consists 
in actual danger, a misfortune which befalls 
some one in whose fate we are interested, tlie 
naive is tragic, and when the danger is a 
dreaded consequence of the naive, the effect is 
terrible and prostrates every feeling of the 
ludicrous. An example of this is the above- 



mentioned passage from Romeo and Juliet. 
Another, equally striking, is the too ingenuous 
confession of Monime in the Mithridates of 
Racine; when this princess suffers herself to 
be betrayed into confidential communications 
by the wily Mithridates and confesses to him 
her love-affairs, but perceives with terror, during 
the relation, that Mithridates loses colour and 
begins to grow pale with rage. 

But when the dreaded evil is not a conse- 
quence of the naivete, but is connected with it 
in some other way, — as sign with the thing 
signified, — the smile which the perception of 
the contrast provokes may consist with the sad- 
dest emotions. Andromache smiles at the 
simple fears of the little Astyanax, and, at the 
same time, scalding tears roll down her cheeks. 
The whole pit laughs at the innocence of the 
little Arabella,* without detriment to the tragic 
sensation. Nay, our compassion for these chil- 
dren is the more lively, the more they show by 
their naive conduct, that they are unconscious 
of the misfortune in which they are most nearly 
concerned. Whence it is evident, how un- 
founded is the opinion of some critics, who 
would have all sentiments which contain any 
touch of the ludicrous, banished from the tragic 
stage. 

This matter deserves further discussion, but 
it does not belong to the object which I had 
proposed to myself. 



* An alluBion to Lessiiig's " Miss :jarali Sampson." 



Tr. 



JOHANN GEORG HAMANN. 



Born 1730. Died I7SS. 



The "Ma^us of the North," as he was 
pleased to style himself in his contributions to 
the periodical literature of his lime, is a name 
little celebrated beyond the select circle of his 
admirers, but greatly honored within that circle. 
Hamann was one of those who waken an in- 
tense interest in a few, and none at all in the 
mass. 

A native of Konigsberg, in compliance with 
the wishes of his father, he studied theology at 
the university in that city. But an impedi- 
ment in his speech and a preference for criti- 
cism, philology and poetry, induced him to 
devote himself principally to those pur.^uits and 
to make the Law his nominal profession. In 
1752 he entered the family of the Baroness of 
Budberg, in Kurland, as a private tutor ; after- 
ward that of General von Witten in the same 
capacity, and in 1755 became domesticated 
with a merchant in Riga where he grew so 
familiar with the business of commerce, that he 
undertook a mercantile expedition to Holland 
and England. The ill success of this enter- 
prise occasioned him deep chagrin, and, while 
in London, he resolved on a change of life. He 
turned his attention to religion, but without 
resuming theology as a profession. He returned 
to Riga where he resided a few years, and after- 
ward to his native city; devoting himself to 
literary pursuits and particularly to ancient 
literature and the Oriental languages. In 1764 
he made the tour of Germany and Switzerland, 
and went to Warsaw in the capacity of tra- 
velling tutor to a nobleman from Kurland. In 
1777 he received an appointment under the 
Prussian Government to an office connected 
with the Customs-department, in Konigsberg. 
In 1784 a pension bestowed by a kind patron 
gave him a pecuniary independence and the 
means of devoting himself entirely to letters. 
But, before he could reap the full benefit of 
this provision, he was overtaken by death, on a 
journey for the benefit of his health, June 21st, 
1788. 

Hamann is indebted for his reputation to the 



testimony of a few names of the highest mark, 
such as Herder, Jacobi, Goethe, and Jean Paul, 
rather than to any great popularity which his 
works have had with the German Public. He 
belonged to that class of writers who love the 
shade and lose more by obscurity than they 
gain by originality; — who repel, by the un- 
couth shapes, in which their thoughts are dis- 
guised, more readers than they attract by the 
rarity and pickedness of the thoughts them- 
selves. He is a humorist, but of a sombre 
complexion, with a strong dash of cynicism. 
At the same time, a deep religious sentiment 
pervades his writings which show him to be an 
orthodox believer, according to the letter, like 
his contemporary — in all else, his antipodes — 
Matthias Claudius. "The Kernel of his works," 
says Herder, " contains many seed-corns of 
great truths, new observations and the results 
of a wonderfully extensive reading; the shell 
is a laborious texture of strong expressions, 
allusions and word-flowers. He read much and 
with taste {mullum et multa), but the balsam- 
odors from the ethereal table of the ancients, 
mixed with occasional vapors of Gaul and the 
steam of British humor, formed a perfect cloud 
around him. His observations often combine 
a whole view in a single view-point; but let 
the reader stand at that view-point, otherwise 
he will see everything askew, and common 
mould instead of microscopic forests. Everj 
thought of his is an unstrung pearl; every 
thought is wrapped in the very word without 
which it could neither have been thought nor 
spoken." 

" The great Hamann," says Jean Paul, " is 
a deep sky full of telescopic stars, with many 
a nebula which no eye can resolve." And 
again, "Hamann's style is a river which the 
storm drives back toward its source, making it 
innavigable for Dutch market-boats." 

But the best account of Hamann is that given 
by Goethe in his autobiography.* 

"Since I was tempted to the Sibylline cha- 
racter which I gave to these leaves, as well ai 

* " Au3 meinem Leben." Zwolfles Bnch. 

n9> 



120 



HAM ANN. 



to the publication of them, by Hamann, this 
seems to me a proper place to speak of that 
worthy and influential man, who was to us 
then as great a mystery, as he has been to his 
country ever since. His " Socratic Memora- 
bilia" excited attention and were especially 
dear to those who could not adjust themselves 
to the dazzling spirit of the times. They 
seemeil to reveal a deep-thinking, thorough 
man, who, while he was well acquainted with 
the public world and literature, still held to 
something secret and inscrutable, and expressed 
himself in a very peculiar way concerning it. 
He was regarded indeed, by those who ruled 
the literature of the day, as an abstruse enthu- 
siast, but the upstriving youth of the country 
yielded itself without resistance to his attrac- 
tion. Even "the silent in the land,'" as — half 
in jest and half in earnest — they were called ; 
those pious souls, who without confessing to 
any particular communion, formed an invisible 
church, turned their attention toward him, and 
to my Klettenberg, as well as to her friend 
Moser, the ' JMagus of the North,' was a wel- 
come phenomenon. One inclined the rather 
to come into relations with him, since it was 
understood that, though distressed with the 
narrowness of domestic circumstances, he could 
still maintain this beautiful and lofty way of 
thinking. With President von Moser's great 
influence, it would have been easy (o provide 
a tolerable and comfortable existence for a 
man of such simple habits. In fact an opening 
was made and the mutual understanding and 
approximation between them had gone so far, 
that Hamann undertook the long journey from 
Kdnigsberg to Darmstadt. But the president 
being accidentally absent, that strange indivi- 
dual — for what reason, no one knew — imme- 
diately returned. Notwithstanding, a friendly 
correspondence was still maintained. I possess 
to this day two letters of the Konigsberger to 
his patron, which bear witness to the wonder- 
ful greatness and intensity of their author. 

" But so good an understanding was not long 
10 remain. These pious persons had imagined 
lim pious too, after their fashion. They had 
regarded him with reverence as the 'Magus 
of the North,' and supposed that he would al- 
ways continue to present a venerable aspect. 
But already in his 'Clouds,' an afterpiece to 
the 'Socratic Memorabilia,' he had given 
some offence; and when, after that, he published 
the 'Crusade^ of a Philologian,' which not 



only exhibits on its title-page the goats-profile 
of a horned Pan, but on one of the first leaves 
of which, also, a large cock, in wood-engraving, 
beating time to young cockerels who stand 
before him with notes in their claws, shows 
himself, in the highest degree, ludicrous; — 
whereby certain pieces of church-music, not 
approved by the author, were intended to be 
ridiculed ; — then arose, among the well-mean- 
ing and persons of delicate feeling, an aversion 
which the author was soon made to perceive, 
while he, on his part, not edified thereby, with- 
drew himself from a nearer connection with 
them. * * * * * * 
******* 

" The principle to which the various declara- 
tions of Hamann may be reduced, is this: 'AH 
that man undertakes, whether with word or 
deed, or however performed, should be the 
result of the union of all his powers; every 
partial effort is to be condemned.' A glorious 
maxim ! but difficult to observe. With respect 
to life and art it may do very well. But in 
every communication by word which is not 
poetical, there is great difficulty in carrying it 
out. For tiie word, in order to express any- 
thing, in order to mean anything, must detach 
itself, must individuate itself. Man, when he 
speaks, must, for the moment, become one- 
sided; there can be no communication, no doc- 
trine, without separation. But as Hamann, 
once for all, resisted this separation and under- 
took to speak as he felt, imagined, thought, 
with perfect unity, and demanded the same of 
others, he came into collision with his own 
style and with all that others might produce. 
In order to perform the impossible, he grasps 
at all the elements. The deepest, mysterious 
intuitions, where Nature and Spirit meet in se- 
cret, the illuminating flashes of the understand- 
ing which burst forth from such meeting, the sig- 
nificant images that hover in those regions, the 
sayings of sacred and profane writers crowding 
upon him, and whatever else may adjoin itself, 
humoristically, hereto,— all this forms the won- 
drous whole of his style, of his communications. 
Unable to associate with him in the deeps, to 
wander with him on the heights, to make our- 
selves masters of the forms which float before 
him, to discover the sense of a passage, which 
is merely indicated, in an infinitely extended 
literature; — it grows ever thicker and darker 
around us, the more we study him. And this 
darkness will increase with coming years, 



HAM ANN. 



12 



because his allusions are directed principally to 
certain peculiarities dominant, at the time, in 
literature and life. In my collection there are 
some of his printed sheets in which he has 
cited, with his own hand, in the margin, the 
passages to which he alludes. On turning to 
those passages, one is met again by an equivo- 
cal double-light which is in the highest degree 
agreeable; only one must renounce entirely 
what is usually called understanding. Such 
leaves, therefore, deserve to be called Sibylline, 
because one cannot contemplate them in and 
for thennselves, but must wait for an opportunity 
to recur to their oracles. Every time we con- 
sult them, we think to find something new, 
because the indwelling sense of each passage 
touches and moves us in manifold ways. 

"Personally, I have never seen him, nor come 
into any immediate relation to him through 
letters. He seems to me, in the connections 
of life and friendship, to have been, in the 
highest degree, clear, and to have felt very 
correctly the relations of men to each other 
and to himself. All the letters that I have 
seen of him were admirable and much more 
intelligible than his other writings, because 



here, the reference to time and circumstances 
as well as to personal relations, was much more 
evident And yet I thought to perceive in 
them, that, feeling with the greatest naivete 
the superiority of his mental gifts, he always 
thought himself a little wiser and more know- 
ing than his correspondents, whom he treated 
ironically rather than heartily. If this was 
true of particular cases only, yet those cases 
constituted, for me, the majority, and a reason 
for not wishing to come any nearer to him." 

The principal works of Hamann are the 
"Memorabilia of Socrates," "Golgotha and 
Scheblimini," and "Sibylline Leaves by the 
Magus of the North." The specimen given 
below does not verify the peculiarities men- 
tioned in these quotations. It was a youthful 
essay which the author was hardly willing to 
publish with the rest of his works. It is 
given not as a characteristic, but, simply, as 
the most intelligible specimen of an author 
whom, on account of his peculiar position in 
German Literature, it was thought best to 
represent in this Collection. The translation 
is by an anonymous friend of the editor. 



THE MERCHANT. 

FROM HAMANN'S SOHKIFTEN, HF.RAU8GEGEBEN VON FBIEDRICH 
ROTH. BERLIN. BEY G. REIMER. lfe2L VOL. I. 

SiipplfinPiit to a translation of Dangeuil's Remarqiies 
siir li'S Avaiita^'es et les Desavaiitacps de la France et de 
la Or. Britdgnp, par Rapport an Commerce et aux autres 
Sources de la Puissance, &c. 

Thehk are virtues, which originate like colo- 
nies, as others seetn to be the growth of the 
afje. Our sensitiveness to what we now riaine 
tlie woilil, or lionour, would be as incompre- 
lien<il)le to the ancients, as it is difficult to the 
moderns to imagine a passionate love of coun- 
try, or to feel it tliernselves. 

History furnishes most indubitable proofs of 
sper'ial care taken by the most ancient nations 
for the rej:ulation of civil society. Their policy 
extended from divine service to the theatre, 
dancing and music. Everything was employed 
by tliem as an implement of the government. 
One spirit united families, whose activity and 
exercise were promoted even by domestic dis- 
sensions. This spirit made them fruitful in 
project.-*, and the performance corresponded. 

The common weal seems to have been extin- 
gnislied since the period when, instead of citi- 
zens, there were vassals who assumed to be 
ma.<ters of their own actions and their property, 
when they had paid homage to their chief. To 
Q. 



this chief it was, in part, no longer possible, in 
part no longer necessary, to be a father to his 
country. In these times, the prince was per 
haps an armed Hobbes, or a prototype of Ma- 
chiavel, or a Vespasian, ruling by tax-gatherers 
and vampires; or the slave of priests. His in- 
clinations, his court, and certain classes, took the 
place of the public welfare. He imitated those 
pliilosophers who took the earth for the centre 
of the universe. 

The style of our offices has likewise served 
to divert the mind from the common weal. To 
seem worthy of a place which can seldom be 
the object of the wishes of a rational man, we 
bring ourselves betimes into, I know not what, 
entanglements. How many submit for the saiie 
of daily bread, and from the fear of man, to 
slavish cringing, and to perjury! 

Aiming at a yearly income and a comfortable 
livelihood, zeal to imitate or excel others in a 
pageantry of trifles, hence arises the monopoly 
which every one pursues in his class. The 
accumulations of prosperity and avarice dissi- 
pate the minds of our youth too much to leave 
space enough for great passions and power for 
great undertakings. How many, besides, find 
their fortune already complete, having thought 
as little of building it up, as of building up 
themselves. One may say, in truth, of place^ 
11 



l23 



HAMA.NN. 



of honour and estates, that to despise both, we 
need only look at their possessors. 

Witty minds have not failed to remark, on 
tlie derision expressed by nature, in that she 
appoints, on this earth, the cattle in the field to 
be more learned than we, and the bird in the 
heavens more wise. But has it not been her 
intention that man should owe his prerogatives 
to the social affections; should early accustom 
himself to reciprocal dependence ; seeing be- 
times the impossibility of dispensing with 
others? Wherefore has she sought to compen- 
sate death, not by a cold mechanism, but by the 
soft and ardent inclination of love ? Wherefore 
has her Author provided by laws, that marriage 
should spread, and that families, by ingrafting 
with families, should form new bonds of friend- 
ship ? Wherefore are his goods so differently 
appointed to the earth and its dwellers, but to 
render them social? The fellowship and ine- 
quality of men are also nowise among the pro- 
jects of our wit. They are no inventions of 
policy, but designs of Providence, which, like 
all other laws of nature, man has partly misun- 
derstood, and partly abused. 

Nothing reminds us more impressively of the 
advantages of union than the benefits which 
flow from commerce in human society. Through 
this it is, that that is everywhere, which is any- 
where. It satisfies our wants, it prevents satiety 
by new desires, and these it allays too. It 
maintains peace among nations, and is their 
horn of plenty. It furnishes them with arms, 
and decides their doubtful fortune. Men labour 
for it, and it rewards their diligence with trea- 
sures. It enlarges their intercourse, develops 
their powers, makes itself not only their wea- 
pon, but employs their genius, their courage, 
their virtues, their vices. Every harbour, every 
canal, every bridge, every floating palace and 
army, are its works. Through its influence, the 
arts are awakened and extended. Our side- 
boards and the toilets of the ladies are adorned 
with its gifts. The poisons of our kitchens, and 
the antidotes of our physicians pass through its 
hands. It atones for frugality by profusion. Its 
exercise consists in exact integrity, and from its 
gains the patriot distributes prizes, and performs 
his vows. 

What happy changes may not the world pro- 
mise itself from the commercial spirit, now 
beginning to prevail, if it should be purified by 
insight ami noble impulses? Perhaps we may 
riOt vainly flatter ourselves with the hope that, 
through its influence, the love of the public 
good will be re-established, and the virtues of 
the citizen raised from their ashes to their 
original splendour. 

The demand of commerce for liberty pro- 
mises to hasten the happy return of that blessing 
to man. The unrestrained energy, the unim- 
peded skill of each individual, and all that each 
undertakes not at variance with the common 
good, will gradually banish that unbridled auda- 
city with which every one in our times allows 



himself in everything, and aims to make possi 
ble whatever he considers useful to himself 
alone. 

Inestimable good ! without which men can 
neither think nor act, whose loss robs him of 
every privilege! By thee, trade blooms, and 
extends through all ranks ! Each resuines his 
ancient and natural rights, which we had re- 
nounced from servile passions and prejudices! 

Holland has, to the advantage of her trade, 
abolished tyrannical persecution for conscience' 
sake, and adopted among her fundamental laws 
that freedom of opinion which is as reasonable 
as it is beneficial. Why should it not tend to 
the renown of the Roman tax-gatherers, that 
they were the first who concerned themselves 
to relieve their countrymen from the blindness 
of superstition ?* 

The spirit of trade may perhaps abolish in 
time the inequality of ranks, and level those 
heights, those hills, which vanity and avarice 
have thrown up, in order not only to receive 
sacrifices thereon, but to control with more ad- 
vantage the course of nature. The incapacity 
of the idle ceases to be a mark of distinction 
gratifying to his pride, where the effort, and 
labour, and sweat of contemporaries make their 
life costly, and alone claim consideration and 
favour. The laurels wither with the decay of 
the fathers. Their rest on the bed of honour 
has become to us more indifferent than to their 
useless posterity, who enjoy the same repose on 
the cushions of prosperity and tedium. These 
dead are here, to bury completely the glory of 
their dead. Trade is, at the same time, the 
shovel which stirs the heaped-up gold, like the 
corn, and preserves it either for the bosom of 
the earth, or for the enjoyment of her children. 
Through it, gold is not only increased and made 
fruitful, but also useful, and a medium of life 
for man. But where it stands highest, the citi- 
zen must be most moderate in his gains, since, 
were all the world to have enough, none would 
have too much or too little. 

Men knew formerly very little of the prin- 
ciples of trade. It was pursued rudely, and 
was so much contemned, as to be left almost 
entirely to the Jews. Now, on the other hand, 
men have with much sagacity aimed to niake 
a science of commerce. Although its objects 
and ideas are in part arbitrary, and depend on 
the imagination ; yet men have, attempted to 
unite the theory of trade, and its exercise with 
as much exactness as the astronomers to found 
their reckonings on imaginary lines and hypo- 
theses. How much weighty insight, have not 
the prince and the people gained besides, by a 
thorough examination of the sources of trade? 

* Cicero says, De Nat. Deor. III. 19, that they were the 
first who considered it alisurd to believe those gods who 
had been men. Self-interest led them to this rational 
conclusion, because the lands consecrated to the Immor- 
tals were exempt from taxes. Whether we have jirofiled 
more from distempered and false, or suffered more from 
great and noble views, may be a problem. 



HAM ANN. 



123 



That instructive satire on monarchs, which 
•he inventor of chess, according to the fancy of 
a distinguislieJ poet* had in mind, is no longer 
a picture of our kings. They have better learned 
to appreciate the worth of their subjects. They 
now know that the state becomes great, only 
when they promote population by abimdant 
sustenance, regard idleness as an injury to their 
violated majesty, punish it with contempt and 
hunger, consider it the masterpiece of their 
wisdom, to multiply the hands of diligence, as 
well as to lighten its labour, and watch over 
the education of orphans and foundlings. 

The subject has learnt better to understand 
and to employ the fruits of the soil and his own 
sweat. Pliilosophy is no longer sculpture. 
The scholar is called back from tlie Sjjanisli 
castles of the intellectual world, and from the 
shades of the library, to the great theatre of 
nature and her doings, to living art, and her 
implements, to social employments, and their 
moving springs. He is an attentive spectator, 
a scholar, an intimate of the peasant, the arti- 
san, the merchant, and through universal ob- 
servation and research, becomes the lielper and 
teacher of all.f 

When even the common man becomes an 
object of importance to the state, because its 
strength flows from his preservation, industry, 
and increase, then the interest, which the com- 
monwealth takes in the industry of every day- 
labourer, is sure to instil into him, in time, nobler 
sentiments. " If those artisans had known," 
says Plutarch, "that through their labour, 
Ampliion would surround a city with walls, 
or Thales still a tumult of the people, with 
what ambition, what delight, had they carved 
the lyres of these men I't 

Trade has served for a demonstration of all 



• No prince this game invented, that will I dare to say, 
TdO plainly. Ins own image befure hiiii, it doth lay, 
For idly while he sitteth, ih.? monarrh lutle knows, 
Tlie pnasant, whom he vexeih. defeiidfth his repose. 
Thesovpreign is the queen, lo raise and lo depress, 
And the inglorious king, to all men valueless. 
To the high place, he dozing fills, doth <iwe 
The crown, that decks in state his empty brow. 

Regnier lends the last touch to this picture, in his four- 
teenth satire. 
" Lea fous sont aux 6checs les plus proches des Rois." 
1 1 appeal merely to that great monument, that has 
been raised by two philosophers in France to the glory 
of their native land. One cannot refuse admiration to 
the Encyclopedia, to which I here refi r, on the score of 
the mechanic arts. This gigantic work, which appears 
lo need a llriareus (I know not whether my memory 
furnishes me with the right name of the heaven-stormer 
with the hundred hands), could fall lo no more capalde 
and enterprising undertaker, than M.Diderot. Besides 
his articles, which do honour to him and the work, I am 
delighted to refer to the essay of [loulaiiger on the com- 
pulsory labourers, on the dams and bridges, under Ihe 
title Corcie. (Ponto et Chauss^es.) 

} In his Ess!)y on the Duty of Philosophers to asso- 
ciate with Public Men. 



these truths, and the pursuit of it has con- 
firmed their force. When, therefore, the de- 
ceitful, lying, avaricious disposition of an an- 
cient nation* is ascribed to their calling, when 
reference is made to a modern country, ren- 
dered habitable by skilful industry, and pow- 
erful by trade, where the moral virtues, and 
the smallest offices of human love are re- 
garded as wares; when it is said that with the 
art of calculation that resoluteness cannot ex- 
ist, by which the renunciation of selfishness, 
and magnanimous sentiments are attained, that 
attention to trifles limits the circle of mental 
vision, and reduces elevation of thought, it is 
certainly the duty of the merchant to refute 
these charges. 

Was it the fault of religion, that in those dark 
times of superstition, the spiritual order adopted 
a sort of asX!en^o-contract,t that the priest car- 
ried on a most lucrative stock-jobbing, derived 
premiums from the fear of hell, sold the church- 
soil to the dead, taxed the early days of mar- 
riage, and made a profit on sins, which he for 
the most part invented himself? 

We laugh at the wise Montaigne, who was 
anxious, lest the introduction of powder and 
shot should annihilate bravery. Let us feel a 
more earnest anxiety for the moral results of 
trade. Much pains have been taken certainly 
to perfect the science, but perhaps too little 
thought has been given to fortning the mer- 
chant. The spirit of trade should be the spirit 
of traders, and their morals, the groundwork 
of its reputation. Both should be better en- 
couraged by rewards, supported by laws, and 
upheld by examples. 

" The occupation most useful to society," says 
an ancient writer.| "should assuredly be fol- 
lowed with emulation, I mean agriculture, 
which would prosper greatly, if rewards were 
offered, giving it the preference. The com- 
monwealth would hereby gain infinite advan- 
tage, the public revenues be increased, and 
sobriety be associated with improved industry. 
The more assiduous the citizens became in 
their occupations, the less would extravagance 
prevail. Is a republic favourably situatetl for 
commerce, honours shown to trade would multi- 
ply merchants and commodities. If on any 
one who (liscovere<l a new source of gain, with- 
out detriment to the commonwealth, a mark of 
honour should be conferred, public spirit would 
never be extinguished. In short, were every 
one convinced, that rewards would accompany 
whatever was done to promote the public goocl, 
this would be a great impulse to discover some- 
thing valuable. But the more men have at 
heart the general welfare, the more will be 

♦ The Carthaginians, Cicero's second oration against 
Rullus. 

t A contract between the King of Spain and other 
powers for introducing negro-slaves into the Spanish 
colonies. 

I Xenophon, in the Conversation between Hiero and 
Siuionides. 



124 



HAM ANN. 



devised and undertaken for its sake." This 
rich passage exiiausts almost all I could say, 
or could wish to say. My readers will there- 
fore be content with the gleaning only of a few 
remarks. 

Our merchants should above all be stimulated 
by these consi<lerations, to make their calling, 
not merely a gainful trade, but a respected 
rank. I retnember to have read, that in Guinea, 
the merchant is the nobleman, and tliat he 
pursues trade by virtue of his dignity, and 
royal privileges. On his elevation to that rank, 
,f the king forbids the waves to injure the new 
nobleman, or merchant. This monarch doubt- 
less prizes his merchants highly, because from 
thein comes his greatness, and wonders per- 
haps that our kings grant nobility only to 
soldiers and courtiers, or even drive a trade 
with it, and sell it for ready money. 

The nobility of the merchant must not be 
confounded uilh military nobility. The pre- 
rogatives of the latter are founded on the cir- 
cumstances of the times when it arose. Na- 
tions plundered one another, remained nowhere 
at home, lived like robbers, or had to defend 
themselves against robbers. Kings believed 
they could immortalize themselves only by 
conquests. These required blood and noble 
blood. The military order had consequently 
the highest rank, and whoever distinguished 
himself in this, was ennobled. The preten- 
sions of these heroes were allowed to descend 
to their children, that, inflamed by the deeds 
of their ancestors, they might make it their 
glory, like them, to die. This was an artifice, 
to transiidt a certain spirit to the childreji, and 
to elevate the military class, which at that time 
was the only privileged one. This being the 
origin and the purpose of their nobility, those 
are the genuine knights, who, born in the 
counting -rooms of acquisitiveness instead of 
the tent, are trained to be voluptuaries and 
covvar<lly prodigals. They miglit make use of 
their weapons, like the discarded patron of 
Venice.* 

Our times are no longer warlike and the 
deeds of the most renowned heroes, 

" From Macedonia's madman to the Swede," 

will appear to us soon like the adventures of 
Don Quixote. 'I'he nation, which distinguished 
itself by the sword to the last, has become 
•nuch more honournble and mighty through the 
plough. Men no longer desolate other lauds by 
conquests, but conquer their own by trade. If 
V, ar is still carried on, it is as a defence against 
jealous rivals, or to establish the balance of 
power. We prepare, not now for triumphs, 
but to enjoy peace j and the time is perhaps 

* St. Theodore, whoso statue is in St. Mark's place, 
noldiiiK a shield in the right hand, and a lance in the 
left. The Veuiiiaiis, instead of this martial snint, have 
taken St. Mark for their patron since his hones were 
hroufiht to the city, by their merchants. — Imelot de la 
Houssage. 



near, when the peasant and citizen will en- 
noble their class. 

The merchant has thus, as it were, taken the 
place of the .soldier. Does not his rank, conse- 
quently, deserve to be elevated by like respect, 
an<l like means? The profession of arms has 
become great through the nobility. Commerce 
must become great through merchants, that is, 
such merchants, as do not think it necessary to 
gain honour by purchased privileges rnerely, 
but place their dignity in the prosperity of 
trade, and hold those gains unworthy, which 
would poison its sources. To devastate, to de- 
stroy, to become rich, this 1.° .he only thing, in 
which the military spirit ol die nobility shows 
itself in the mercantile profession. 

The rewards, marks of honour, and privileges 
of the merchant must give him in the eyes 
of his countrymen a visible distinction, that 
continually admonishes him to uphold the flou- 
rishing prosperity of the country, which the 
soldier must devastate against his own will, 
with the same courage, ambition, and elevation 
of mind. 

Thanks be to the age in which we live ! our 
meichants need as little to be cheats, as our 
nobility ignoPamuses. If there are yet among 
Christians, persons, whose whole soul is made 
up of avarice, who aim to enrich themselves by 
usury and deceit, they must not be ennobled. 
Besides, what avail them those certificates of 
liberality, for which ancestors are assigned them, 
but to make them exhibit a ridiculous resem- 
blance to that species of mouse whose wings 
render his rank among anijiials ambiguous? 

I come to the morals of the mercantile class, 
on which depends the pursuit, as well as the 
prosperity of trade. Good faith, honesty, love 
of the commonwealth, must be here the moving 
springs, like diligence in manufactures, work- 
shops, and agricidture; — double objects of equal 
elevation, which claim all the care and thought 
of the government, because from their union 
springs the goo<l of the whole nation. 

If the merchants were regarded as mediators 
between the difl^erent members of the State,* 
with how much right would their avocations 
become more public and solemn ! The com- 
mon weal, as it were, compensates them. On 
its preservation depend their rank and occu- 
pation. It must therefore take more interest 
in their condition; btit on the other hand, the 
merchant should be more mindful of the obliga- 
tions they are under to the public, and the con- 
sideration they owe it on this account. 

Public credit is the soul of trade; it rests on 
the confidence, which individual citizens ac- 
quire tlirough honourable dealing. This sum 
of the private credit of numerous citizens of the 
same place, taken together, is a deposit, which 
shouhl be sacred to all the members of the com 
muiiity, because it involves in itself the imme- 
diate interest of each member, to support ac- 



* Hume's Essays. 



HAM ANN. 



125 



tording to his means, the credit of the rest, and 
to protect it from all adulteration and diminution. 
Whoever brines the public faith under suspicion, 
deserves severer punishment than the man who 
robs the public cotfer entrusted to him. 

Readiness to pay is a result of the moral cha- 
racter of the debtor, which spealis well to the 
creditor for his wisdom and honesty. This 
readiness furnishes not only the best security 
for the gold committed to strange hands, but 
serves as a pledge against possible misfortunes. 
The virtue of a merchant should thus bear the 
same relation to his good name, as the ware to 
the coin. 

But cluefly the merchant presupposes the up- 
right citizen, because the welfare of trade must 
be often in opposition to his own private advan- 
tage. To maintain the former, demands there- 
fore sacrifices from the disinterestedness and 
self-denial of the latter. Mere rapacity renders 
the merchant sharp-sighted to tlie greatness of 
the advantage, without his picturing to himself 
the consequences to his fellow-citizens, and to 
commerce. He swallows down each bit, and 
considers neither the wants of the future nor 
the bones with which he will be choked. The 
present and the certain prevent his discerning 
a greater good, which might compel an expendi- 
ture of time, or which he mu.st share with others. 
Thus he disregards for the sake of his own ad- 
vantage, not only the public revenue, but even 
the interests of his own posterity. The stream 
may fail, the harbour be destroyed — nothing but 
his own loss is of importance in his eyes, and 
the profits of a year will be preferred, without a 
scruple of conscience, to ihe gain of a century. 

Plato* describes both the riches and the po- 
verty of the artisan as the ruin of his profes- 
sion. "Is lie rich,'' says he, "think you he will 
be anxious about his work? No, he and his 
art will be ruined by indolence and neglect. 
Is he needy, how can he procure suitable im- 
plements? He is clumsy, and leaves behind 
him, in his children and apprentices only bun- 
glers." Let us be assured, that the merchant's 
love of gain is far more detrimental to the im- 
provement of trade. And does not experience 
teach us that the very vices, whereby property 
has been or can be acquired, at the same time 
destroy its value? The conriting-room is a school 
of deceit and avarice; what wonder? when the 
household is a temjile of disorder and waste! 
The exchange is ashamed of these freebooters, 
and the city of their memory. Trade execrates 
their oppressions, and the public their profession. 

The merchant, on the other hand, who loves 
liis country, its present and future welfare, 
plants trees that may give shade to his posterity. 
He abhors as a theft all gain which is contrary 
to the general good of commerce. He seeks by 
wise undertakings, to attract to the country new 
branches of trade. He supports and upholds 
Ihe old, which, if they do not immediately bring 

* Republic. B. IV. 



him fruit a hundred fold, yet employ the hands 
of his fellow-citizens, and with the ruin of which, 
numerous other lateral branches would be de- 
stroyed. This merchant is no phantom. I 
myself know merchants who have greatness 
of soul enough to make the expansion of trade, 
and not private gain, their ultimate object, who 
think not only of its arithmetic, but also of its 
morals and its utility. Holland should bore 
through her dams, if she had not merchants, 
who out of love to her soil, can employ their 
millions in a trade which now yields little, or 
is indeed the occasion of loss, like the whale- 
fishery. The merchant is therefore capable of 
great sentiments. To encourage them is worth 
the pains. 

The green cap, the broken bench formerly 
terrified the cheat. Wherein does he now find 
his security, but in the defence, which he durst 
not stoop to himself, but which is offered him, 
and in the ruin of better citizens. Hope and 
compassion, which are left him, inspire bold- 
ness, while the final disgrace renders fear and 
repentance inactive. 

An ancient nation is spoken of,* where the 
taste for beauty cost lovers dear. From their 
contributions a bridal treasure was collected for 
those daughters of the land whom nature had 
refused to furnish with recommendations. How 
near does not this come to the use, made at pre- 
sent, of the virtue of an honourable man? 

If a city contains not more than one upright 
citizen, it is on his account the laws were made, 
and on his account the magistracy instituted. 
Not to accommodate those offenders, who are 
studious only to infringe and corrupt justice, are 
the laws entrusted to you, fathers of the city! 
but to support this honest man, that he may 
not be wearied out, terrified, or impeded, that 
unhindered, he may do all the good his patriotic 
soul devises and his magnanimous heart sug- 
gests for the benefit of the commonwealth. 
Then will his zeal, in gratitude for your support, 
find fresh nutriment, and his example become 
the pattern and inheritance of liis house. 

Let us argue from single individuals to whole 
families. They are the elements of civil soci 
ety ; consequently, their social influence is m- 
disputably greater than men seem to recognise. 
The welfare of the commimity is bound up with 
the virtues and vices, the flourishing and decay of 
certain families. A single family has often been 
sufficient to corrupt the morals of a whole State, 
to impress its own form on the mass, or to fix 
it there; to bring certain principles and customs, 
on which business depends, into favour or coii 
tempt. Mahomet was first the jjrophet of his 
own family, and afterwards of a great people. 
Ought not the cares of the magistracy to extend 
to the fostering of some families, and the de- 
pression of others ? 

If it is justifiable policy, in opening the view 
of a building, that adorns a certain part of the 

* Herodotus, I. 96. 
11* 



126 



HAMANN. 



city, to remove a few miserable hovels, if it is 
a duty to transfer to tlie mouth of the stream 
such trades as taint the purity of its waters, 
and to remove them from the place where it 
enters their walls, there is a far more urgent 
call on the magistracy, to protect families whose 
integrity is exposed to the vexations of envy, 
and the rage of wickedness, to uphold them as 
the keystone of tlie laws, and on the other hand, to 
watch those whose views spread secret poison 
among their fellow-citizens. 

The family mania, whose mere name excites 
suspicions of an infectious disease, is in our days 
greater than ever. The selfishness, which unites 
whole families in extorting from the community 
the same assistance that relations are obliged 
to lend each other, has extended a detrimental 
indulgence to the children of great families, to 
whom men, in spite of stupidity and worthless- 
ness, hardly venture to refuse preferences and 
offices any longer, and who, through the base- 
ness of their intercessors and patrons, are some- 
times placed in a position to justify themselves 
again, by the choice of others. Hence those 
conspiracies to put down merit, the rewards of 
which they seek to marry with their like, in case 
of need to disarm the laws, or give their ex- 
pounders cunning. Hence those nurseries of 
old customs, to whose service certain houses are 
more devoted, than the corporations at Ephesns 
to their Diana. To this prevailing evil there 
could not be a more forcible check, than through 
the family spirit itself whose application as 
much to the public good generally, as to com- 
merce in particular, I would here recommend. 

The family spirit, of which I speak, deserves 
at least more attention, than the author of the 
Fable of the Bees claims for a certain portion 
of ignorance, which he holds must be main- 
tained, in every well-constituted community. 
This spirit consists in a remarkable strength of 
certain natural gifts or propensities, which 
tiirough the impression of domestic example, 
and the consequent training, becomes hereditary 
and is transmitted. I premise here particularly 
a certain amount of social tendencies, and the 
seeds of citizen-like virtues, (for why should not 
these be capable of imitation and degeneracy, 
like other tendencies and dispositions?) an 
amount which would enable us to forget our 
private good in the public approbation and wel- 
fare, to prefer the honour of the order, to which 
we devote ourselves, and its social advantages, 
above self-preservation and individual advan- 
tage. 

It is this family spirit which has built cities, 
and through which they subsist. It was doubtless 
most active when their foundations were laid 
and the walks first marked out. None of those 
small communities thought of anything else but 
the city; even when his own house began to 
occupy him, the thoughts of the individual were 
far from being directed from the public works to 
his own building, but this latter was always sub- 
ordinate to the former. The city was completed, 



yet was still a subject of discourse ; each was still 
occupied in the work undertaken ; one still inquir- 
ed of another, what was to be supplied and added 1 
Children an<l children's children carried out and 
improved the plan which the first founder had 
devised. The more distant the times, the more 
obscure was the tradition of the value, the na- 
ture and the circumstances of an inheritance, 
which had cost many generations, and for the 
rent of which the care and management should 
he undertaken by us. The peril of capital in 
hands, which have not earned it, is great. The 
zeal, the blessings, the wishes, wherewith the 
first founders of our dwelling-places bequeath 
them to their latest possessors in spite of their 
ingratitude, kindles yet perhaps some sparks in 
the souls of a few families, who make known 
and reveal to us the spirit of the first benefac- 
tors. It is these patriots to whose families 
every city should oflTer the tight and honour 
of representing those by whom it was built and 
founded. 

If there are besides, families which have in- 
herited from their ancestors the true principles 
of trade, and a genuine love of it, these are the 
lifeguardsmen, from whose services commerce 
receives warmth and splendour. They are to 
be regarded as the dam, which gives security to 
its course, as the lighthouse, by which the wan- 
dering mariner directs his path, and at whose 
sight the stranger rejoices. Such families should 
not be allowed to go to decay, but rather be 
encouraged, distinguished, preferred, so that the 
spirit which animates them may be immortal ; 
for with them trade rises and falls, and under 
its ruins they must be buried. 

These thoughts have not entered into my 
mind by mere accident. They are founded in 
some degree on a stray paper, which I had 
partly in view, and of which in part this seems 
to be written in continuation. The author 
would not be injured by a pmblicity to which 
every tiling that is found, ia exposed. For the 
rest, I am as little inclined to gratify the curiosity 
of readers by an account of the accident, which 
threw this paper into my hands, as to trouble 
myself about their conjectures. My view in the 
communication of this fragment will be in part 
justified by its perusal. 

* 4: % 4: 4: ^ « 

" This family from the grandfather down- 
ward, has closely interwoven its own conse- 
quence with the good of the commimity. The 
grandfather died and left behind, by will, to 
his numerous heirs, some hundred thousands, 
which for the extension of commerce, and to 
draw the Polish merchandise to Miza, he had 
lent to the Poles, according to the wishes of 
their kings. The war ruined this scheme. The 
son received nothing but the debts of his father, 
and carried on likewise an extensive trade. 
This man did every thing, although the result 
was unfortunate. How much would he not 
have undertaken in better circumstances! In 
his civil offices he concerned himself, merely, 



HAMANN. 



IQ-* 



fn' the improvement of general commerce, and 
his views were far from being limited to his 
own especial benefit. The former, and not the 
latter, he regarded as the inheritance of his 
family. Careless in his domestic economy, he 
v/as the more zealous to frame for. the good 
of the city new plans and institutions, which 
are yet in existence. He always appealed to the 
old laws, and was urgent to be judged thereby. 
The word public he uttered with reverence. 
He loved the Pole, in spite of all his folly and 
levity, because lie furnished commodities for 
trade, and hated the Englishman, so respectable 
as he is otherwise, because he employed his 
sountrymen as beasts of burden, as carriers to 
his customers. He sighed over the existing 
decay ; and zeal for the public good at last 
destroyed him. He lived like a Roman with 
his great deeds, eating roots, and he was proud 
to be a citizen. He was called obstinate, but 
none presumed to perpetrate any baseness be- 
fore his eyes. Whoever knows men, under- 
stands their language. An obstinate man means 
a man, who can be brought to no conclusion 
without reflection, who does not lay aside and 
alter the plan, by which he wishes to proceed, 
according to the fancy of every one, but con- 
tinues true to the precepts of sound reason and 
conscience, and is far above the judgments of 
complaisant, frivolous people. The children of 
this citizen inherited the spirit and the principles 
of their father, which perhaps are no longer 
suitable to our times. Love for the public good 
is their passion; it gives them penetration and 
courage, whereby they are an oifence to those, 



who ride in gilt coaches, and adorn themselves 
with the spoils of trade. They resist the seduc- 
tions of strangers, who come to us as to savages, 
to carry on our commerce. If this family wish 
to assert the principles of their father, against 
their competitors, they are compelled to resolve 
on their own ruin. Their plans were well laid, 
and aimed likewise at the extension of the 
commerce of Poland and Curland, to Holland 
and France, for which a good friend sacrificed 
himself Nevertheless, they failed through rivals, 
with whom all methods are good, whereby they 
can cut rushes for their own roofs, through the 
dishonesty of agents, corrupted by the impunity, 
— as things go now, — of acting against the laws, 
and the shallow ambition of making a fortune 
without a good name. Men admire Marius, 
sitting on the ruins of Carthage, the greatest of 
commercial cities, and amidst its fallen heaps 
raising himself above the vicissitudes of his 
own destiny. I have not yet forgotten the words 
of a dying son of this house, with which he con- 
soled his brother, by whom he was honoured 
as a second father. They merit to be preserved, 
" Who knows, my brodier, whether the ruin of 
a house like ours may not conduce to general 
progress? Men will thereby come to the know- 
ledge, how much is due to honourable citizens, 
and be warned, not to be so hard with others.' 
This man felt himself stronger perhaps in cold 
blood, than Glover in the midst of his inspira- 
tion, when he conceived the noble sentiment, 
with which his hero devoted himself and his 
handful, exclaiming, "Freedom and my coun 
try!" 



CHEISTOPH MARTIN WIELAND. 



Born 1733. Died 1813. 



WiELAND was a native of Suabia. His 
father, a Lutheran divine, who, at the birth of 
this son, resided in Oberholzheim, removed soon 
after to Biberach, where Wieland spent his 
childish years. 

His early education was superintended by 
his father in person. At the age of seven he 
read Latin. At twelve he gave indications of 
his poetic genius in German and Latin verse. 
At fourteen he was put to school at Klosterber- 
gen, near Magdeburg, where he remained two 
years, and then continued his studies under 
private instruction at Erfurt. In 1750, he en- 
tered the University of Tiibingen as a student 
of law, but devoted himself chiefly to literary 
pursuits. Thence he sent the first cantos of 
an epic poem to Bodmer at Zurich, who was 
so much struck with this juvenile performance, 
that he invited the young poet to reside with 
him. He remained in Switzerland eight years, 
writing and publishing several minor works. 
At the end of this period he returned to Bibe- 
rach, where he was made a member of the 
Council, and appointed Director of Chancery, 
and where he married, in 1765. In 1769, he 
was elected Professor of Philosophy at Erfurt, 
an office which he retained but three years, and 
then accepted an invitation from the Duchess 
Amalia, of Weimar, to superintend the educa- 
tion of her sons. Wieland had already become 
distinguished as an author. His Aijrathon, his 
Musitrion, his Don Silvio de Rnsalva, had 
placed him at the head of the national litera- 
ture of that day. His translation of Shakspeare, 
the first in the German language, had also 
been published some time before. With the 
leisure of his new office and the security of a 
pension for life, he now devoted himself with 
increased zeal to literary pursuits. Amidst his 
numerous engagements and a constant series 
of publications, original and translated, prose 
and verse, he undertook the German Mercury, 
a monthly periodical, which he edited during 
the rest of his life. In 1798, he purchased with 
the proceeds of his literary labors an estate at 
Osinansstadt, near Weimar, where he intended 
to pass the remainder of his days; but, after 



the death of his wife, at the solicitation of the 
Duchess, he returned to Weimar, and there 
resided until his death, which occurred January 
20th, 1813. 

In Wieland we notice first his singular fer- 
tility. The industry of the man is amazing, 
and enlarges our idea of the capabilities of a 
human life. His translations from Shakspeare, 
Horace, Lucian, Cicero, would alone be suffi- 
cient to establish his reputation for literary 
diligence. When we add to these some fifty 
volumes of original productions, and consider, 
moreover, how mucii of his time was spent in 
editorial labors and official duties, we have an 
example of productiveness which has few pa- 
rallels in the history of letters, and which 
places Wieland on a level, in this particular, 
with Lope de Vega, Voltaire, and Sir Walter 
Scott. 

As to quality, it must be confessed that Wie- 
land's excellence lies rather in the manner than 
in the matter. He is more graceful than ener- 
getic, more agreeable than impressive, more 
sportive than profound. ' Words that burn' are 
not found on his page, nor thoughts that make 
one close the book and ponder, and rise up in- 
tellectually new-born from the reading. But 
then he has charms of manner that lure the 
reader on and hold him fast. And when we 
speak of him as not profound, we speak in rela- 
tion to German standards. Unlike the gener- 
ality of his countrymen, he occupied himself 
with the show of things rather than their sub- 
stance ; with phenomena rather than laws. He 
loved to discourse pleasantly, rather than to 
investigate conscientiously, or to settle accu- 
rately. What Goethe says of him is very cha- 
racteristic ; that " in all he did he cared less 
for a firm footing than for a clever debate." 

As a poet, he has been accused of licentious- 
ness. Voluptuousness would be a more proper 
designation. His poetry is certainly liable to 
objection on that score. At the same time, it 
is free from coarseness and from all that — in 
his own phrase — ' offends against the Graces.' 
It should be observed too, that Wieland's life 
was pure and exemplary in all respects. Whe- 
el 28) 



WIELAND. 



129 



ther prose or poetry, his writings are distin- 
guished by elegance of style and perfect finish. 
He elaborated all that he wrote with great 
care, and declared that he spent one-sixth part 
of his time in copying. 

His intellectual life is divided into two periods 
distinctly marked in his works. He began his 
literary career a zealous enthusiast. His first 
productions are strongly tinctured with reli- 
gion, and treat, in part, of religious subjects. 
He afterward became an Epicurean (theoreti- 
cally) in morals; a materialist, or common- 
sense man, in philosophy ; placed experience 
above faith ; believed in no ideas but those 
wliich are derived through the senses; and good- 
humoredly satirized all lofty aspiration, and 
everything which leaned, as he thought, to 
spiritual excess. It would be difficult to find 
another author whose earlier and later produc- 
tions exhibit such a contrast as those of Wie- 
land. 

Bouterwek, in his " History of German Po- 
etry and Eloquence," thus characterizes him : 
"The names of Klopstock and Wieland denote 
opposite extremes. While Klopstock carried 
the poetry of the supersensual, in its most so- 
lemn earnestness, to excess, Wieland laugh- 
ingly turned his back on supersensual things, 
and declared war against all extravagance. 
His poetry was not meant to be trifling, any 
more than his character was trifling ; but he 
would have it subordinate to a philosophy which 
he had learned, in the French school, to regard 
as the only sound one. In this way, Wieland 
became a philosophical poet of sensualism, such 
as Germany had never seen before. But far 
from advocating a sensualism which degrades 
man to a beast, he wished to establish that 
form of virtue which, according to the doctrine 
of Shaftesbury, he held to be of the same 
origin with the love of the beautiful, as the 
only true one, in opposition to all which seemed 
to him extravagant and fantastic. Conscious 
of the strictest purity in his own morals, he 
never doubted that a poet, especially in the 
capacity of satirist, might, without scruple, 
paint the most voluptuous charms of sense as 
seductively as was consistent with the laws of 
beauty. Only what offended the Graces — ac- 
cording to his principles — was to be strictly 
excluded from the domain of poetry. This 
Esthetic morality which Wieland introduced 
into German literature, operated beneficially as 



a counterpoise to the false rigorism by which 
criticism in Germany was oppressed." " Satire 
has never contended with such polished wea- 
pons, as in Wieland's* writings, against that 
enthusiasm to which no modern nation is so 
much inclined as the German." "With all his 
faults and defects, and whatever a one-sided 
criticism may bring forward to his disparage- 
ment, he is still one of the great poets who are 
the pride of German literature." " He had 
imbibed so much of the taste of the French, 
along with their philosophy, that he bore the 
name of the ' German Voltaire' in Germany 
and out of Germany. But in all that Voltaire 
has written there is not a trace to be found of 
Wieland's ideal of moral loveliness. Among 
Italian poets, Ariosto is the one whose humor 
agrees best with Wieland's manner." " His 
Muse rather smiled than laughed." "This 
inextinguishable cheerfulness, united with such 
knowledge of mankind, such refinement of wit 
and taste, such fulness of imagination, with so 
soft, so luxurious, so apparently careless, and 
yet so cultivated a style, is found in no other 
poet." 

The following extract from Goethe's Eulogy 
of Wieland is taken from Mrs. Austin's "Cha- 
racteristics of Goethe." 

"The effect of Wieland's writings on the 
public was uninterrupted and lasting. He edu- 
cated his age, and gave a decided impulse to 
the taste and to the judgment of his contempo- 
raries. And whence proceeded this great in- 
fluence which he exercised over the Germans'! 
It was the consequence of the vigor and frank- 
ness of his character. Man and author were, 
in him, completely blended; his poetry was 
life, his life poetry. Whether in verse or in 
prose, he never concealed what was his predo- 
minant feeling at the moment, nor what was 
his general frame of mind. From the fertility 
of his mind flowed the fertility of his pen. I 
use the word pen not as a rhetorical phrase ; it 
has here a peculiar appropriateness; and if 
pious reverence ever hallowed the quill with 
which an author wrote his works, assuredly 
that which Wieland used was worthy of this 
distinction. He wrote everything with his own 
hand, and very beautifully ; at once freely and 
carefully. He kept what he had written ever 
before his eyes, examined, altered, improved 
it; unweariedly cast and recast; nay, had the 
patience, repeatedly, to transcribe whole works 
of considerable extent. And this gave his pro- 



130 



WIELAND. 



ductions the delicacy, the elegance, clearness, 
the natural grace which cannot he attained by 
mere drudgery, but by cheerful, genial atten- 
tion to a work already completed. 

" Our friend was capable of the highest en- 
thusiasm, and, in youth, gave himself completely 
up to it. Those glad bright regions of the 
golden time, that paradise of innocence, he 
dwelt in longer than others. His natal roof, 
hallowed by the presence of his father, a learn- 
ed pastor ; the ancient cloister of Bergen be- 
neath its shade of antique times on the shores 
of the Elbe, where his pious teacher lived in 
patriarchal simplicity; the still monastic Tubin- 
gen; the simple dwellings of Switzerland, sur- 
rounded by gushing brooks, washed by clear 
lakes hemmed in by rocks ; in all he found his 
Delphi ; in all, the groves and thickets in which, 
even when arrived at manhood, he still revelled. 
Amid such scenes he felt the mighty attraction 
of the movements which the manly innocence 
of the Greeks has bequeathed to us. He lived 
in the lofty presence of Cyrus, Araspes and 
Panthea. He felt the Platonic spirit move 
within him. ***** But precisely 
because he had the good fortune to linger so 
long in these higher regions, because he was 
permitted so long to regard all that he thought, 
felt, imagined and dreamed, as the most abso- 
lute reality, was the fruit, which he was at last 
compelled to pluck from the tree of knowledge, 
the more bitter to him. Who may escape the 
conflict with the outer world ] Our friend, like 
the rest, was drawn into the strife ; reluctantly 
he submitted to be contradicted by life and ex- 
perience. And as, after long struggling, he 
could not succeed in combining these noble 
images with the ordinary world, these high 



intents with the necessities of the day, he deter- 
mined to accept the actual, as necessary ; and 
declared what had hitherto appeared to him 
truth, to be fantastic visions. » » » • 
He declared war on all that cannot be shown 
to exist in reality ; first on Platonic love ; then 
on all dogmatizing philosophy, especially the 
two extremes — the Stoic and the Pythago- 
rG3.n ^ *F "F * *!* T* 

"It has been acutely remarked by some 
foreigners that German authors take less heed 
of the public than those of other nations ; and 
that, therefore, it is easy to discern, in their 
writings, the man educating himself, the man 
who wants to owe something to himself; and 
consequently, to read his character. This was 
peculiarly true of Wieland, and it would be the 
more interesting to follow his writings and his 
life with this view, since suspicions have been 
cast upon his character, drawn from these very 
writings. Many men still misunderstand him, 
because they imagine the many-sided must be 
indifferent, the mobile must be infirm and in- 
consistent. They do not reflect that character 
regards the practical alone. Only in what a 
man does, in what he continues to do and per- 
sists in doing, can he show character ; and in 
this sense, there never was a firmer, more con- 
sistent man than Wieland. When he gave 
himself up to the variety of his sensations, to 
the mobility of his thoughts, and permitted no 
single impression to obtain dominion over him, 
he showed, by that very process, the firmness 
and certainty of his mind. He loved to play 
with his conceptions, but never — I take all his 
contempraries to witness — never with his 
opinions. And thus he won and retained- numer- 
ous friends." 



PHILOSOPHY CONSIDERED AS THE ART 
OF LIFE AND HEALING ART OF THE 
SOUL. 

Men had lived, and perhaps lived many 
thousand years, before one of them hit upon the 
tlioiight that life could be an art; and, in all 
probability, every other ait, from the arts of 
Tubalcain to tlie art of catching flies, — which 
Shah Baham, a peritus in arte, assures us, is not 
so easy a matter as some people imagine, — had 
long been invented, wlien, at last, the sagacious 
Greeks, along with other fine arts and sciences, 
invented also this famous art of life, called Phi- 
]psophy : or, if they did not altogether invent it, 



first reduced it to the form of art, and carried it 
to a high degree of refinement. 

By far the greater part of the children of men 
never dreamed that there was such an art. 
People lived without knowing how they did it, 
very much as Mons. Jourdain in Moliere's 
"Citizen Gentleman,'' had talked prose all his 
life, or as we all draw breath, digest, perform 
various motions, grow and thrive, without one 
in a thousand knowing or desiring to know by 
what mechanical laws or by what combination 
of causes all these things are done. And in 
this thick fog of ignorance innumerable nations 
in Asia, Africa, America, and the Islands of the 
South Sea, white and olive, yellow-black and 



WIELAND. 



131 



pitch-black, bearded and unbearded, circum- 
cised and uncircumcised, tattooed and untat- 
tooed, with and without rings through the nose, 
from the giants in Patagonia to the dwarfs on 
Hudson's Bay, &c. &c., live to this hour. And 
not only so, but even of tlie greatest portion of 
the inhabitants of our enlightened Europe, it 
may be maintained with truth, that they know 
as little about said art of life and that they care 
as little about it as the careless people of Ota- 
heite or the half-frozen inhabitants of Terra del 
Fuego, who are scarcely more than sea-calves. 

Ihe strangest part of this business is, that all 
these people, who, according to a very moderate 
calculation, constitute nearly the whole human 
race, — like their ancestors as far back as Adam 
and Eve, who also knew nothing of the afore- 
said fine art, — notwithstanding their ignorance, 
live away as courageously as if they were 
finished masters of it. Nay more, the greater 
part of these bunglers get on so well, as it re- 
spects all the most essential and important func- 
tions of human life, that scarcely one of the 
liired masters and professors of the art can hold 
a candle to them. 

Cicero says somewhere, " Nature is the best 
guide of life," which probably means, that Na- 
ture shows us best how we may help ourselves 
through this earthly state. Further, he says, 
"No one can fail who suffers himself to be 
guided by her." On tliis guidance, therefore, it 
would seem that men must always have relied. 
This same Nature, they thought, which teaches 
us to breathe, eat, drink, to move hands and 
feet, &c., teaches us also how to use our senses, 
our memory, our understanding, and all our 
other powers; teaches us what is fitting and 
what is not fitting. It requires only so much 
attention as every object enforces of itself, to see 
and feel whether it is friendly or hostile. Our 
nose and our tongue teach us, without any other 
instructiorj, what fruits, herbs and roots, &c., are 
good to eat. At a piinch, hunger teaches the 
same, without much circumstance. Nature has 
provided for all pressing necessities. Either 
the thing which we require exists already ; — 
and then we have whatever is needed to seize 
and enjoy it ; — or, at least, the materials of it ex- 
ist; and then we have just so much understand- 
ing, power, and natural dexterity in our mem- 
bers, as is necessary to form those materials to 
our use and purpose. What does not succeed 
the first time, will succeed the tenth or the 
twentieth. If two arms are not sufficient, four, 
six, eight will accomplish it. Every new trial 
adds something to our knowledge of the thing, 
and to our faculty. We learn by errors and 
failures, and become masters by practice, with- 
out perceiving how it lias come about. And 
this same Nature which carries us so far, always 
conceals from us what lies too far to be reached 
from the place assigned us ; makes us happy 
by ignorance, and has given us this beneficent 
6luggibhness,of which the world-reformers make 
80 much complaint, for no other purpose but 



that the everlasting desire to improve our con- 
dition may not cause us to fall from the frying- 
pan into the fire, and that we may not fare like 
that man who, in order to feel better, physicked 
himself to death, and had for his epitaph: Per 
star meglio sto qui. 

So Nature teaches all men how to live, who 
have not run away from the instruction and 
discipline of the good Mother. And, in all 
this, as you perceive, there is no art. It is Na- 
ture herself, bodily. The celebrated Quam 
multis non ego! of the ancient philosopher is the 
native philosophy of all Samoyedes, Laplanders, 
Esquimaux, &c. — a philosophy in which the 
New Hollanders or the New Walesmen, as the 
honest people must suffer themselves to be 
called, according to the arbitrary pleasure of 
the gentlemen with the firelocks, who have the 
command, appear to have made the greatest 
progress. Let no man come and say that such 
a life is an oyster-life. Call it, if you please, a 
continual childhood; but honour Nature who 
conducts these her children, by the shortest 
route, to the beate vivere at which we enlight- 
ened people seldom or never arrive, merely on 
account of the great multitude of roads which 
lead to it. 

The wise Theophrastus (not Paracelsus, but 
the scholar and successor of the divine Aristotle) 
lived ninety years, and when he came to die, 
he complained against Nature because "she has 
given man so little time to live, and because an 
honest fellow must die at tlie very moment 
when he has begun to comprehend a little the 
art of life." When did ever a New Hollander 
make so unreasonable a complainf? When he 
has come to be an hundred years old (which is 
nothing rare with themj, he has lived just one 
hundred years, and rises satisfied from the ban- 
quet of Nature; — and truly, a banquet that, in 
which Nature furnishes such poor entertain- 
ment, that the strictest candidate for canoniza- 
tion need not scruple to share it. 

But — let me remark in passing — I am very 
far from believing that Theophrastus made the 
foolish speech which is imputed to him. The 
people around his bed did not exactly under- 
stand what he said, and then some schoolmaster 
came along, a good while after, and tried to 
make sense of it, and made nonsense. I would 
bet that Theophrastus meant neither more nor 
less than this ; that he regretted he had not been 
wise enough, sixty or seventy years before, to see 
that he might have saved himself the trouble 
of studying, as art and science, what Nature 
would have taught him far better and inore 
surely, without study, if he had had the sim- 
plicity of mind to heed her instruction. It was 
not innocent Nature but his own folly that he 
blamed, as most men are wont to do in his case ; 
although they might as well let it alone; foi 
what is the use of repentance when one has no 
time left for amendment? 

Notwithstanding all that has been said, it is 
by no means my intention to dispute the value, 



132 



W I E L A N D. 



whatever it may be, of the above-mentioned art 

of life. 

It has somewhere been said, that art is, at 
bottom, nothing else than Nature herself, who, 
by means of man, as her most perfect instru- 
ment, unfolds and brings to perfection under a 
ditferent name, what before slie had merely 
sketched, as it were, or hastily begun. If art 
is that, and so far as it is that, it is worthy of 
all honour. 

Yes, even then, when it merely comes in aid 
of enfeebled or corrupted Nature, it is, like the 
art of medicine, sometimes beneficial, although 
often just as uncertain and just as ineffectual as 
that. When Nature no longer suffices for the 
support of life, then, to be sure, art must patch 
and prop, and plaster and doctor as well as it 
can. Or, to speak more correctly, even in this 
case, the good, universal Mother lias provided 
for her darling child. She has remedies in her 
store-chamber for every wound or disease of 
the outward or the inward man, so that art 
has nothing to do but to observe and to exhibit. 
The simpler then the remedies are, the less they 
have been tampered with, the better for the 
sufferer. And still, the successful issue must be 
expected from Nature alone. If she has strength 
enough left to raise lierself up by tlie liand of 
art, well and good; — if not, then, for art too, 
nothing remains, but to let the sick man die and 
to embalm the dead. Art cannot supply the 
power of life where it is wanting. 

It was long ago that philosophy, on account 
of this resemblance to the healing art, received 
the name of •'■ medicine for the soul." And 
truly, this qualification seems better adapted to 
secure its acceptance, tlian when it claims to 
teach us to live according to the rules of art. 
For who that has the free use of his natural 
powers does not feel that he can live without 
it? On the other hand, when it presents itself 
only as physician, then the well know that they 
have nothiiig to do with it. 

The Indians in the islands of the South sea, 
it seems, are unacquainted with medicines. 
With them slight wounds or illnesses heal them- 
selves; and of great ones they die — as we do. 
And as they are so fortunate as to have no idea 
of a soul in and of itself, as a man in their ap- 
prehension is always a man, made out of one 
piece, so they know nothing of particular dis- 
eases of the soul ; or if ever they experience 
an atiack of this kind, the hunger-cure, for 
which they have but too frequent opportunity, 
is generally the most effectual remedy. 

On the other hand, when the progress of 
refinement in a nation has gone so far, that 
body and soul, instead of being as they should 
be one person, are treated as two powers with 
different interests, each having its separate 
establishment, like naughty husbands and wives; 
what is more natural than, that bad conse- 
quences should result from such an ill-starred 
union ? Man is then no longer that noble being 
in whom all is sense and power and soul, 



in whom, so to speak, everything corporeal is 
spiritual, and everything spiritual, corporeal. 
He is an unnatural. Centaur-like compound of 
animal and spirit, in which the one lives at the 
others expense, in which the animal creates 
for itself necessities, the spirit passions, projects 
and aims of which the natural man knows 
nothing. Each oppresses, drags, worries and 
exhausts the other as much as it can, and a 
vast number of bodily and mental diseases are 
the ultimate fruit of this putting asunder what 
God had joined together. In such cases, when 
the evil has reached its height, that " medical 
art for the soul"' may offer its aid with some 
degree of success; and either relieve the patient 
by purging, bleeding and clysters; or, at least, 
by ?neans of agreeable opiates, procure for him 
a delusive rest. 

But this art has never yet been found able to 
effect a radical cure; and we may boldly main- 
tain, that when a nation has once fallen into 
the hands of the two Goddesses of Healing, it is 
irrecoverably lost; not because one must needs 
burst with their medicines, but because when- 
ever they are resorted to, the evil has already 
proceeded too far to admit of entire restoration. 

I said Philosophy might the rather maintain 
its place, as nealing art for the soul, because 
then, the well would know that they had no- 
thing to do with it. But as all arts love to 
make themselves more important than they 
are, so this art too has found means to impose 
itself upon all the world as indispensable. Like 
its sister art, which ministers to the body, it 
will not allow any one to be entirely well. Ac- 
cording to its doctrine and its ideal of health, 
the whole earth is one great lazar-house of 
bodily and mental diseases, and there is no 
man well enough to dispense with its prescrip- 
tions. Happily, this assumption is not conceded 
to either of these arts. Nature knows nothing 
of ideals. As long as a man feels himself 
sound, he has a right to think himself sound ; 
and, without troubling himself whetlier others 
object to that view or not, he lives straight for- 
ward as a healthy man; and (like Voltaire's 
Zadig) reads not a letter of all the learned dis- 
sertations, in which gentlemen undertake to 
prove it impossible that he should be well. 
There are cases, it is true, in which a sick man 
is only the more dangerously sick, because un- 
conscious of his malady. But these cases are 
rare, and cannot deprive the great mass of those 
who feel well, of their traditional right to that 
feeling. 



LETTER TO A YOUNG POET. 

Well then, my young friend ! No man can 
escape his destiny ; and if you too are destined 
to the laurel-wreath and the dark cell of the 
divine Tasso, or to the spital and the postumous 
fame of the Portuguese Camoens, can I, weak 
mortal, prevent it? 



WIELAND. 



ir.3 



I have heard your confession and have pon- 
dered well the whole case. Your inward voca- 
tion seems indeed to admit of no doubt. 

Such tension of the inner and the outer 
senses! All so sharply tuned that the softest 
breath of Nature causes the entire organ of the 
soul to vibrate harmoniously like an .iEoliari 
harp; and every sensation gives back, with 
heightened beauty and the purest accord, like 
a perfect echo, the melody of the object, and 
grows ever sweeter as it gradually dies away. 
A memory in which nothing is lost, but every- 
thing imperceptibly coalesces into that fine, 
plastic, half spiritual substance from which 
Fancy breathes forth its own new and magical 
creations. 

An imagination which, by an involuntary, 
inward impulse, idealizes each individual ob- 
ject, clothes everything abstract in determinate 
forms, to the simple sign supplies impercepti- 
bly ever the thing itself or an image resembling 
it, in short, which embodies all that is spiritual 
and purifies and ennobles into spirituality all 
that is material. 

A warm and tender soul which kindles with 
every breath, all nerve, sensation and sym- 
pathy; which cati imagine nothing dead, no- 
thing unfeeling in Nature, but is ever ready to 
impart its own excess of life, feeling, passion to 
all things about it, ever with the greatest ease 
and rapidity to metamorphose others into itself 
and itself into others. 

A passionate love for the wonderful, the 
beautiful and the sublime in the material and 
lh,-> jiioral world, a love avowed from earliest 
youth anil never false to itself. 

A hoort which beats high at every noble deed 
and revolts with horror from every bad, coward- 
ly and unfeeling one. 

Add to all this, together with the most clieer- 
ful temperament and quick circulation, an in- 
born propensity to reflect, to search within, to 
pursue your own thoughts, to rove in a world 
of ideas, and, together with the most social dis- 
position and the most delicate vivacity of sym- 
pathetic inclinations, an ever predominant love 
for solitude, for the silence of the forest, for 
all that promotes the quiet of the senses, all 
that disengages the soul I'rom the burdens by 
which it is hampered in its free and peculiar 
flight, or that rescues it from the distractions 
which interrupt its inward occupations. 

To be sure, if all this does not constitute 
native endowment for a poet to be, if it is not 
suliicient to assure a youth that — to speak with 
the philosopher among the poets — it is the 
Muses themselves that have sent him this 
beautiful phrenzy, which he can no more shake 
otf than Virgil s Cumaean Sibyl can shake off 
the [irophelic god — * 

Be easy, my friend ! I recognise and reve- 
rence the indelible character by which Nature 

• Wifland, i)f nil wrilirs, iriiJiilgi:s most frequintly in 
tb-il vnry coiivt'nicnt figure callf^d aposiopcsis by the 
rlietiiriciaiiii, of whitli the abuve is a i^peciiiien. Tr. 



has consecrated you to the priesthood of the 
Muses, and since, according to the divine Plato, 
it is only necessary that the Muses' fury, in 
order to produce the finest effects, should seize 
a tender and uncoloured soul, I must be greatly 
deceived or you will do honour to the theory 
of our philosopher. 

I do not consider it exactly an infallible 
diagnostic of a genuine inward vocation, — ne- 
vertheless it is generally at least the case, — that 
an almost irresistible impulse to the art in 
which they are destined to excel manifests 
itself in future virtuosi, in poets, painters, &c., 
from their earliest youth. And this sign of 
election, my young friend, is also found in 
you. 

You say, " As far as I can look back into the 
first years of my life, I cannot remember the 
time when I did not make verses. The inborn 
sensibility of my ear to the music of fine verse, 
the rapture which dissolved me, when, even 
in my boyhood, I declaimed certain passages 
in which the versification was particularly 
good from ancient or modern poets, especially 
from the jEneid and Horace s Odes, the often 
repetition and dwelling on those lines, on 
which, even when I read them to myself, I 
know not what internal, spiritual ear feasted, 
as on the dying echo of the song of the Muses, 
— all this, with me, preceded instruction. And 
so it came to pass, that I maile all kinds of 
verses and observed a number of rules before 
I had the least idea — in the way of learned 
knowledge — of prosody, rhythm, poetic num- 
bers, imitative harmony, and the like. Nothing 
could equal my love for the poets, except the 
ease with which I understood them, the inter- 
est they inspired in me, and the almost ecstatic 
rapture in which 1 continued for hours in the 
enjoyment of some particularly beautiful pas- 
sage, and the visions which it conjured up in 
my soul. With Virgil, Haller, Milton, and the 
five first cantos of Klopstock, I forgot eating 
and drinking, play, sleep, myself and the 
world. I experienced, indeed, from my early 
youth, the same opposition from those who had 
charge of my education, — whether as a natural 
or a hired duty, — wliich Ovid, Ariosto, Tasso, 
and so many other celebrated poets had to con- 
tend with. But strong nature prevailed, and 
the Genius, or the evil Spirit, as you would 
rather call it, that possessed me, was not to 
be expelled, neither by fair means nor foul. 
Even when I made no verses, my guardians, 
the enemies of the Muse, gained nothing. All 
the ideas and knowledges with which they 
endeavoured to stuff iny mind, either fell 
through or were transmuted into poetic matter. 
Whatever I studied, physics, metaphysics, 
ethics, history, politics, — everything, with me, 
was converted into epopee and drama. And 
while the teacher, with the air of a mystagogue, 
was explaining the monadology of Leibnitz, 
my imagination was developing the plan of a 
poein on the origin of Venus from the foam ol 
12 



the sea ; or I was making the statue of Pyg- 
malion start into life before my eyes, or I was 
explaining to myself how the great principle 
of the Orphic cosmogony, Love, like the lyre 
of Amphion, could unite the elements into a 
world by its attractive energy." 

What can I answer, my dear friend, to facts 
of such potency? I seem to hear my own his- 
tory. All this, word by word, was my own 
case, five and thirty years ago : and if, not- 
withstanding these plain indications of Nature, 
I would still keep you on this side of the dan- 
gerous Rubicon, I have at least quite other rea- 
sons for so doing than distrust of your talent 
and ability. 

The very first flowers of the fertile soil 
which has fallen to your lot, notwithstanding 
you think so modestly of them yourself, would 
be sufficient to inspire me with the fairest hopes 
respecting you, and the rather, precisely be- 
cause, with so decided a natural vocation and 
so much preparatory discipline and years of 
study, you are still so little satisfied with your 
own productions, and are almost as much 
offended by praise which you cannot persuade 
yourself that you have merited, as others would 
be by the most merited censure. I know no 
more decided criterion of true talent, than this 
difficulty of satisfying one's self, this unwearied 
striving after something higher, this unaffected 
contempt of present attainments, compared 
with what one trusts hereafter to be, and this 
delicate feeling of the beauties in the works of 
other men, and of the deficiencies in one's own ; 
qualities which I have so often had occasion 
to notice in you, and which are so seldom 
found in poets, young or old. 

Wonder at me as much as you please, my 
dear friend ! But it is precisely my well- 
grounded conviction that Mother Nature really 
designed to make a poet of you, and that, if 
you should give yourself up to your inclination, 
you would become wholly a poet and therefore 
lost for all other modes of life, — it is even this 
that makes, me tremble for you. Unhappily, 
the good mother has thought of everything else 
except the one important point, that she ousht 
to have brought over Plutus to her plan. How 
could she forget that poets, no more than birds 
of Paradise, can live on flower-odours; and 
that the very man who has all the elementary 
Spirits at his command, and whom it costs but 
a stroke of the pen to summon the most splen- 
did magic banquet-table out of the ground, is, 
of all men in the world, the nearest to starva- 
tion, unless by chance some compassionate 
Genius (who, however, is not to be counted on) 
has provided better for him than Nature, the 
Muses, or he himself. 

It would be a very diff'erent aff'air, indeed, 
if you intended to follow the wise counsel 
which Herr Klinggut gives his friend, to pursue 
poetry, which he deems to be in every point 
of view a very uncertain business, only as a 
collateral employment by the side of some 



lucrative office or other honest subsistence ir 
the learned or civil line. * * 

• » • ' • • 

But the verses, which in that case, are sent 
"to Dessau to the press," are of a quality con- 
forming; and it must be confessed that the 
poets of narrower income, have, generally, 
very different views in regard to this matter. 
He who makes verses only then when he 
knows of nothing else in God's world to do, 
will be just such a kind of poet as one, who 
attends to painting only in lost hours, will be a 
Raff"ael. 

What I now say is between ourselves. The 
Graces forbid that I should deprive the gentle- 
men, who know how to spend their waste 
hours to so good advantage, of their pastime! 
Suffice it that you, my young friend, happily 
or unhappily for yourself, are not of this cat- 
egory. Your love for the Muse is a serious 
passion which must decide the fate of your 
life. 

You will be everywhere — in all the events, 
relations, employments, business, sorrows and 
joys of your earthly pilgrimage — a poet. You 
will always think, feel, speak, act as only a 
poet thinks, feels, speaks, acts ; and though, for 
ten years in succession, you should not have 
made a single verse, yet all that you had seen, 
heard, tried, done, and suffered in those ten 
years, would either have been poetry or have 
been turned to poetry; and at the end of this^ 
to the Muses, apparently, lost — period of your 
life, there would lie more germs and embryos 
of poems of all kinds in your soul, than you 
would have time to unfold, though you should 
reach the age of Bodmer or of Nestor. 

But alas! this is not all. You will also com- 
mit follies which only a poet can be guilty of. 
With the most fortunate head and the best of 
hearts, you will stand, every moment, in a false 
light before the world; you will always hear 
complaints and reproaches, and still you will 
always injure only yourself ; and whatever pains 
you may take to persuade men that you are a 
harmless, innocent, well-meaning being, men 
will stare at you as a strange animal, will not 
know what to make of your way of thinking 
and being, and will entertain, every minute, 
serious doubts of your understanding and your 
heart. 

All this, my beloved, diff'uses very unpleasant 
consequences over the life of the individual 
who is endowed with ihis admired and des- 
pised, envied and liated, flattered and almost 
always badly rewarded talent, which gives hiin 
such singular advantages over ordinary men, — 
so much power over their imagination, and such 
inexhaustible means of helping himself, — in his 
own. 

The golden xo^f p«ooa{, the unnoticed, narrow 
path through life — the eternal wish of all souls 
which are made for the quiet enjoyment of Na- 
ture and for living with their own ideas — will 
become for you a tree of Tantalus. A hateful 



W I E L A N D. 



3 35 



celebrity, which you will find it impossible to 
escape, will poison your rest and inundate you 
with an inexhaustible flood of thousand - fold, 
worthless, but all the more troublesome, petty 
annoyances, which will not even leave you the 
poor illusion of being at least rewarded with 
love for the pleasure you have conferred upon 
the world. 

A love for the Muses, like yours, generally 
terminates like the passion of an inexperienced 
pair of turtle-dove souls, who, in the place of all 
other dower, bring to each other an unbounded 
treasure of fondness, and have forgotten all pro- 
vision for the necessities of life in the sweet 
delusion that love will always be meat and 
drink to them. The enchanted lover by the 
side of his beloved, is perfectly assured that a 
straw-built shed, is a fairy palace ; that, with her 
beaming eyes, he needs no light; in her warm 
bosom, no firing; in short, that, in the ocean of 
bliss in which his intoxicated soul is rioting, 
like the gods in heaven, he needs nothing ex- 
cept — that the sweet illusion should last forever. 
But this is the very point in which he has reck- 
oned without his host. 

It has not been considered that hours, days, 
months, perhaps whole years will come, in 
which fancy, deprived of its magic power, will 
deliver us up to the disagreeable feeling of the 
present; and that, with its deceitful nature, it 
magnifies tlie evils which oppress us as much, 
as, in liappy hours, it enhances what is pleasant 
in our condition. It has not been taken into the 
account, that even if it were according to na- 
ture, never to wake of ourselves from the beau- 
tif(d Endymion-dream in which we have been 
Japped, yet the sober people about us would 
certainly not fail, either from good will or ill 
will to shake and shove us until tliey had played 
us the evil trick which the Corinthian experi- 
enced at the hands of hie relatives, who drugged 
him with hellebore until all the splendi<l trage- 
dies disappeared, which he thought he saw on 
the empty boards. 

This circumstance alone would be sufficient 
to justify all my solicitude regarding the way 
of life on which you are about to enter. The 
true poet, however rare — according to the afore- 
said Herr Klinggut — the louisd'or and the 
sugarplums may be with him, yet finds himself 
in about the same situation in which a possessor 
of the philosopher's stone might be. Both per- 
haps — the one with his talisman in his head 
and heart, the other with his powder in his 
pocket — iriight be happy, if it were only possible 
to conceal their secret I'rom all the world. But 
since this is out of the question, they may both 
be sure that means enow will be found to make 
them pay dearly for the advantage which they 
possess over other honest people. 

When, my friend, I indulge these fears for 
your future happiness, the louisd'or and the 
sugarplums are the least that I am thinking of 
The latter, with all things thereto pertaining, 
{onfectionary and wines, — all, except the order- 



insignia, you will come to taste, it may be, but 
too often ; and so much money as a poet needs 
who lays no claims to a villa like Boileau's and 
Pope's, or even to a Ferney, may also be found. 
Horace dined as often as he pleased, at the ta- 
bles of the great at Rome, resided as often and 
as long as he pleased, in the splendid house of 
Maecenas or in his elegant villa at Tibur, had 
his own little Sabinum, — knew scarcely any 
other plague than those which he had to endure 
from authors, from the Public, from his own 
celebrity, through the misfortune of being the 
first lyric poet of Rome; and yet he was often 
so hard pressed with all this, that, notwithstand- 
ing his love for the Muses, he swore he would 
be hanged if he had not rather sleep away his 
time than to make verses. 

Read what this amiable poet — a refined man 
of the world, as well as a man of genius and 
distinguished acquirements — says in many parts 
of his letters, especially in the nineteenth, to 
Moscenas, and in the second of the second book, 
to Julius Florus, of the discomforts and plagues 
of the poet's calling. And read also, if you 
please, the notes of his newest commentator,* 
who appears to have understood the author 
more clearly and intimately than many others, 
for the simple reason, that he had had very 
much the same experience himself. Since we 
must once for all fulfil our destiny, it is well 
at least to know what we have to expect, and 
how much or how little we can build on those 
receipts which are considered the surest. 

Among all the beautiful visions which cheer 
and animate a young poet, when he enters on 
the long and painful career whose goal so few 
of the thousands that run in it ever reach, the 
most delightful perliaps is this: 'the hope that 
something more tlian applause, — the empty 
digito nionstrari et dicier hie est — that the love of 
the nation for which he labours, will be the 
prize of his unwearied efforts.' Do not, my 
friend, flatter yourself with so vain a hope. The 
highest on which you can count are moments 
of favour, brief effervescences occasioned by the 
pleasure which you have conferred upon us in 
these moments, and for which it is thought that 
you are abundantly recompensed by the conde- 
scension which permits itself to be entertained 
by you. From the moment that we perceive 
or imagine that you are striving for our appro- 
bation, we look upon you with the same eyes 
with which we regard all other pretenders to 
the character o{ virtuosi in the entertaining arts, 
and you stand, whether you like it or <iot, on 
the same level with jugplers, rope-dancets, and 
histrionic performers. All your exertions to at- 
tain a high degree of perfection we regard as 
simply your duty, and wo unto you, if you do 
not always surpass yourself, or ever hold your- 
self at liberty to sleep upon your laurels! 

You will not find this thought very encourag 
ing; but I have not yet told you the worst 

* Wieland here refers to himself. Tr. 



136 



WIELAND. 



Your relation to the Public, as poet, is much less 
advantaoeous than if you had the honour to be 
a ijreat Kadenzen-macher or the Parisian Grand- 
Diable. For these arts, every man possesses a 
standard of perfection, and can judge, with 
more or less correctness, how much is required 
to perform this or that miracle. But with the 
poetic art the contrary is the case. Among a 
thousand readers, scarcely one has a clear and 
definite idea of the difficulties and of the highest 
in art. Tlie readers or hearers know whether 
the poet interests them or makes them gape. 
But that is all. And, since a very indifferent 
and a very careless work may have something 
interesting as well as a masterpiece, you may 
expect that when your work has ceased to be 
the curiosity of the fair,* the first novel which 
is new, which has a little wit, here and there 
an astoni.-hment, a pathetic passage, or a slip- 
pery picture, will seize the attention of the read- 
ing world and displace your work though all 
the nine Muses had helped you produce it. Do 
not hope, by any strain of your faculties, by any 
ideal perfection for which you have striven 
with all the powers of your mind, to obtain 
what, according to your ideas of art, and with 
a full consciousness of what you have accoin- 
])lished, seems to you but simple justice. Tliat 
you will never obtain ; not because men intend 
to deny you justice, but because they have no 
conception of all that which it is necessary to 
know, in order to render it. 

When a poetical work, in addition to all other 
essential qualities of a good poem, is what Ho- 
race calls tolutn teres atque rolmidum, when, to- 
gether with the finest polish, it possesses the 
greatest ease, when the language is uniformly 
pure, the expression always adequate, the 
rhythm always music, when the rhyme always 
comes of itself in its proper place without be- 
ing foreseen, when tlie whole stands forth as 
if cast at one casting or blown with one breath, 
and nowhere shows a trace of labour or effort, 
it may be set down as certain that such a pro- 
duction has cost the poet, whatever his talent, 
infinite pains. That lies in the nature of the 
case ; and .^ince perhaps there is no European 
language in which it is more difficult to com- 
pose beautiful verses than in ours, the labour 
and the effort required to arrive at any degree 
of perfection in such a language must be pio- 
portionally greater. 

But do not fancy, if ever you should succeed 
in producing such a work, that the reader will 
give you the least credit for that which you 
have performed over and above what was re- 
c]uired. He would have been quite satisfied, 
as daily experience shows, with less. Nay, 
what is worst of all, this very ease, this smooth- 
ness, this roundness which has cost you so 
much, and which the occasional but rare con- 
noisseur acknowledges with becoming coolness, 



* New publications in Germany are generally brought 
lut at the semi-annual fair of Leipsic. Tr. 



will only injure your work with the great mass. 
"I suppose it does not cost you the least trouble 
to write such verses," is the compliment which 
will greet you on every side. And as men are 
accustomed to estimate a work in proportion to 
the apparent difficulty of producing it, so yours 
will incur a kind of contempt on account of that 
very thing on which you have most congratu- 
lated yourself. It will be read perhaps with 
more pleasure than many other works of the 
same season. But because men think that no 
thing is easier than for you to manufacture such 
things, you will scarcely have finished one be- 
fore people will expect of you another like it, 
as if you had done nothing as yet. And if you 
are so disobliging or lazy or unfruitful, as not 
to fulfil the expectation of your patrons with all 
speed, some new fabrication which contains 
something to laugh at or to weep at, will take 
the attention of the leisure world and the work 
on which your whole soul has impressed itself, 
the work of your love, of your niglit watches, 
the work for which you have summoned all your 
powers, on which you have expended all your 
talent, all your knowledge of the mysteries of 
art, will be confounded with the mushrooms 
wliich s[)ring up in a single night, will be thrown 
into a corner, and, in a short time, be as clean 
forgotten as if it had never been. 

All this, my friend, is something so natural, 
such an everyday affair, it has been from the 
same causes so universal in all nations, at least 
in certain periods, that it would be ridicidous 
to complain of it. True, it is not very pleasant 
to be surprised with experiences of this kind ; 
and, at the moment when this shall happen to 
you, you will be more than once tempted to 
envy the happiness of every honest Bosotiari 
who, with just that portion of hiunan sense 
which he brought with him, eats his bread in 
the sweat of his face, and, for want of the 
doubtful advantage of having ten thousand peo- 
ple whom he never saw mentioning his name 
and undertaking to pass judgment on him and 
his merits or demerits, is richly indemnifieil by 
the enjoyment of a life which glides unknown 
but peacefully down the stream of time. 

I should never have done if I were to reckon 
up to you all the varieties of vexation and dis- 
comfort which await you on the other side of 
the Aganippe, which is the perilous Rubicon for 
you. I doubt not that, as to many of them, I 
should tell you nothing but what you knew be- 
fore. But do not forget to take into the account 
the delicate sensibility and irritability of a poetic 
organization. A thousand things which will em- 
bitter your life are trifles in themselves consi- 
dered ; but for tlie nervous system, for the 
iiuagination, for the heart of a poet, they will 
be heavy sorrows. A single perverse or mali- 
cious criticism, one stupid look of a hearer at a 
passage which ought to have given him an 
electric shock, or the question : " What was 
your meaning in that passage?" at some deli 
cate stroke of irony, will render you insensible 



WIELAND. 



137 



I 



to the approbation of thousands ; and for tVie 
Bake of one such citation as you have seen of 
Bome quite virginal stanza of a favourite poem 
in a book where you certainly did not expect it, 
a citation or rather adulteration by some harm- 
less academic philosopher, who wished to honour 
the poet, you will wish that you could annihi- 
late your best work. 

I say nothing of the treatment you have to 
expect from others, brothers in art, connoisseurs, 
critics, reviewers, &c. You will, if I am not 
greatly deceived in you, arlopt Horace's method 
in regard lo all gentlemen of this description. 
Expect then also Horaces fate; that is, to be 
read with pleasure in secret, lo be deluged with 
praise to your face, and pidjlicly to be honoured 
on every Occasion with critical shrugging of the 
shoulders, or at best with silence. A common 
soldier who by mere dint of talent anil merit 
should rise to the ofhce of tield-marshal, would 
be a great rarity. But an author who, without 
belonging to a clique, without having made dis- 
ciples, without having let his reputation to the 
potentates of the Republic of Letters for the 
time being, witliout having adopted young au- 
thors in clientele, and so created for himself a 
sturdy band of followers who shall be always 
ready to attack with foot and fist all who may 
have incurred the disfavour of their patron: an 
author, I say, who. without all these aids, and, 
wliat must not be forgotten, without being pro- 
tected by the aegis of golden mediocrity, should 
arrive merely by his own merits at the quiet 
possession of an undisputed property in fame 
and authority with his contemporaries, would 
be a still greater rarity. Strange things some- 
times happen in this world, and some one may 
win the golden prize; but who can calculate 
that he shall be that one? 

On the whole, if an extended and decided 
fame, and the advantages connected therewith 
are the goal for which you run, yon may pre- 
pare yourself betimes to find every conceivable 
hindrance in your way, and at last perhaps to 
see people arrive there before you, who, instead 
of running in the prescribed patli, jump the 
barriers, cut across the field, and by a happy 
inqmilence appropriate the jirize which they 
never could have won in the ordinary course. 
"The race is not to the swift,' says Solomoji, 
"nor the battle to the strong, but time and 
chance happeueth to all.'' 

You know, my dear friend, how many reasons 
I have foi feeling the liveliest interest iu your 
a^I'f'.irs. I see you enteriiig on a path \^■llich 
probably will not lead you to the temiile of For- 
tujic; and yet I have not the heart to keep you 
back. I niyseif love the art, to which yon are 
al)0:it to devote yourself wiili such decided 
■{•iljMiiy, too well not to experience a kinil of 
inward rebuke when seeking to deter you from 
it. And how can 1 iielp foreseeing the answer 
with whiid.- you will beat to the grounil at 
once all that I can oppose to your resolution? 
Nor is it my design to deter you; I would otdy 



compel you, before you choose your part foi 
ever, to consider the dangers and discomforts 
of the path which seems to you so charming. 

In Horace's day, poetry chanced to be the 
way in which a kind of fortune could be made. 
He says it was necessity, which dares every- 
thing, that impelled him to make verses. 

Ibit eo quo vis, qui zonam perdidit. 

With us, I fear, it is just the reverse. The nar- 
row path across the Helicon is generally the 
direct road into the arms of the beggarly god- 
dess whom Horace wished to escape. Perhaps 
you may live to witness a happier ilay for the 
German Muses. Perhaps some other prince is 
destined to realize the glory which was despised 
by the great king,* who, after forty years laden 
with every other kind of fame, in which he had 
done nothing for our literature, and was en- 
tirely unacquainted with it, finally contented 
himself with the merit of publicly uiibraiding 
us with its barrenness and defects. Perhaps— 
but no ! — these hopeful perhapses are after all 
very uncertain, and in fact far more improba- 
ble than many now dream. Rather therefore 
picture to yourself the worst; and since, in any 
case, you have no great talent for the philosophy 
of Aristippus, and are not strongly disposed 
whatever the advantages to be gained by it, to 
expend much incense on the gods of this world, 
or on those who dispense their favours, exa- 
mii\e yourself carefully, whether in the lap of 
your beloved Muse you can be happy with a 
meal of potatoes and cold water? 

Anil if then, my friend, all things considered 
you are resolved to venture, promise me with 
hand and mouth (since I have told you before 
hand the worst that can happen) never in your 
life, however it may fare with you, to complain 
of the envy of your rivals and guild-brethren, 
of the inditference of the great, and the ingrati 
tude of the Public. 

Nothing is at once more unjust and more 
foolish than to whine because things are as they 
have always been, and because the world, in 
stead of revolving around our own dear little 
self, in its eternal on-rush takes us along with 
it, like imperceptible atoms, without being aware 
of it. 

Mankind around us, from the greatest to the 
least, have so much to do with themselves and 
their own necessities, so much with their owr 
plans, wants, J)as^ions and the momentary sug 
gestions of the good or evil Demon, which every 
one, will he or nill he, must bear on his shoul 
ders, that it is not to be wondered at, if they do 
not trouble themselves much about our affairs 
And yet, if you help a man in his need or cou 
fer a pleasure upon liim when, where, and as 
he desires, he will thank you for it sincerely at 
the moment. But how can we demand of him 
that he sliould thank us also for unasked and 
unavailing services, or that he shall feel ibliged 

* Frederic 11. Tr. 
12* 



138 



WIELAND. 



to us -when we have sung his ears full at the 
wrong time ? How can we demand that other 
men, amid the pressure of their business, cares, 
dissipations, entertainments, shall attach the 
same importance tliat we do to the art which 
we pursue, the objects with which our soul is 
filled, the work with which we are occupied 
and with which they perhaps do not know 
what in God's world to do. How can we 
reasonably demand that they should have as 
practised an ear for the music of our verses, 
that they should notice the finer beauties of a 
poetic picture as accurately or estimate them as 
highly as if they had made such matters a 
special study for many years? 

It lies in the nature of things that much in 
works of wit, of taste, of art, must be lost to the 
mere amateur. But the Public are not therefore 
unjust toward writers of distinguished merit nor 
without a feeling of the value of the master- 
pieces of the poetic art. See how well every 
day manufactures, sine pondere et arte, are re- 
ceived, where there is anything in them that 
can please. The reading world wishes to be 
entertained and amused in a great variety of 
ways, and it loves variety so much, that an 
author must be altogether insipid who does not 
succeed in attracting notice, and in being for a 
time at least distinguished among the daily in- 
creasing crowd of competitors. Even in the 
easiest and most artless kind, — that which has 
scarcely anything of poetry, except vividness of 
expression and rhyme — wit or humour or the 
felicitous ejaculation of a momentary feeling is 
enough to make an author beloved and esteemed 
by a nation. Let not the fault therefore be in 
yourself, my young friend. Deserve public ap- 
probalion, and it will not be denied you. Spread 
all your sails, and, not content with ordinary 
prizes, enrich our literature with works which, 
instead of entertaining for the moment oidy, 
shall possess themselves of the entire soul of 
the reader, bring all his organs of sensation into 
play, warm and enchant his imagination with 
an unbroken illusion, afford nourishment to his 
mind, and to his heart the sweet enjoyment of 
its best feelings, — its moral sense, its interest in 
others' joys and sorrows, its admiration of all 
that is beautiful and great in Humanity. And, 
de|)end upon it, the Public will feel all the gra- 
titude for such a work, which you can reason- 
ably desire. 

I add this clause, because it would be mad- 
ness to expect more of men than they can give. 
And by what right do authors alone demand 
from their nation more justice, more gratitude, 
more equality and constancy than any other 
man of merit — in whatever category he may be 
■—can expect from it? 

I have thought this little digression necessary, 
that you may not consider that, which I have 
now Slated merely as fact respecting the dis- 
ugreeable circumstances in the life of a poet, as 
a lamentation wrung from me by the feeling or 
I'le memory of my own experiences. In every 



conceivable mode of life and in all conceivable 
circumstances, the life of man is compassed 
about with manifold actual, imaginary, natural 
and self-made plagues ; and in the surprise of 
the moment, a very small pain may sometimes 
extort from us a loud cry. But who would be 
in despair at unavoidable, universal and there- 
fore very endurable ills? Quisque suos patimur 
manes. It needed no reference to my own case, 
in order to speak to you of universal experiences, 
common to all times and to all nations where 
literature has flourished. 

You, my friend, know me well enough to 
know that I am satisfied with iny lot in every 
point of view. From my youth up, I have loved 
art more than what is called fame and success; 
and always the unadulterated feeling of a few 
noble souls, the unexpected kind-hearted thanks 
of some brave, upright man, who could have no 
private purposes in praising me, have been 
more to me than the calm approbation of the 
connoisseur or the loud applause of the multi- 
tude; although, in a career of more than thirty 
years, these too have not been wanting. But I 
should arrogate to myself a merit to which I 
have no claim, were I to deny that, after 
spending the greater part of my life in the 
service of the Muses, I have done more for my- 
self than for others. It was the pure truth— 
and will probably remain true to the end of my 
days — that I said to my Muse, from the fulness 
of my heart, more than fifteen years ago, when 
living at the farthest extreme of South Germany, 
entirely secluded from our Parnassus and with 
out any literary connexions, 

If thou pleasest not, if world and connoisseur agree 

To disparage thy merit, 

Let thy consolation be, in this calamity, 

That with sweet pains thou hast conferred much joy on me. 

Thou art stili, O Muse ! the happiness of my life. 

And if no one listens to thee, thou singest to me alone. 

I am greatly mistaken if, in the course of 
your life, this sentiment does not become your 
sentiment also. And so, whichever way your 
fate may lead you, I have still this consolation 
always, that a fountain of happiness is spring- 
ing up within you, which can sweeten every 
care of life and double the enjoyment of its 
highest pleasures, and which, even when it 
begins to fail, will still have a few nectar-drops 
left for your solace, in the days in which we 
have no pleasure. 



ON THE RELATION OF THE AGREE 
ABLE AND THE BEAUTIFUL TO THE 
USEFUL. 

Balzac, whose " Letters," once so admired, 
would furnish an inexhaustible fund of anti- 
theses, concetti and other witticisms for epi- 
grammatists by pi-ofession, was often in the 
predicament of saying soinetliing very fiat when 
he imagined that he had said soinething \^^ry 
ingenious. Nevertheless, he sometimes mad? 



WIELAND. 



139 



a good hit, as one who spends his wliole life 
in chasing after thoughts necessarily must. 

In the following passage I am pleased with 
the concluding thought, notwithstanding its epi- 
grammatic turn, on account of the simplicity 
and luminous truth of the image in which it is 
clothed. "We must have books,'" he says, "for 
recreation and entertainment, as well as books 
for instruction and for business. The former 
are agreeable, the latter useful ; and the human 
mind requires both. The Canon-law and the 
codes of Justinian shall have due honour, and 
reign at the universities, but Homer and Virgil 
need not therefore be banished. We will cul- 
tivate the olive and the vine, but without era- 
dicating the myrtle and the rose." 

I have two remarks to make, however, re- 
specting this passage. In the first place, Balzac 
concedes too much to those pedants, who turn 
up their noses at the iavourites of the Muses 
and their works, when he reckons the Homers 
and the Virgils among the merely agreeable 
writers. Antiquity, more wise in this respect, 
thought differently ; and Horace maintains with 
good reason, that tliere is more practical phi- 
losophy to be learned from Homer than from 
Grantor and Chrysippus. 

In the next place, it seems to me on the 
whole to indicate ratlier a mercantile than a 
philosophical way of thinking, when people 
place the agreeable and the useful in opposition 
to each other, and look upon the former with a 
kind of contempt in comparison with the latter. 

Presuming that what we understand by the 
agreeable is something that violates neither 
law nor duty nor sound moral sentiment, I 
say that the useful, as opposed to the agreeable 
and the beautiful, is common to us witli the 
lowest brute; and that when we love and 
honour that v/hich is useful in this sense, we 
do only what the ox and the ass do likewise. 
The value of such utility depends on the greater 
or less degree of indispen^ableness which at- 
taches to it. So far therefore as a thing is 
necessary to the preservation of the human 
species and of civil society, so far it is good 
indeed, but not on that account excellent. Ac- 
cordingly, we desire the useful, not on its own 
account, but only on account of certain advan- 
tages which we derive from it. The beautiful 
on the other hand we love by virtue of an in- 
trinsic superiority of our nature over the merely 
animal. For man alone of all animals is 
endowed with a delicate feeling for order and 
beauty and grace. Hence, he is so much the 
more perfect, so much the more a man, the 
more extended and intense his love for the 
beautiful, and the greater the refinement and 
accuracy with which, by mere sensation, he 
can distinguish difierent degrees and kinds of 
beauty. And therefore, moreover, it is only 
the beautiful in art as well as in the mode of 
life and in morals, that distinguishes social, 
developed, refined man from savages and bar- 
barians. Nay, all the arts without exception, 



and the sciences too, owe their growth almost 
exclusively to this love for the beautiful and 
the perfect, inherent in man, and would still 
be infinitely removed from that degree of per- 
fection to whicli they have risen in Europe, if 
men had attempted to confine them within the 
narrow limits of the necessary and the useful, 
in the common acceptation of those words. 

Socrates did so, and if ever he was mistaken 
in anything, it was in this. Keppler and 
Newton would never have discovered the laws 
of the mundane system, — the noblest product 
of human thought, — if, in conformity with his 
precepts, they had confined geometry to mere 
mensuration, and astronomy to the mere neces- 
sities of travel by land and sea, and to the 
making of almanacs. 

Socrates exhorted painters and sculptors to 
combine the agreeable and the beautiful with 
the useful; just as he urged mimic dancers to 
ennoble the pleasure which their art was 
capable of yielding, and to entertain the heart 
together with the senses. According to the 
same principle, he behoved to admonish those 
labourers who occupy themselves with thiiigs 
essential, to combine the useful as far as pos 
sible with the beautiful. But to deny the name 
of beautiful lo everything that is not useful is 
to confound ideas. 

It is true. Nature herself has established a 
relation between the useful, and the beautiful 
and graceful. But these are not desirable be- 
cause they are useful, but because it is the 
nature of man to enjoy a pure satisfaction in 
the contemplation of them, a satisfaction 
altogether similar to that which we derive 
from the contemplation of moral excellence, 
and as much a want of rational beings as 
food, clothing, shelter, are wants of the animal 
man. 

I say of the animal man because they are 
common to him with all other, or at least, with 
most other animals. But neither these animal 
necessities, nor the power and the effort to 
satisfy them, constitute him a man. In pro- 
viding food, in building his nest, in choosing a 
mate, in training his young, in battling with 
others who would deprive him of his food, or 
take possession of his dwelling, — in all this he 
acts, materially considered, as an animal. It 
is the way and manner in which man — unless 
reduced to the condition of a brute, and kept 
therein by cogent, external circumstances — per- 
forms these animal functions, that distinguishes 
him from and raises him above all other orders 
of animals, and characterizes his humanity. 
For this animal that calls itself man, and this 
otdy, possesses an inborn feeling for beauty and 
order, possesses a heart disposed to communi- 
cation of itself, to sympathy with sorrow and 
with joy, and to an ijitiniie diversity of agree- 
able and beautiful sentiments. Only this ani- 
mal possesses a strong propensity to imi'ate 
and to create, and labours unceasingly to im 
prove what he has invented and made. 



140 



WIELAND. 



All these qualities together distinguish liim 
essentially from other animals, make him their 
lord and master, subject land and sea to his 
dominion, and lead Irim from step to step so 
far, that, by the almost unlimited extension of 
his artistic powers, lie is enabled to transform 
Nature herself, and, from the materials which 
she furnishes, to create for himself a new 
world, more perfectly adapted to liis particular 
ends. 

The first thing, in which man displays this 
his superiority, is the refinement and ennobling 
of all those wants, impulses and functions 
which he has in common with other animals. 
The time which he requires for this purpose is 
not to be considered. Enough that he finally 
arrives at that point where lie is no longer 
necessitated to beg his sustenance from mere 
chance, and where the greater certainty of a 
richer and better support allows him leisure to 
lliinU also of perfecting the other necessities of 
life. He invents one art after another, and 
each increases the security or the pleasure of 
his existence. And so he ascends continually 
from the indispensable to the convenient, from 
the convenient to the beautiful. 

'i'lie natural society into which he is born, 
combined with the necessity of securing him- 
self against the injurious consequences of a too 
great extension of the human species, leads him 
at last to civil society and civilized modes of life. 

But here too, no sooner has he provided for 
the necessary, lor the means of internal and 
external security, than we find him occupied, 
in thousand-fold ways, with beautifying this 
liis new condition. Imperceptibly small vil- 
lages are transformed into large cities, the 
abodes of the arts and of commerce, ami points 
of union for the ditferent nations of the earth. 
Man spreads himself ever farther in all senses 
and in all directions. Navigation and tratfic 
multiply relations and pursuits by multiplying 
the wants and the goods of life. Wealth and 
luxmy refine every art whose mother was want 
anil necessity; leisure, ambition, and public 
encouragement promote the growth of the 
sciences, which, by the light they diffuse over 
all the objects of human life, become rich 
sources of new advantages and enjoyments. 

But in the same proportion in which man 
adorns and improves his external condition, 
his feeling for the morally beaulilul is also un- 
foldetl. He renounces the rude and inhuman 
uses of the savage state, he learns to abhor all 
violent conduct toward his kind, and accustoms 
himself to laws of justice and propriety. T'he 
nianilbld relations of the social condition un- 
fold and determine the ideas of politeness and 
etiquette, and the desire of pleasing others and 
of gaining their esteem teaches him to restrain 
ills passions, to conceal his faults, to turn his 
best side out, and to perform whatsoever he 
does, in a decent manner. In a word, his 
manners improve with the rest of his con- 
dition 



Through all these gradations he raises him 
self at last to the highest perfection of mind, 
possible in this present life, to the great idea 
of the whole of which he is a part, to the ideai 
of the fair and good, to wisdom and virtue, and 
to the worship of the inscrutable, original 
Power of Nature, the universal Father of 
Spirits, to know whose laws and to do them is 
his greatestprivilege,his first duty and hispurest 
pleasure. 

All this we denominate, with one word, the 
progress of Humanity. And now let every one 
answer for himself the question, whether man 
would have made this progress if that inborn 
feeling of the beautiful an<i the graceful had re- 
mained inactive in him? Take from him this, 
and all the results of his dormant power, all the 
monuments of his greatness, all the riches of 
Nature and Art of which he has possessed him- 
self, disappear; he relapses into the brutal con- 
dition of the inhabitants of New Holland; and, 
with him. Nature herself relapses into savage 
and formless chaos. 

What are ail these steps by which man gra- 
dually approaches perfection but successive 
embellishments, embellishments of his neces- 
sities, his mode of living, his habitation, his 
apjiarel, his implements, embellisliments of his 
mind and heart, his sentiments and passions, 
his language, manners, customs, pleasures'? 

What a distance from the earliest hovel to a 
building of Palladio! From the canoe of a Ca- 
rib to a ship of the line! From the three blocks 
by which, in the remotest ages, the Boeotians 
represented the three Graces, to the Graces of 
Praxiteles! From a village of Hottentots or 
wild Indians to a city like London! From the 
ornaments of a woman of New Zealand to the 
state-dress of a sultana! From the dialect of 
the natives of Otaheite to the languages of Ho- 
mer, of Virgil, Tasso, Milton and Voltaire! 

What innumerable gradations of embellish- 
ment must men and human things have passed 
through before they could overcome this almost 
measureless interval! 

The ilesire to beautify and refine, and the 
dissatisfaction With the lower grade as soon as 
a higher was known, are the true, the only, and 
the very simjile forces by which man has been 
urged onward to the point at which we find 
him. All nations which liave perfected them- 
selves are a proof of this proposition. And if 
there are any to be found which, without any 
special impediment, physical or moral, have 
always remained stationary in the same degrea 
of imperfection, or which betray an entire want 
of those motives to progress, which have been 
mentioned, we should have reason to regard 
them rather as a particular species of man-like 
animals tlian as actual men of our own race 
and kind. 

If now, as no one will deny, everything 
which tends to perfect man and his condition 
deserves the name of useful, where is there any 
ground for this hateful antithesis whicli certain 



WIELAND. 



141 



Ostrosjoihs still make between the useful and 
the beautiful? Probably these people have 
never thought what tlie consequences would 
be, if a nation, which has reached a high degree 
of refinement, should banish or let starve its 
musicians, its actors, its poets, its painters, and 
other artists; in a word, all who minister in the 
kingdom of the Muses and the Graces; — or, 
what would be quite as bad, if it should lose its 
taste in all these arts. 

The loss of things which are incomparably 
Jess important would make a great gap in its 
prosperity. If one should reckon up to you 
■what the consequences would be to the French, 
if only the two little articles, fans and snuff- 
boxes, were stricken out from the number of 
European necessities, and if yo'i were to con- 
sider that these are but two little twigs of the 
countless branches of that industry elicited by 
t'le love for playthings and trinkets, wherewith 
all the large children in trowsers and long coats 
around us are affected, and if you were to cal- 
culate how useful to the world even these use- 
less things are. and were to reflect that the de- 
partments of the beautiful and the useful are 
not exclusive departments, but are so manifold ly 
intertwined with each other that it is impossible 
ever to define with certainty and precision their 
respective boundaries, in short, that there exists 
such an intimate relation between them that 
almost all that is useful is or may be made beau- 
tiful, and all that is beautiful useful; — if you 
were to consider all this, you would — 

But there are some people who, like the Ab- 
derites, grow no wiser by considering. He 
whose head has, once for all, a crook in it, will 
never, in his life, be brought to see things as 
they are seen by all the rest of the world who 
look straight before them. 

And then there is still another class of incor- 
rigible people who have always been avowed 
contemners of the beautiful, not because their 
head is placed awry, but because they call no- 
tliiug useful that does not fill their purse. Now, 
the trade of a sycophant, a quack, a dealer in 
charms, a clipper of ilucats, a pimp, a Tartuffe, 
is certainly not beautiful ; it is therefore per- 
fectly natural that this gentry should manifest 
on every occasion a jjrofound contempt for that 
kind of beauty which yields them notliing. Be- 
sides, to how many a blockhead is stupidity 
Useful! How many would lose their whole 
authority, if those among whom they had won 
or stolen it, had taste enough to di.-tinguisli the 
genuine from the false, the beautiful from the 
ugly! Such persons, to be sure, have weighty, 
Jjeisonal reasons to be enemies of wit and taste. 
'I'liey are in the condition of the honest fellow 
who had married his homely daughter to a blind 
man, and was unwilling that his son-in law 
should be couched. 

But the rest of us, who can only gain by being 
made wiser, — what Abderites we should be if 
we suffered ourselves to be persuaded by Uiese 
gentlemen who are interested in the matter, to 



become blind or to remain blind, in order that 
the ugliness of their daughters may not come to 
light ! 



FROM THE DIALOGUES OF THE GODS.* 

DIALOGUE VI. 
Mercury brings to the banqueting Gods the informa- 
tion that they have been f(irnially deposed in the Roninn 
Senate — under Hip government of the Emperor Thpodo- 
sius the great — Jupiter discusses this event with ureal 
moderation, and reveals to the Gods consoling glimpses 
of the Future. 

SPEAKERS. 
JPPITEII, jnNO, APOLLO, MINERVA, VENUS, BAC- 
CHUS, VESTA, CERES, VICTORIA, aUlUINUS, 
SERAPIS, MOMUS AND.MEIICURT. 

Jupiter and Jwiio, with the other inhabitants of 
Olympus, are sitting in an open hall of the Olym- 
pian palace, at sundry large tables. Ganymede 
and Antinous are pouring out nectar for the gods, 
Hebe, for the goddesses. The Muses perform table 
music, the Graces and the Hours dance pantomimic 
dances ; and Jocus, from time to time, provokes the 
blessed gods to loud laughter, by his caricatures 
and his lazzi. In the moment of the greatest mer- 
riment. Mercury comes flying in, in great haste. 

Jupiter. You are late, my son ; how you look ! 
What news do you bring us from below there f 

Venus, to Bacchus. He seems to have a heavy 
load of it; how troubled he looks! 

Mercury. The newest that I bring with me is 
not very well calculated to enhance the mirth 
which, I see, reigns here at this moment. 

Jupiter. At least your looks are not, Mercury. 
What can have happened so bad as to disturb 
even the gods in their enjoyment? 

Quirinus. Has an earthquake 'destroyed the 
Capitol ? 

Mercury. That would be a trifling affair. 

Ceres. Has a violent eruption of JEtna. de- 
vastated my beautiful Sicily ? 

Bacchus. Or has an untimely frost blighted 
the Campanian vines? 

Mercury. Trifles! Trifles! 

Jupiier. Well! Come! Out with your tale 
of wo ! 

Mercury. It is nothing more than — (He hesi- 
tates.) 

Jupiter. Do not make me impatient, Hermes! 
What is 'nothing more than?' 

Mercury. NoUiing, Jupiter, but that at Rome 
on a motion made in the Senate by the Inipe- 
rator in his own person, and carried by an 
overwhelming majority, you have been form- 
ally DEPOSED. 

* These dialogues were suggested to Wieland by his 
translations of Lucian. Some of them are mere jeux 
d'esprit in imitation of that author on whom he had ex- 
pended three years' labour. Some have a deeper meaning. 
The author says of them, " 1 do not wish for readers who 
need to he informed that they have a very Berious puf 
pose." Tr. 



142 



WIELAND. 



(TAe gods all rise from the table in great com- 
motion, Jupiter, who alone remains sealed, laugh- 
ing.) Is tliat ain That is what I have been 
expecting this long while. 

All the gods at once. Jupiter deposed ! Is it 
possible? Jupiter! 

Juno. You talk like a crazy man, Mercury. — 
.ffisculapins, do feel of his pulse! 

The gods. Jupiter deposed! 

Mercury. As I said, formally and solemnly, by 
a great majority of voices, declared to be a man 
of straw — what do I say? a man of straw is 
something; — less than a man of straw, a no- 
thing: robbed of his temples, his priests, his 
dignity as supreme protector of the Roman em- 
pire ! 

Hercules. That is mad news, Mercury! — But, 
as true as I am Hercules, (flourishing his club) 
they shall not have done me that for nothing! 

Jupiler. Be quiet, Hercules ! — So then, Jupiter 
Optimus Maximus, Capitolinus, Feretriiis, Sta- 
ler, Lapis, &c. &c., has finished his part? 

Mercury. Your statue is thrown down, and 
they are now busily employed in demolishing 
your temple. The same tragedy is going on in 
all the provinces and corners of the Roman em- 
pire. Everywhere legions of goat-bearded, semi- 
human beings, with torches and crowbars, ham- 
mers, mattocks and axes are falling to work and 
destroying with fanatic rage the venerable ob- 
jects of the arch-old popular faith. 

Serapis. Wo is me ! What will be the fate of 
my splendid temple at Alexandria and my su- 
perb colossal image! If the desert of Thebais 
spews out but one half of its sacred Satyrs 
against them, it is a gone case. 

Momus. O ! you have nothing to fear, Serapis. 
Who would dare to touch your image, when it 
is an understood thing at Alexan<lria, that, on 
the least outrage committed against it by any 
sacrilegious hand, heaven and earth will tumble 
into ruins and Nature sink back into ancient 
chaos? 

Quirinus. Only, one cannot always depend on 
that sort of tradition, my good Serapis! It might 
happen to you as it did to the massive-gold 
statue of the goddess Anaitis at Zela, with re- 
gard to which, it was also believed, that the 
first one who offered any violence to it, would 
be struck dead on the spot. 

Serapis. And what happened to that statue? 

Quirinus. When the Triumvir, Antony, had 
routed Pharnaces at Zela, the city, together widi 
the temple of Anaiiis, was plundered ; and no 
one could tell what had become of the massive- 
gold goddess Soine years after, it happened 
that Augustus was spending the night at Bono- 
nia with one of Antony's veterans. The Impe- 
rator was splendidly entertained, and, at table, 
the conversation happening to turn on the battle 
of Zela and the plunder of the temple of Anai- 
tis, he asked his host, as an eyewitness, whether 
it was true that the first one who laid hand on 
ner fell suddenly dead to the ground? — You 
behold that rash man before you, said the 



veteran, and you are actually supping from a 
leg of the goddess. I had the good fortune to 
seize upon her first. Anaitis is a very good 
person, and I gratefully confess, that I am in 
debted to her for all my wealth. 

Serapis. That is poor consolation which you 
give me, Quirinus ! If such things are going on 
in the world as Mercury reports, I can promise 
myself no better fate for my colossus at Alexan- 
dria. It is really dreadful that Jupiter can look 
so composedly on such enorinities ! 

Jupiter. You would do well, Serapis, if you 
would follow my example. For a Divinity of 
Pontus, you have enjoyed the honour of being 
worshipped from East to West long enough, 
and you can hardly expect that your temples 
should fare better than mine, or that your colos- 
sus should last longer than the god-like master- 
piece of Phidias. Surely you do not look to be 
the only one that stands upright, when all the 
rest of us are fallen. 

Momus. Fy ! Fy ! Jupiter, what have you 
done with your famous thimderbolts, that you 
submit so quietly to your fall ? 

Jupiter. If I were not what I am, I should 
answer that foolish question with one of them, 
witling! 

Quirinus to Mercury. You must tell it to me 
again. Mercury, before I can believe you. Do 
you mean to say then, that my Flamen is 
abolished ? my temple closed? that my festival 
is no longer celebrated ? Have the enervated, 
slavish, unfeeling Quirites degenerated to this 
degree of ingratitude toward their founder? 

Mercury. I should deceive you, if I were to 
give any other account. 

Victoria. Then I need not ask what has be- 
come of my altar and my statue in the Julian 
Curia. The Romans have so long forgotten the 
art of conquering, that I find nothing more 
natural than that they should not even be able 
to bear the presence of my image any longer. 
With every look which they cast upon it, it 
would seem to reproach them with their shame- 
ful degeneracy. Victoria has nothing more to 
do with Romans whose very name has become 
'an insult among Barbarians, which only blood 
can wash out. 

Vesta. Under such circumstances they will 
be sure not to let the sacred fire burn any longer 
in my temple. Heaven ! What will be the 
fate of my poor virgins? 

Mercury. O, they will not touch a hair of 
their heads, venerable Vesta! They will let 
them very quietly die of hunger. 

Quirinus. How times change! Formerly, it 
was a dreadful misfortune for the whole Roman 
Empire, if the sacred fire, on the altar of Vesta, 
went out. 

Mercury. And now, there would be a deal 
more fuss made, if the fire should go out in 
some Roman cook's -shop than if the Vestals 
should let theirs expire twice every week. 

Quirinus. But who then, in future, is to be 
the patron and protector of Rome, in my stead ? 



W I E L A N D. 



143 



Mercury. St. Peter with the double key has 
bespoken this little office for himself. 

Quirinus. St. Peter with the double key ! Who 
is he? 

Mercury. I do not exactly know, myself 
Ask Apollo; perhaps he can give you more 
information on the subject. 

.Rpollo. That is a man, Quirinus, who, in his 
successors, will govern half the world for eight 
hundred years; although he himself was only 
a poor fisherman. 

Q,uirinus. What! Will the world let itself be 
governed by fishers ? 

Apullo. At least by a certain kind of fishers, 
by tishers of men, who with a very ingenious 
kind of bow-net, called decretals, will gradually 
catch all the nations and princes of Europe. 
Their commands will be regarded as divine 
oracles and a piece of sheep-sUin or of paper 
sealed with St. Peter s fishers-ring will have 
power to create and depose kings. 

Quirinus. This St. Peter, with his double key, 
must be a mighty conjuror! 

Apollo. Not at all! The strangest and most 
miraculous things in the world come about, as 
you ought to know by this time, in a very 
natural way. The avalanche, which over- 
whelms a whole village, was at first a little 
snow-ball; and a stream which bears large 
vessels is a gurgling rock-fountain in its origin. 
Why may not the successors of a Galilean 
fisherman, in a isw centuries, become masters 
of Rome, and, by means of a new religion, 
whose chief priests they have constituted them- 
selves, and with the aid of an entirely new 
morality and system of politics which they 
know how to rear upon that religion, become 
at last, masters for a time of half the world ? 
Did you not yourself tend the herds of the King 
of Alba, who was a very small potentate, be- 
fore you placed yourself at the head of all the 
banditti in Lutium, and patched together the 
little robbers-nest, which, in process of time, 
became the capital and queen of the world? 
St. Peter, it is true, made no great figure in his 
life-time, but he will see the time when em- 
perors shall hold the stirrups for his successors, 
and queens with all humility kiss their feet. 

Qmrinus. What things one lives to see, when 
one is immortal ! 

Apollo. To be sure, it requires a good deal 
of time and no little art to make that progress 
in man-fishing. But the fishes must be stupid 
enough, who will let themselves be caught by 
them. 

Quirinus. Meanwhile, we are and remain all 
of us deposed, eh? 

Mercury. It seems likely to stop at that, for 
the present. 

Several gods. Better not be immortal, than 
experience such things. 

Jupiter. My dear sons, uncles, nephews, and 
cousins, all and severally! I see that you treat 
this little revolution, which I have very quietly 
seen approaching this long while, more tragi- 



cally than the thing is worth. May I ask you 
to sit down again in your places, and let us 
discuss these matters calmly and candidly over 
a glass of nectar. Everything in nature has its 
time, everything is liable to change, and so too 
are human opinions. They ever change with 
circumstances, and if we consider what a dif- 
ference only fifty years makes between the 
grandsire and the grandson, it really will not 
seem strange that the world should appear to 
take an entirely new shape in the course of one 
thousand or two thousand years. For at bot- 
tom it is only in appearance after all. It re- 
mains forever the same comedy though with 
dilferent masks and names. The foolish peo- 
ple there below have practised superstition 
with us long enough, and if there are some 
among you who thought themselves benefited 
by it, 1 must tell them that they were mistaken. 
One would not grudge that mankind should 
grow wiser at last, if they can. By heaven! 
it were none too soon. But that is not to be 
thought of, at present. True, they always flat- 
ter themselves that the last folly of which they 
have become conscious, is the last they shall 
commit. The hope of better times is their 
everlasting chimera, by which they are forever 
deluded, in order to be forever deluded again ; 
because they will never come to understand 
that not the time, but their own inborn, in- 
curable folly, is the cause why their condition 
never improves. For it is, once for all, their 
lot not to be able to enjoy anything good with 
a pure enjoyment, and to exchange one folly, 
of which they have grown weary at last, like 
children of a worn-out doll, for a new one, 
with which, for the most part, they fare worse 
than before. This time, it actually looked as 
if they would gain by the exchange, but 1 knew 
them too well not to foresee that they were not 
to be helped in this way. For though Wisdom 
herself should descend to them, in person, and 
dwell visibly among them, they would not cease 
to hang ribbons and feathers and rags and bells 
about her, until they had made a fool of her. 
Believe me, Gods, the song of triumph, which 
they are raising, at this moment, on account of 
the glorious victory they have obtained over 
our defenceless statues, is a raven-cry prophetic 
of wo to posterity. They think to improve, and 
will fall from the frying-pan into the fire, 'i'hey 
are weary of us, they wish to have nothing 
more to do with us. So much the worse for 
them ! We need them not. If their priests 
pronounce us unclean and evil spirits and as- 
sure the foolish people that an ever-burning 
gulph of brimstone is our dwelling, why need 
that trouble us? Of what importance is it to 
us, what conceptions half-reasoning creatures 
of earth may form of us? or in what relation 
they place themselves to us, and whether they 
smoke us with a sickening compound of the 
stink of sacrifices and incense, or with hellish 
brimstone? Neither the one nor the other 
reaches to us. You say, they do not know us, 



144 



WIELAND. 



when they wish to withdraw themselves from 
our government. Did they know us better 
while they served US'? What the poor people 
call their religion is their concern not ours. It 
is they alone who gain or lose by ordering their 
life rationally or irrationally. And their de- 
scendants, when hereafter they shall feel the 
consequences of the unwise decrees of their 
Valentinians, their Gratiani, and their Theo- 
do?ii, will find cause enough to regret the un- 
wise provisions which will accumulate on their 
giddy heads a flood of new and insupportable 
evils, of which the world had no conception 
as long as it adhered to the old faith or the old 
superstition. It would be a very different 
art'air, if they really improved their condition 
under the new arrangement! Who of us would 
or could blame them for that? But it is just 
the opposite ! They resemble a man, who, for 
the sake of driving away some trifling evil 
with whicli he might live to the age of Titho- 
nus, suffers ten others, which are ten times 
worse, to be fastened upon him. Thus, for 
example, they raise a great outcry against our 
priests, because they entertained the people, 
who are everywhere superstitious and will 
always remain so, with delusions, which how- 
ever benefited the State as well as them- 
selves. Will their priests do better? At this 
moment they are laying the foundation of a 
snperstition, which will benefit no one but 
themselves, and which, instead of strengthen- 
ing the political constitution, will confound and 
•.mdermine all human and civil relations, — a 
superstition which will lie like lead on their 
brains, exclude every sound conception of 
things, natural and moral, and, under pretence 
of a chimerical perfection, will poison humanity 
in every man in the very germ. When the 
worst has been said that can be said with 
truth of the superstition which has hitherto 
fooled the world, men will be forced, here- 
after, to confess, that it was far more human, 
more innocent, and more beneficial, than the 
new one which is substituted in its place. Our 
priests were infinitely more harmless than those 
to whom they must now yield. They enjoyed 
their authority and their income in peace, were 
in harmony with every one and assailed no 
man's faith. These are greedy of dominion 
and intolerant, they persecute one another with 
the uttermost rage on account of the most in- 
significant verbal subtleties, decide by a majority 
of voices what must be thought concerning un- 
thinkable Things and what must be said con- 
cerning unspeakable things, and treat all, who 
think or speak otherwise, as enemies of God 
and man. It was a thing scarce heard of for 
a thousand years, that the priests of the gods 
came into collision with the civil authority, un- 
til encroached upon by these raving iconoclasts. 
The new priesthood on the contrary, since their 
party has been in power, have not ceased to 
conlbund the world. As yet, their pontiffs 
w-ork under ground, but soon they will grasp 



at the sceptres of kings and assume to be vice- 
gerents of their God, and under this title arro- 
gate to themselves an hitherto unheard of do- 
minion over heaven and earth. Our priests 
indeed, as was proper, were not very zealous 
promoters — or at least they were not avowed 
enemies — of philosophy, from which they had 
nothing to fear under the protection of the 
laws. Least of all, did they dream of sub- 
jecting the thoughts and opinions of men to 
their jurisdiction, and of hindering their free 
circulation in society. Theirs, on the other 
hand, who, as long as they were the weaker 
party, made so much boast of having Reason 
on their side amd always placed her in the van. 
whenever attacked by ours, — now that she 
would only be an hindrance to them, in their 
farther operations, — will dismiss her from their 
service and will not rest until they have made 
all dark around them, until they have with- 
drawn from the people all means of enlighten- 
ment and stamped the free use of the natural 
juilgment as the greatest of all crimes. For- 
merly, while they lived on alms themselves, 
the wealth and decent living of our priests was 
an abomination to them; now that they aie 
driving with full sails, the moderate revenues 
of our temples are much too small to satisfy 
the necessities of their pride and vanity. Al- 
ready their pontiffs at Rome, through the li- 
berality of superstitious and wealthy matrons, 
whose enthusiastic sentimentality they know 
how to avail themselves of in so masterly a 
manner, by the most shameless legacy-hunting, 
and a thousand other arts of the same sort, have 
placed themselves in a condition to surpass the 
first persons in the State, in splendor, luxury, 
and expense. But all these fountains, although 
grown to rivers by ever new accessions, will 
not satisfy these insatiable men. They will 
invent a thousand unheard of means to tax the 
simplicity of rude and deluded men; even the 
sins of the world they will convert to golden 
fountains by their magic art, and, to render these 
fountains more productive, they will invent a 
monstrous number of new suis, of which the 
Theophrasts and the Epictetusses had no con- 
ception. 

But why do I speak of all this ? What is it 
to us what these people do Of leave undone, or 
how well or ill they avail themselves of their 
new dominion over the sickly souls of men who 
are enervated and criiipled by lust and bondage? 
They who deceive the rest are themselves de- 
luded. They too know not what tliey do. But 
it becomes us to treat them with indulgence as 
diseased and insane, and, without regard to 
their gratitude or ingratitude, in future also, still 
to confer upon them as much good as their own 
folly may yet leave us the opportunity of doing. 
The unhappy! Whom but themselves do they 
injure, when of their own accord they deprive 
themselves of the beneficent influence by which 
Athens became the school of wisdom and of 
art, and Rome the lawgiver and mistress of the 



WIELAND. 



145 



earth, by which both attained a degree of cul- 
ture to which even the better descendants oC the 
barbarians, wlio are now aboitt to divide among 
themselves the lands atjd wealth of these de- 
generate Greeks and Romans, will- never be 
able to rise. For what is to become of men 
from whom the Muses and the Graces, Philoso- 
phy and all the beautifying arts of life and the 
finer enjoyment of life have withdrawn them- 
selves, together with the gods, their inventors 
and protectors'? I foresee with one glance all 
the evil that will thrust itself in, in die place of 
the good, all the unformed, the perverted, tlie 
monstrous and misshapen that these fanatical 
destroyers of the beautiful will rear on the ashes 
and the ruins of works of genius, of wisdom and 
art, and I am disgusted with the loathsome 
spectacle. Away with it! For, so truly as I 
am Jupiter Olympius, it shall not always remain 
so, altho\igh centuries will elapse before Hu- 
manity reaches the lowest abyss of its fall, and 
centuries more before, with our aid, it works its 
way once more above the slime. The time will 
come- when they will seek us again, invoke our 
aid once more, and confess that they are power- 
less without us. The time will come when with 
unwearying diligence they will drag forth from 
the dust once more, or excavate from rubbish 
and corruption every ruined or defaced relic 
of those works which, by our influence, once 
sprung from the mind and hands of our fa- 
vourites, and exhaust themselves in vain, with 
aH'ected enthusiasm, to imitate those miracles 
of genuine inspiration and the actual afflatus of 
divine powers. 

Apollo. Most surely it will come, Jupiter, that 
time ! I see it as if it stood already before me, 
in the full glory of the present. They will again 
erect our images, will gaze upon them with a 
feeling of awe and adoring wonder, will use 
them as models for their iilols, which had be- 
come frights in barbarous hands; and — 0! what 
a triumph! their pontiffs themselves will take 
Jiride in erecting the most magnificent temple 
to us, under a different name! 

Jupiter, {with a large goblet of nectar in his hand) 
Here s to the Future! {to Minerva.') My daugh- 
ter, we'll drink to the time when you shall see 
all Europe converted into a new Athens, filled 
w-ith aca<lemical lyceums, and perhaps shall 
hear the voice of philosophy from the midst of 
the forests of Germany, more clear and free than 
formerly from the halls of Athens and Alexan- 
dria. 

Minerva, {slightly shaking her head) I am glad. 
Father Jupiter, to see you of such good cheer in 
view of the present aspects; but you will par- 
don me if I believe as little in a new Athens as 
in a new Olympus. 

Quirinus. {to Mercury) I can't get that Peter 
with the double key, who is to be my successor, 
out of my head. Mercury ! How is it with that 
key? Is it an actual or emblematic, a natural 
or a magic key? Where did he get it, and what 
will he unlock with it? 
T 



Mercury. All that I can tell you about it. 
Quirinus, is, that with this key he can unlock 
Heaven or Tartarus to whom he pleases. 

Quirinus. He may imiock Tartarus to whom 
he will for all me; but as to Heaven! — that is 
a very different matter. 

Mercury. Indeed, they are preparing to peo- 
ple Heaven with such an enormous quantity of 
new gods of their sort, that there will hartlJy be 
any room left for us old ones. 

Jupiter. Leave that to me, Hermes ! They 
could easily deprive us of our temples and ter- 
ritories on the earth ; but, in Olympus, we have 
been estal.ilished too long to be crowded out. 
For the rest, as a proof of our perfect impar- 
tiality, we will concede to the new Romans the 
right of apotheosis, notwithstanding their inso- 
lence, under the same conditions as to the old. 
As I understand, most of their candidates who 
lay claim to this promotion are not persons of 
the best society. Therefore, before we admit 
any one, with St. Peter's permission we will 
examine him a little. If it shall ajjpear that, 
in virtue of his other qualities and merits, he 
can maintain his place among us, no objection 
shall be made on account of the golden circle 
round his head; and Momus himself shall not 
twit him with the miracles which are wrought 
with his bones or his wardrobe. 

Juno. You may do as you please with regard 
to the men, Jupiter; but I protest against the 
introduction of the ladies. 

Venus. There are said to be some very pretty 
ones among the number. 

Jupiter. We will talk about that when the 
case occurs. And now — not a word more de 
odiosis ! A fresh cup, Antinous ! 

DIALOGUE VIII. 
jupiTEB, NUMA, afterward an uuKNOwif.* 

Jupiter. How happens it, Numa, that we have 
not seen you now, for several days, at the table 
of the Gods? 

Numa. The accounts which Mercury lately 
brought us from Rome left me no rest until I 
had seen with my own eyes how matters stood. 

Jupiter. And how did you find them ? 

Numa. I say it with heavy heart, Jupiter, but 
probably I tell you nothing new, when I say 
that your authority with mortals appears to be 
irrecoverably lost. 

Jupiter. Did you not hear what Apollo said 
at table the other day ? 

Numa. He gave you very distant consolation, 
Jupiter; and even this consolation turns at lust 
on a verbal quibble. It is just as if a Chaldean 
soothsayer had comforted Alexander tlie Great, 
when about to die of a miserable fever at Baby- 
lon in the midst of the enjoyment of his con- 
quests, with the assurance that two thousand 

* He is so still to most persons at the present day, and 
he appears here to give some important information tc 
specting his true character and aim. 
13 



146 



WIELAND. 



years after liis death a noble descendant of the 
great Witteldnd would wear his picture in a 
ring. Such a thought may be very agreeable as 
long as one is in good condition ; but it is a poor 
indemnification for the loss of the first throne in 
the world. 

Jupiler. I should have thought, friend Numa, 
that your residence in Olympus would have 
corrected your notions of such things! 

Numa. I know very well that a decree of the 
seriate at Rome cannot deprive you of tlie in- 
fluence which you have on the affairs of the 
world below ; but — 

Jupiter, (smiting) Speak out plainly what you 
think! My ear has grown patient of late — 
'But' what ? 

Numa. Your influence, after all, cannot be 
very considerable ; or else I cannot conceive 
how you could suffer yourself to be deprived of 
the divine authority and the high privileges 
wliich you have enjoyed for so many centuries 
throughout the Roman world, without so much 
as stirring a finger. 

Jupiler. I can pardon my Flamen for not 
comprehending a thing of this sort; but you, 
Numa !^ 

Numa. To speak candidly, Jupiter, although 
1 may be considered in some sort the founder 
of the old Roman religion, it was never my in- 
tention to give more nourishment to the super- 
stition of the rude Romans than was absolutely 
necessary to polish thein. I did not indeed 
make any essential change in the service of 
those gods wliich a primeval, popular belief 
had long established in the possession of the 
public veneration. Nevertheless, it was my a'.m 
to keep the way open, so to speak, to a pvrer 
knowledge of tlie Supreme Being, and at least 
to prevent the coarsest kind of idolatry by not 
allowing the Godhead to be represented in tlie 
temples, neither in tlie likeness of beasts nor 
even of men. I regarded even then tlie dif- 
ferent persons and names, wliicli the faith of 
the forefathers had exalted into gods, either as 
symbols of the invisible and unfathomable 
arch-Power of Nature, or as men whom the gra- 
titude of ]iosterity for great services conferred on 
social and civil life, had raised to the rank of 
publicly worshipped, guardian spirits. 

Jupiter. And ocular evidence has taught you 
that you did not err greatly, in this latter notion 
at least; although 1 am not of your opinion as 
it regards the images of the gods. 

Numa. Had tliere been Phidiasses and Alka- 
meneses in Latium in my day, it is probable tliat 
these artists might have led me too to a differ- 
ent way of thinking. 

Jupiter. If, then, you have never held us for 
anything else than we are, whence your sur- 
l)rise that we are quite willing to let it pass, 
when the inhabitants of the earth have also 
advanced so far as to regard us in the same 
light 1 

Nvmia. It may be owing to the habit of living 
among you, and of seeing you so long in posses- 



sion of the worship of mankind. Both these 
circumstances have placed you in a strange kind 
of chiaroscuro to my eye, and have given me 
imperceptibly, perhaps, too high an opinion of 
your nature and dignity. In short, I confess 
that it will be diflrcult for me, Jupiter, to accus- 
tom myself to a different way of thinking. 

Jvpiter. I am half inclined to come forth from 
the chiaroscuro, and to draw away the veil from 
the secrets of my family, concerning which so 
many excellent people on the earth have cud- 
gelled tlieir brains to no purpose. 

Numa. I am sure you will lose nothing by it. 

Jupiter. One always gains by the truth, friend. 
Numa! — You know that no one of us. Olym- 
pians, long as we have existed and far as our 
sight extends, can refer to a time when this im- 
measurable whole began to be, whose exist- 
ence, on the contrary, is the most convincing 
proof that it had no beginning. On the other 
hand it may be affirmed with the same cer- 
tainty, that, of all its visible parts, no one has 
always existed precisely as it is. Thus, for ex- 
ample, the earth which we once inhabited has 
undergone several great revolutions, of which, 
in part, some traces have been preserved by 
oral tradition among the oldest nations. Of this 
kind is the tradition current among the North- 
landers, the Indians and the Egyptians, that 
there was a time when the earth was inhabited 
by gods. In fact, the inhabitants of the earth in 
this first period, if they can be called men, were 
a kind of men who would compare witli the 
present race, as the Olympian Jupiter of Phi- 
dias, with the Priapus-iinages of fig-tree woof/ 
which the country people stick up to protecv 
their gardens ; so far did they surpass in size 
and beauty, bodily strength and mental powers, 
the men of after times. With them and by 
means of them, the earth enjoyed a state of per- 
fection which was worthy of its then inhabit- 
ants. But, iti the course of thousands of years, 
it has undergone great changes. A part of the 
posterity of the first inhabitants degenerated in 
the different regions of the earth, over which 
their increase compelled them to spread them- 
selves. Extraordinary events, earthquakes, vol- 
canoes, floods, changed the shape of the jjlanet. 
While whole countries were swallowed up in 
the ocean, others gradually emerged from the 
waves; but the greater part of the old inhabit- 
ants of the earth perished in this fearful revolu- 
tion of things. The few who remained, wan- 
dered singly, amazed and dispirited, among the 
ruins of Nature. Here and there, indeed, acci- 
dent brought a Deucalion and a Pyrrha together, 
but their descendants soon degenerated, through 
want and misery, into beastly savages. Mean- 
while, the earth gradually recovered from the 
chaotic state which naturally resulted from those 
terrible convulsions, and became evermore fitted 
for the habitation and subsistence of its new in- 
habitants. The new races with which it was 
peopled supported themselves scantily with 
hunting and fishing, and where these failed, 



W I E L A N D. 



147 



with acorns and other wild fruits. They dwelt, 
for the most part, in forests and caves ; and the 
most of them were so rude, that they did not 
even know the use of fire. Happily, a family 
of that first and more perfect race had preserved 
itself on the summit of Imaus, witli all their 
original excellences, and in the enjoyment of 
All the advantages derived from the arts and 
sciences invented by their ancestors. Necessi- 
tated by similar catastrophes to relinquish the 
seats of their inheritance, they scattered them- 
selves to the east and to the west, and wherever 
they came, their arrival was like the appearance 
of beneficent gods. For, besides a cultivated 
language and gentle manners, they brought all 
the arts, of which no trace was to be found 
among those wild-animal-men, and the want 
of which was the very cause which had de- 
graded them to that inhuman animality. You 
will comprehend, friend Numa, that they were 
received as gods by these wretched creatures, 
anil tliat, by all the good which they communi- 
cated, by the arts of agriculture, by the breeding 
of domestic animals, the planting of fruit trees, 
whereby they became creators of a new world, 
by the civil societies whose founders, by the cities 
whose builders and lawgivers they became, by 
the pleasant arts of the Muses, whereby they 
diffused milder manners, more refined plea- 
sures, and a sweeter enjoyment of life, — you 
will comprehend, I say, that by all these bene- 
fits they had deserved so well of mankind, tliat, 
after their death, (of which their ascension into 
this purer element was the natural consequence) 
they came to be honoured as guardian gods by 
a grateful posterity. You will further compre- 
hend, that they who once conferred so many 
and such great benefits on mortals, after their 
transition to a higher mode of life, should still 
find pleasure in caring for men who had re- 
ceived from them all that made them men, and 
in general to watch over the preservation of all 
that of which they had been, in some sense, the 
creators. 

Numa. Now, suddenly, everything which, 
before, I had seen only as in a mist, is made 
clear to me. 

Jupiter. And now too, it will be clear to you, 
I hope, why I said I was very willing that men 
sliould become sufficiently enlightened to regard 
us as nothing more than we actually are. Su- 
perstition and priestcraft, powerfully supported 
by ])oets, artists and mythologians, had gradu- 
ally converted the service which was paid us, 
and which we accepted, only on account of its 
beneficial influence on Humanity, into a mad 
idolatry, which neither could nor ought to con- 
tinue, which was necessarily undermined by an 
ever-growing culture, and like all human things, 
must finally fall back into itself How could I 
desire that that should not ensue, which, accord- 
ing to the eternal laws of necessity, must needs 
>nsue? 

Numa. But these fanatical innovators are not 
contented with merely purifying a service so 



ancient, and founded on such important bene- 
fits ; they destroy, they annihilate it! They rob 
you of that which they actually owe to you; 
and far from reducing the ideas of the nations 
respecting the gods of their fathers to the stan- 
dard of truth, they carry the madness of their 
impious insolence so far as to pronounce you 
evil demons and hellish spirits, and to treat you 
as such. 

Jupiter. Do not be angry, good Numa! Was 
I not also forced, while my altars yet smoked, 
to endure every coarse and indecent tale with 
which the poets entertained their gaping hearers 
at my expense? What does it signify to me 
what is thought or said of me there below, 
since the period has once for all arrived, when 
the service of Jupiter has ceased to be bene- 
ficial to men? Shall I force them with thunder- 
bolts to have more respect for me? Of what 
importance can it be to me, whether they assign 
Olympus or Tartarus to me for a dwelling? 
Am I not secure against all the consequences of . 
their opinion? Or will Ganymede pour out for 
me one cup the less of nectar 01 their acooiint? 

Numa. But it is of importance to them, Jupiter, 
not to deprive themselves of all the benefits 
which the world has hitherto enjoyed under 
your government, by the abandonment of all 
communion between themselves and you, into 
which they are now suffering themselves to be 
betrayed. 

Jupiter. I thank you for your good opinion of 
my government, friend Pompilius! There are 
certain wise people below there, who do not 
think quite so highly of my influence in human 
thinas, and — strictly considered — they may not 
be so far out of the way. 'One cannot do more 
for people than they are receptive of. I have 
never liked to employ myself with working 
miracles, and so every thing goes its natural 
course, — mad enough, as you see, and yet, on 
the whole, not so bad but that one may get on 
with it. And so it will remain for the future, 
I think. Whatever I can contribute to the com- 
mon good, without sacrificing my repose, I shall 
always be pleased to do. But as to playing the 
enthusiast and letting myself be crucified for 
ingrates and fools — that is not in Jupiter's line, 
my good Numa ! 

The Unknown appears. 

Nwna. Who may that stranger be, who is 
coming towards us yonder? Or are you already 
acquainte<l with him, Jupiter? 

Jupiter. Not that I remember. He has some- 
thing in his appearance, which indicates no 
common character. 

The Unknown. Is it permitted me to take part 
in your conversation? I confess, it hath drawn 
me hither from a considerable distance. 

Jupiter, (^aside) A new kind of magnetism ! 
(^To the unknown.) You know then, already, 
whereof we were speaking? 

The Unknown. I possess the faculty of being 
where I wish to be; and where two are in- 



148 



WIELAND. 



quiring after tnith, I seldom fail, visibly or in- 
visibly, to make the third. 

Nuiiia. {^shaking his head, softly to Jupiter'^ A 
queer customer ! 

Jupiter, (without minding Numa, to the Un- 
known) In that case, you are an excellent com- 
panion! I rejoice to mal;e your acquaintance. 

Nmna. (to the Unknown j May I ask your name? 
and whence you cotne? 

The Unknown. Neither the one nor the other 
has anything to do with the subject matter 
vifliich you were discussing. 

Jupiter. We were speaking merely of facts. 
And these, as you know, appear differently to 
each observer, according to his stand-point and 
the quality of his eyes. 

The Unknown. And yet each thing can be 
seen correctly only from one point of view. 

Numa. And that is — ? 

The Unknown. The centre of the Whole. 

Jupiter, (aside, to Numa) In that man there 
is either a great deal, or nothing. — (To the Un- 
known.) You know the Whole then? 

The Unknown. Yes. 

Numa. And what do you call its centre? 

The Unknown. Perfection; from which every- 
thing is equally remote and to which everything 
approximates. 

Numa. And how does each thing appear to 
you from this centre? 

The Unknown. Not fragmentary, not as it is in 
particular places and periods of time, not as it 
relates to these or those things, not as it loses or 
gains by its immersion in the atmosphere of 
human opinions and passions, not as it is falsi- 
fied by folly or poisoned by corruption of heart; 
but as it relates to the whole, in its beginning, 
progress and issue, in all its forms, movements, 
operations and consequences; — that is, in the 
measure in which it contributes to the eternal 
growth of the perfection of the whole. 

Jupiter. That is not bad ! 

Numa. And seen from this point of view, 
how do you find the subject of which we were 
speaking when you came, — the great cata- 
strophe which, in these days, without respect 
or mercy, has overthrown everything that, for 
so many centuries, was most venerable and 
sacred to ihe human race? 

The Unknown. It followed necessarily, for it 
had been a long while preparing; and it needs 
at last, as you know, but a single blast to over- 
throw an old, ill-joined, thoroughly ruinous 
fabric, and one, moreover, which was founded 
on the sand. 

Numa. But it was such a magnificent strnc- 
.ture, so venerable in its antiquity, possessing, 
with all its variety, so much simplicity, so bene- 
ficent in the protection which Humanity, the 
laws, the security of the States enjoyed so 
long under its lofty arches! Would it not 
have been better to repair than to destroy it? 
Our philosophers at Alexandria had formed 
such beautiful projects not merely to restore its 
5^rraer authority but even to give it a far greater 



splendour and especially a symmetry, a beauty, 
a convenience which it never had before! It 
was a Pantheon of such great extent and such 
ingenious construction that all the religions in the 
world — even this new one if it would only be 
peaceable — might have found space enough 
within its walls. 

The Unknown. It is a pity that, with all these 
apparent advantages, it was nevertheless built 
only on the movable sand ! And as to peace- 
ableness ! — how can you expect that, in a matter 
of such great importance, truth and delusion 
should agree together ? 

Numa. That is a very easy matter, if only 
mankind will agree among themselves. They 
are never more grossly deluded than when they 
imagine themselves in exclusive possession of 
the truth. 

The Unknown. If it is not their destination to 
be deceived — and that, surely, you will not 
maintain — then it cannot and will not be their 
lot to wander forever in error and delusion, like 
.sheep without a shepherd. Between darkness 
and light, twilight and half-light is certainly 
better than complete night ! but only as a transi 
tion from that to pure all-irradiating daylight. 
The day has now dawned, and would you 
lament that night and twilight are past? 

Jupiter. You love allegory, as I hear, young 
man! I, for my part, love to speak roundly and 
plainly. I suppose you mean to say that men 
will be made happier by this new order of 
things ? I hope they may, but as yet I see very 
poor preparations for it. 

The Unknown. Without fail the condition of 
these poor mortals will be better and infinitely 
better. Truth will put them in possession of 
that freedom which is the most indispensable 
condition of happiness : for truth alone makes 
free. 

Jupiter. Bravo! I heard that five hundred 
years ago in the Sloa at Athens, until I was sick 
of it. Propositions of this kind are just as in- 
disputable and contribute just as much to the 
welfare of the world as the great truth, that 
once one is one. As soon as you will bring me 
intelligence that the foolish people below there 
have become better men than their fathers, since 
that a great part of them believe differently from 
their fathers, I will call you the messenger of 
very good tidings. 

The Unknown. The corruption of mankind 
was so great that even the most extraordinary 
provisions could not remedy the evil at once. 
But, assuredly, they will grow better when truth 
shall have made them free. 

Jupiter. I believe so too, but, it seems to me, 
that is saying no more than if you should say, 
that as soon as all men are wise and good they 
will cease to be foolish and perverse; or that, 
when tlie golden age arrives in which every 
man shall have abundance, no one will suffer 
hunger any more. 

The Unknown. I see the time actually coming 
when all who do not purposely close theil 



WIELAND. 



149 



hearts to the truth, will, by means of it, attain 
to a perfection of which your philosophers never 
dreamed. 

Jvpiter. Have you been initiated in the mys- 
teries of Eleusisl 

The Unknown. I know them as well' as if I 
had been. 

Jupiter. Then you know what is the ultimate 
aim of those mysteries. 

The Unknown. To live happily, and to die 
with the hope of a better life. 

Jupiler. You seem to be a sreat philanthropist ; 
do you know anytliing more salutary for mortals 
than this? 

The Unknown. Yes. 

Jupiter. Let me hear it, if I may ask. 

The Unknown. To give tliem in reality what 
those mystagogues at Kleusis promised. 

Jupiler. 1 fear that is more than you or I will 
be able to perform. 

The Unknown. You have never tried, Jupiter. 

Jupiter. Who likes to speak of his services? 
But you may easily suppose that I could not 
have attained to the honour which has been 
paid me by so many great and powerful nations 
for several thousand years, without having 
served them to some extent. 

The Unknown. That may have been a long 
while ago! He who is unwilling to do more for 
man than he can do 'without sacrifiring his re- 
pose,' will not accomplish much in tlieir behalf. 
1 confess, 1 have laboured sore. 

Jupiler. I like you, young man. In your 
years this amiable enthusiasm, which sacrifices 
itself for others, is a real merit. Who can otfer 
himself up for mankind without loving tliem ? 
And who can love them without thinking better 
of them than tliey deserve? 

The Unknown. I think neither too well nor 
too ill of thern. 1 pity their misery. I see 
that they may be helped; and they shall be 
helped. 

Jupiter. It is even as I said. You are full of 
courage and good-will, but you are still young: 
the folly of earth's people has not yet made you 
tender. When you are as old as 1 am, you will 
sing a difl'erent song! 

The Unknown. You speak as might be ex- 
pected of you. 

Jupiter. It seems scandalous to you to hear 
me talk thus, does it? You have formed a 
great and benevolent plan for the good of man- 
kind. You burn with the desire to execute it. 
You live and have your being in it; your far- 
seeing glance shows you all its advantages; 
your courage swallows up all difficulties; you 
have set your existence uiron it; how can you 
help believing that it will be accomplished? 
But you have to do with men, my rood friend ! 
Do not be offended, if I speak exactly as I 
thiidt: it is the privilege of age and experience. 
You seem to me like a tragic poet who under- 
takes to perform an excellent piece with no- 
thing but crippled, dwarfed, halt and hunch- 
backed actors. Once more, my friend, you are 



not the first who has undertaken to accomplish 
something great with men; but I tell you that, 
as long as they are what they are. all such 
attempts will come to nothing. 

The Unknown. For that very reason, they 
must be made new men. 

Jupiter. New men ! {laughing') That, indeed! 
If you could only do that! But I think I under- 
stand you. You mean to remodel them, to give 
them a new and better form. The model is 
there; you have only to form them after your- 
self. But that is not all that is required. Na- 
ture must furnish the clay for your creation ; 
and you will have to take that as it is. Think 
of me, my friend ! You will lake all possible 
pains with your pottery, and when it comes 
out of tlie furnace, you will see yourself dis- 
graced by it. 

The Unknown. The clay — to continue your 
figure — is not so bad in itself, as you think. It 
can be purified and made as plastic as I re- 
quire it, in order to make new and better men 
out of it. 

Jupiter. I rejoice to hear it. Have you made 
the experiment? 

The Unknown. I have. 

Jupiter. I mean, on the large scale. For suc- 
cess in one piece out of a thousand, does not 
decide the matter. 

The Unknown, (after some hesitation) If the 
experiment on the large scale has not yet suc- 
ceeded according to my mind, I knQw, at least, 
why it could not be otherwise. It will be 
better in time. 

Jupiter. In time? Yes, to be sure! we always 
hope the best from time. And who would un- 
dertake anything great without that hope? We 
shall see how time will fulfil your expectations. 
I can promise you little good for the next thou- 
sand years. 

The Unknown. You have, I see, a small scale, 
old King of Crete! What are a thousand years, 
compared with the period required for the com- 
pletion of the great work of making a single 
family of good and happy beings out of the 
whole human race? 

Jupiter. Ah ! you are right. How many thou- 
sand years tlie Hermetic philosophers have 
been labouring on their stone, without complet- 
ing it? And what is the undertaking of those 
wise masters compared with yours? 

The Unknown. Your jest is imseasonable. 
The work which I have undertaken, is just as 
possible as that the seed of a cedar should grow 
to a great tree; only that the cedar does not, it 
is true, attain its perfection as rapidly as a 
poplar. 

Jupiter. And you should have as much time 
for the accomplishment of your work as you 
desire, if it depended only on that. But the 
certain and enormous evils, with which man- 
kind for so many centuries are to purchase the 
hope of an uncertain good, give the thing a 
different shape. What shall we think of a 
plan intended to beriefit the human race, which 
13* 



;50 



WIELAND. 



so fails in the execution, that a large portion of 
the human race, for a period whose duration is 
incalculable, are rendered beyond all compari- 
son moie miserable and (what is worse still) 
more depiaved in head and heart than they 
ever were before? I appeal to ocular evidence, 
and yet all that we have witnessed since tlie 
murder of the brave enthusiast, Julian, was but 
a small prelude to the immeasurable calamities 
which the new hierarchy will bring down on 
poor foolish mortals who suffer themselves to 
be lured into the unsuspected snare, by every 
new song which is pipeii to them. 

The. Unknown. All these evils about which 
you complain, in the name of Humanity, — you 
who formerly took their misery so little to 
heart, — are neither the conditions nor the con- 
sequences of tlie great plan of which we speak. 
Tliey are the obstacles which oppose it from 
without, and with whicli the light will have to 
contend but too long, until it has finally over- 
come the darkness. Is it the fault of the wine 
when it is spoiled in mouldy vessels? Since 
it is the nature of the case, that mankind can 
advance in wisdom and goodness, only by im- 
perceptible degrees ; since from witliin and 
without such an infinite number of enemies 
are labouring against their amendment; since 
the difficulties increase with every victory and 
even the most eft'ective measures, from the 
mere circumstance that they have to pass 
through human heads and to be confided to 
human hands, become new obstacles; how can 
you be surprised that it is not in my power to 
procure for my brethren the happiness which 
I have designed for them at a less cost? How 
gladly would I have relieved them of all their 
misery at once! But even I can effect nothing 
in opposition to the eternal laws of necessity. 
Suffice it that the time will come at last. — 

Jupiter, {somewhat vexed) Well then! we will 
let it come ; and the poor fools to whom you 
are so kindly disposed, nmst see, meanwhile, 
how they can help themselves! As I said, my 
sight does not extend far enough to judge of so 
far-looking and complicated a plan as yours. 
The best of it is, that we are immortal and 
therefore may hope to see the result at last, how- 
ever many Platonic ages we have to wait for it. 

The Unknown. iVIy plan, great as it is, is at 
bottom tlie simplest in the world. The way 
in which I am sure of effecting the general 
happiness is tlie same by which I conduct 
each individual to happiness; and the pledge 
of its safety is, that there is no other. For the 
resi, I end as 1 began : it is impossible not to be 
deceived, so long as one regards things frag- 
rnentarily and as they appear in trie particular. 
They are, in reality, nothing but what they are 
in the whole; ami the perfection which unites 
all in one, toward whicli everything tends and 
in which everything will finally rest, is the 
only view-point from which everything is seen 
iiright. And herewith, fare ye well! [He 
vanishes.) 



Numa. (to Jupiter) What say you to this ap- 
parition, Jupiter? 

Jupiter. Ask me again fifteen hundred years 
hence. 

DIALOGUE IX. 
JUPITER AND JUNO. 

Jupiter, half-sitting, half-reclining on a couch 
strown with roses. Juno, sitting at his feet. 

Jupiter. And is this all, dear Juno, that you 
have to ask of me? You might have requested 
an impossibility; and to oblige you I would 
have attempted to make it possible. 

Juno. You are very gallant, Jupiter. I shall 
never expect anything unreasonable of you. 

Jupiter. The kings and the nobility have al- 
ways belonged to your department, and the 
least you can expect of my affection is, that I 
should leave you unmolested in your own 
sphere. 

Juno. Nor do my wishes extend any farther 
than that. For since I know your present prin- 
ciples, it would be asking too much to require 
that you, for your own part, should take a live- 
lier interest in kings. 

Jupiter. I perceive you think I incline too 
strongly to the side of the people. There may 
be some foundation for that opinion; but in 
fact it is only because it has been one of my 
first principles of government to take the side 
of those who are likely to retain the right at 
last. The present time is not favourable to the 
'Shepherds of the people.' It is now the people's 
turn ; and I am afraid, my love, that 1 am doing 
very little for you and your clients, when I 
swear to you that I will place no hindrances in 
the way of the measures which you shall adopt 
for their advantage. 

Juno. I trust things have not yet come to that 
pass, that the inhabitants of the earth have only 
to imagine that we have no more power over 
them, in order to be independent of us. 

Jupiter. As I said, you can try. I leave you 
perfect freedom ; only I foresee that, as matters 
stand, you will have but little pleasure in the 
result. 

Juno. I would rather you did not foresee that. 
If I were suspicious — 

Jupiter. That you have always been a little, 
lady of my heart! But this time you would do 
me injustice. It is my serious intention to keep 
my promise to you, and to leave the governing 
gentlemen below there to your powerful protec- 
tion and — to their fate. 

Juno. 1 confess, Jupiter, I do not exactly un- 
derstand how the king of gods and of men can 
be so indifferent in the affairs of kings, and, 
without moving a finger, can look quietly on 
and see his sub-delegates gradually changed into 
theatre-princes and card-kings. 

Jupiter. It will not come to that so easily, my 
dearest. 

Juno. It has come to that already in some 
places, and it will come to that everywhere at 
last, if we fold our hands in our I aps any longer. 



WIELAND, 



151 



Jvpiter. We shall not assuredly make a man 
like Henry IV. of France, or Frederick the only, 
out of a king of cards; and he who lets a king 
of cards be made of himself deserves nothing 
better. 

Juno. That is a mere evasion, sir husband. 
Yon know very -well that such kings as you 
have named are extremely rare products of 
Nature and circumstances; and so much the 
better. Tlie kings at bottom are our vicegerents 
after all, and for that purpose the ordinary ones 
are good enough, provided we do not let them 
fall. 

Jupiter. The compliment which you are pi eased 
to pay me in those words is not very flattering; 
but, basta ! We will not enter into any explana- 
tion on this subject. I shall not let my vicege- 
rents, as you call them, fall, as long as they can 
stand on their own legs. My office is to let no 
one be oppressed if I can help it. Only, dear 
wife, do not let us forget the great truth, that 
kings exist for the sake of the people, and not 
the people for the sake of the kings. 

Juno. With your permission, sir husband, 
that is an old saw, which, like most wise say- 
ings of the kind, seems to say a great deal, and 
in fact says very little. Kings exist to govern 
the people, and the people must let themselves 
be governed by them. That is the thing; and 
so old Homer, even in his day, understood it, 
when he makes the wise Ulysses say to the 
stupid populace of the Grecian army: "'["he 
government of many is not good ! Let one only 
be ruler, one only be king.''* And, that no one 
may imagine the sceptre to depend on arbitrary 
will, he wisely adds, that it is Jupiter himself 
from whose hand kings receive this sign of su- 
preme power. This is truth, and I know no 
higher. 

Jupiter. I am very much obliged to you and 
to old Homer! But to speak candidly, what 
might pass for true in a certain sense, in those 
rude times of the world's first youth, is no longer 
so when applied to a people who through ex- 
perience and cultivation have reached that 
point at last where they are masters of their 
own reason, and have grown strong enough to 
shake off the yoke of ancient prejudices and 
errors. Nations, indeed, have their childhood 
as well as individuals; and, as long as they are 
ignorant and weak and foolish like children, 
they must be treated like children, and govern- 
ed by blind obedience to an authority which is 
not responsible to them. But nations do not, any 
more than individuals, remain children forever. 
It is a crime against Nature to wish to keep 
them in perpetual childhood by force or fraud ; 
or, as is generally the case, by both. And it is 
both folly and crime to treat them as children 
still, when they have already ripened into men. 

Juno. I willingly concede, Jupiter, that a high 
degree of culture requires a different kind of 
government from that which is most fitting for 

* See Iliad, B. II. vs. 204, 205. Tr. 



a people that is yet entirely rude, or that is still 
in the first stages of its culture. But all the phi- 
losophers of the earth will never cause that ten 
millions of men, who together constitute a na- 
tion, shall have two millions of Epaminondasses 
and Epictetusses at their head; and so the say- 
ing of Ulysses will always remain true : 

"Truly we cannot all reigm, not all be kin^, we Achaians, 
Nor is polycracy good; let one and one only be ruler, 
One onJy king!'' 

Jupiter. Granted! Only let every people, when 
it has arrived at that point where it can un- 
derstand its own rights and calculate its own 
powers, for which in fact nothing more is re- 
quired than an ordinary share of common sense, 
— let every such people have the privilege of 
managing its own political institutions. (^Junu 
shakes her head.) I mean, they should be allowed 
to empower those of their number in whose 
Judgment and integrity they have most confi- 
dence, to adopt such measures as shall hinder 
the arbitrary power of the individual and of 
the few who know how to possess themselves 
of his favour and confidence from doing mis- 
chief, from wasting the powers of the state, 
corrupting its morals, and making a crime of 
wisdom, virtue, and the candour which says 
aloud what it believes to be true; in short — 

Juno. 0! you are perfectly right there, Jupi- 
ter ! Kings must not be suffered to do that. 
They must be restrained by religion and laws, 
of course! They must know that they receive 
their sceptre from the hands of Jupiter alone. 

Jupiter. Dear wife, do not liarp upon this 
strirjg any more, if I may make the request. I 
know best how the matter stands. But suppose 
it were as you say, the people would be little 
benefited if kings had no one over them beside 
me. I should have to remind thein of it with 
thunder and lightning every moment, or they 
would govern exactly as if there were no Jupi- 
ter over them, although they should sacrifice 
whole hecatombs to me every morning with the 
greatest ceremony. 

Juno. I do not mean that religion shall be the 
only thing which they respect — 

Jupiter, (somewhat passionately) The worst 
kings will always respect us most, — they who 
have made the great Ulyssean principle: that 
kings have their sceptre from me, one of the 
first articles of faith, and thereon grounded a 
blind subjection which is made the most sacred 
duty of the people. 

Juno. But I say that they must govern accord- 
ing to laws whose end is the common good. 

Jupiter. The common good ! — A beautiful say 
ing! And who shall give them these laws'? 

Juno. O! Themis has published thetn long 
aso all over the world! Where is there a na- 
tion so barbarous as not to know the universal 
laws of justice and right ? 

Jupiter. So innocent as you affect to be, child ! 
Suppose now kings and their tools, or rather 
imperious courtiers and servants and their obe 



152 



WIELAND. 



rlient instruments the kings, in spite of Old 
Themis and her antiquated laws, should govern 
only according to their own will and pleasure, 
and because they have the power and are an- 
swerable to no one should do as much evil or — 
what is the same thing to the people — should 
suffer as much evil to be done as they please; 
How then ? 

Juno. That is the very thing that we must 
prevent, Jupiter! Else why are we in the 
world ? 

Jupiter. We! Well, to be sure, my darling, 
you are right there! — only that the more rea- 
sonable class of men view the thing from an- 
other side. We mortals, they think, are after 
all the only ones who have suffered under the 
Ibrmer government. We can lielp ourselves; 
and we will help ourselves. He who trusts 
that others will do for him that which he can 
do for himself, and in the doing of which no 
one is so much interested as himself, will al- 
ways be poorly served. 

J-uno. How you talk! If mortals below there 
should hear you talk in this way — 

Jupiter. We are speaking between ourselves, 
child ! If we do not see clearly ! — I do not ob- 
ject however that all men should know that I, 
for my part, always bold with him who does 
his duty. I am very willing that people should 
grow wiser. There was a time when they 
showed me unmerited honour. All the mis- 
chief that was done by lightning among them 
was placed to my account; and dear Heaven 
knows what foolish things 1 often had to hear, 
when the lightning struck my own temple or 
passed by many rogues to fall on some innocent 
person. Now that the brave Nordi American, 
Franklin, has invented the lightning-rod, and 
since the people know that metals, high trees, 
the ]>inriacles of towers, and things of that sort 
are natural conductors of lightning, my thunder- 
bolts are ever less feared. But I never think 
of being jealous about it. 

Juno. We have imperceptibly fallen into a 
moralising vein, dear Jupiter! 

Jtipiter. And morals, you think, have nothing 
to do with politics? 

Juno. Not that exactly. But I think that po- 
litics have a morals of their own, and that what 
is tiie rule of right for the subjects is not always 
so fur the nionarchs. 

Jupiter. I remember the time when I thought 
so too. It is a very convenient and pleasant 
way of thinking for kings ; but times change, 
my love ! 

Juno. If joe only remain firm, there is nothing 
to fear. 

Jupiter. Hear me, Juno! You know that I 
possess the privilege of seeing somewhat farther 
into the Future than the rest of you. Your con- 
fident tone sometimes teinpts ine to discover to 
you more than I had originally intended. 

Jmio. And what mystery may that be which 
niakes you look so serious ? 

Jupiter. Everything, dear Juno, is subject to 



the eternal law of change. The time has now 
arrived for monarchies to cease ; and (i« a lower 
tone) our own tends to its decline as well as the 
rest. It is not much to be regretted, for it was 
only patchwork after all. 

Juno. You speak as in a dream, Jupiter. 

Jupiter. First reigned Uranus and Gaia; then 
came the kingdoin of Saturn ; this gave place to 
mine; and now — 

Juno. And now? You do not mean to abdi- 
cate your kingdom in favour of the National 
Assembly at Paris, do you? 

Jupiter. And now the kingdom of Nemesis 
has come ! 

Juno. The kingdom of Nemesis? 

Jupiter. The kingdom of Nemesis! So I am 
assured by a primeval oracle long forgotten hj 
gods and men, which Themis uttered whiU 
still in possession of the Delphian soil, and 
which I recall again in these days. 

"When after long revolving centuries," says 
the oracle, '-there shall be a kingdom on the 
earth in which the tyranny of kings, the inso- 
lence of the great, and the oppression of the 
people keep equal pace with the cultivation of 
all the faculties of Huinanity, and both at last 
are so near their acme, that in a moment the 
eyes of all the oppressed are opened and all 
arms raised for revenge, then inexorable but 
ever just Nemesis, with her diamond bridle in 
one hand and her scale which measures with 
a hair's breadth exactness in the other, will 
descend upon the throne of Olympus to humble 
the proud, to exalt the depressed, and to exer- 
cise a strict retribution upon every sinner who 
has trampled the rights of Humanity under foot, 
and who in the intoxication of his insolence 
would acknowledge no otiier laws than the ex- 
travagant demands of his passions and his hu- 
mours. Content to reign under her, Jupiter 
himself will then be nothing inore than the 
executor of the laws which she will enact for 
the nations of the earth. An age more gohlen 
than the Saturnian will then be diffused among 
innumerable generations of better men. Uni- 
versal harmony will inake one family of them, 
and mortality will be the only difference be- 
tween the happiness of the inhabitants of earth 
and of Olympus." 

Juno, (^laughing) That sounds splendidly, Ju- 
piter! — And you believe in this fine poetic 
dream, and are resolved, as it would seem, 
with your hands in your lap, to await its fulfil- 
ment? 

Jupiter, (gravely) I am resolved to submit 
myself to the ordy Power which is above me, 
and if you would take good advice, you would 
follow my example, and quietly let come what 
must come at last, thougli we should all so for- 
get ourselves as to attempt to hinder it. 

Juno. O! certainly I shall let come what I 
can't hinder! But why therefore remain inac- 
tive? Why divest ourselves, before the time, 
of the power wbich we actually possess, to 
oblige an old oracle ? and not rather summon 



W I E L A N D. 



]f>3 



all our powers to restrain the Demon of rebel- 
lion and the rage for governing wliich has talfen 
possession of the people? I insist on my old 
Homeric Oracle : " The government of many is 
bad !'' Nations must enjoy the privileges of 
liberty under a paternal government'; nothing 
is more reasonable. But they must not attempt 
to govern themselves, they must not attempt to 
throw off the indispensable yoke of relations 
and duties, and to introduce an equality which 
is not in the nature of men or of things, and 
which makes the deluded happy in a moment 
of intoxication, only to make them more fear- 
fully sensible of their actual misery, on awak- 
ing. 

Jupiter. Be imconcerned, my best of wives ! 
Nemesis and Themis will know bow to reduce 



to the right measure what is now^ too mucn oi 
too little, too rash or too one-sided. 

Juno. I am not yet disposed to abdicate my 
.share in the government of the world to another 
I still feel courage in me to preside over my 
office myself; and if you always hold with those 
who do their duty, I promise myself your ap- 
probation. At least I have your word that you 
will not labour against me. 

Jupiter. And I swear to yon by the diamond 
bridle of Nemesis, that I will keep it as long as 
you are wise enough to bridle yourself Do as 
you think best, but do not compel me to do my 
duty, my dear ! 

Juno, ^embracing him) Let the beautiful Anti- 
nous fill you your great cup with nectar, Jupiter; 
aud take your ease. You shall be satisfied with me . 



JOHANN AUGUST MUSAUS.* 



Born 17S3. Ditd 1787. 



JoHANN August Musaus was born in the 
year 1735, at Jena, where his father then held 
the office of Judge. The quick talents, and 
kind lively temper of the boy, recommended 
hirn to the affection of his uncle, Herr Weissen- 
born, Snperintendent at Allstadt, who took him 
to his house, and treated him in all respects 
like a son. Johann was then in his ninth year: 
a few months afterwards, his uncle was pro- 
moted to the post of General Superintendent at 
Eisenach ; a change which did not alter the 
domestic condition of the nephew, though it 
replaced him in the neighbourhood of his pa- 
rents; for his father had also been transferred 
to Eisenach, in the capacity of Councillor and 
Police Magistrate. With this hospitable rela- 
tive he continued till his nineteenth year. 

Old Weissenborn had no children of his own, 
and he determined aiat his foster-child should 
have a liberal education. In due time he placed 
him at the University of Jena, as a student of 
theology. It is not likely that the inclinations 
of the youth himself had been particularly con- 
sulted in this arrangement; nevertheless he 
appears to have studied with sufficient dili- 
gence; for in the usual period of three years 
and a half, lie obtained his degree of Master, 
and what was then a proof of more than ordi- 
nary merit, was elected a member of the Ger- 
man Society. With these titles, and the 
groundwork of a solid culture, he returned to 
Eisenach, to wait for an appointment in the 
Churcii, of which he was now licentiate. 

For several years, though he preached with 
ability, and not without approval, no appoint- 
ment presented itself; and when at last a 
country living in the neighbourhood of Eisenach 
was offered him, the people stoutly resisted the 
admission of their new pastor, on the ground, 
says his Biographer, that "he had once been 
seen dancing." It may be, however, that the 
sentence of the peasants was not altogether so 
infirm as this its alleged very narrow basis 
would betoken : judging from external circuin- 
ptances, it by no means appears that devotion 

♦From Cariyle's German Bomance. 



was at any time the chief distinction of the new 
candidate; and to a simple rustic flock, his 
shining talents, unsupported by zeal, would be 
empty and unprofitable, as sounding brass or a 
tinkling cymbal. At all events, this hindrance 
closed his theological career: it came in good 
season to withdraw him from a calling, in 
which, whether willingly or unwillingly adopt- 
ed, his history must have been dishonest and 
contemptible, and his gifts could never have 
availed him. 

Musaus had now lost his profession ; but his 
resources were not limited to one department 
of activity, and he was still young enough to 
choose another. His temper was gay and kind- 
ly; his faculties of mind were brilliant, and 
had now been improved by years of steady in- 
dustry. His residence at Eisenach had not 
been spent in scrutinizing the phases of church 
preferment, or dancing attendance on patrons 
and dignitaries: he had stored his mind with 
useful and ornamental knowledge ; and from 
his remote watch-tower, his keen eye had dis- 
cerned the movements of the world, and firm 
judgments of its wisdom and its folly were 
gathering form in his thoughts. In his twenty- 
fifth year he became an author ; a satirist, and 
what is rarer, a just one. Germany, by the 
report of its enemies and lukewarm friends, is 
seldom long witliout some Idol; some author 
of superhuman endowments, some system that 
promises to renovate the earth, some science 
destined to conduct, by a north-west passage, 
to universal knowledge. At this period, the 
Brazen Image of the day was our English 
Richardson: his novels had been translated 
into German with unbounded acceptance;* and 
Grandison was figuring in many weak heads 
as the sole model of a true Christian gentle- 
man. Musaus published his German Grandi- 
son in 1760; a work of good omen as a first 
attempt, and received with greater favor than 
the popularity of its victim seemed to promise. 
It co-operated with Time in removing this spi- 

*SeP the Letters of Mela, Klopstock's lady, in Richard- 
son's Life and Correspondence, 

'154) 



MUSAUS. 



155 



ritual epidemic ; and appears to have survived 
its object, for it was reprinted in 1761. 

The success of his anonymous parody, how- 
ever gratifying to the youthful author, did not 
tempt him to disclose his name, and still less 
to think of literature as a profession. With his 
cool sceptical temper, he was little liable to 
over-estimate his talents, or the prizes set up 
for them; and he longed much less for a literary 
existence than for a civic one. In 1763, his 
wish, to a certain extent, was granted : he be- 
came Tutor of the Pages in the court of Wei- 
mar; which office, after seven punctual and 
laborious years, he exchanged for a professor- 
ship in the Gymnasium, or public school of the 
same town. He had now married; and amid 
the cares and pleasures of providing for a 
family, and keeping house like an honest 
burgher, the dreams of fame had faded still 
farther from his mind. The emoluments of 
his post were small ; but his heart was light, 
and his mind humble : to increase his income 
he gave private lessons in history and the like, 
"to young ladies and gentlemen of quality ;" 
and for several years took charge of a few 
boarders. The names of Wieland and Goethe 
had now risen on the world, while his own was 
still under the horizon : but this obscurity, en- 
joying as he did the kind esteem of all his 
many personal acquaintances, he felt to be a 
very light evil ; and participated without envy 
in whatever entertainment or instruction his 
famed contemporaries could afflird him. With 
literature he still occupied his leisure; he had 
read and reflected much; but for any public 
display of his acquirements he was making no 
preparation, and feeling no anxiety. 

After an interval of nineteen years, the ap- 
pearance of a new idol again called forth his 
iconoclastic faculty. Lavater had left his 
parsonage among the Alps, and set out on a 
cruize over Europe, in search of proselytes and 
striking physiognomies. His theories, sup- 
ported by his personal influence, and the 
honest rude ardor of his character, became 
the rage in Germany; and men, women, and 
children were immersed in promoting philan- 
thropy, and studying the human mind. Where- 
upon Musaus grasped his satirical hammer; and 
with lusty strokes, defaced and unshrined the 
false divinity. His Physiognomical Travels, 
which appeared in 1779, is still ranked by the 
German critics among the happiest productions 



of its kind in their literature; and still read for 
its wit and acuteness, and genial overflowing 
humour, though the object it attacked has long 
ago become a reminiscence. At the time of its 
publication, when everything conspired to give 
its qualities their full eifect, the applause it 
gained was instant and general. The author 
had, as in the former case, concealed his name: 
but the public curiosity soon penetrated the 
secret, which he had now no interest in keep- 
ing; and Musaus was forthwith enrolled among 
the lights of his day and generation ; and courte- 
ous readers crowded to him from far and near, 
to see his face, and pay him the tribute of their 
admiration. This unlooked-for celebrity he 
valued at its just price; continuing to live as 
if it were not; gratified chiefly in his character 
of father, at having found an honest way of 
improving his domestic circumstances, and en- 
larging the comforts of his family. The ground 
was now broken, and he was not long in digging 
deeper. 

The popular traditions of Germany, so nu- 
merous and often so impressive, had attracted 
his attention ; and their rugged Gothic vigor, 
saddened into sternness or venerable grace by 
the flight of ages, became dearer to his taste, 
as he looked abroad upon the mawkish deluge 
of Sentimentality, with which The Sorrows of 
Werter had been the innocent signal for a 
legion of imitators to drown the land. The 
spirit of German imagination seemed but ill 
represented by these tearful persons, who, if 
their hearts were full, minded little though 
their heads were empty: their spasmodic ten- 
derness made no imposing figure beside the 
gloomy strength, which might still in frag- 
ments be discerned in their distant predecessors. 
Of what has been preserved from age to age 
by living memory alone, the chance is that it 
possesses some intrinsic merit : its very exist- 
ence declares it to be adapted to some form of 
our common nature, and therefore calculated 
more or less to interest all its forms. It struck 
Musaus that these rude traditionary fragments 
might be worked anew into shape and polish, 
and transferred from the hearths of the common 
people, to the parlors of the intellectual and 
refined. He determined on forming a series of 
VoUismfihrchen, or Popular Traditionary Tales; 
a task of more originality and smaller promise 
in those days than it would be now. In tne 
collection of materials, he spared no pains; and 
despised no source of intelligence, howevei 



156 



MUSAUS. 



mean. He would call children from the street; 
become a child along with them, listen to their 
nursery tales, and reward his tiny narrators 
with a dreyer apiece. Sometimes lie assembled 
a knot of old women, with their spinning- 
wheels, about him; and amid the hum of their 
industrious implements, gathered stories of the 
ancient time from the lips of the garrulous 
sisterhood. Once his wife had been out pay- 
ing visits: on opening the parlor door at her 
return, she was met by a villanous cloud of 
tobacco-smoke ; and venturing forward through 
the haze, she found her husband seated by the 
stove, in company with an old soldier, who was 
smoking vehemently on his black stump of 
pipe, and charming his landlord, between whifFs, 
with legendary lore. 

The Vnlksmahrchen, in five little volumes, 
appeared in 1782. They soon rose into favor 
with a large class of readers; and while many 
generations of novels have since that time been 
ushered into being, and conducted out of it, 
they still survive, increasing in popularity ra- 
ther than declining. This pre-eminence is 
owing less to the ancient materials, than to 
the author's way of treating them. The pri- 
mitive tradition often serves him only as a 
vehicle for interesting description, shrewd sar- 
castic speculation, and gay fanciful pleasantry, 
extending its allusions over all things past and 
present, now rising into comic humor, now 
sinking into drollery, often tasteless, strained, 
or tawdry, but never dull. The traces of poetry 
and earnest imagination, here and there dis- 
cernible in the original fiction, he treats with 
levity and kind sceptical derision: nothing is 
required of the reader but what all readers are 
prepared to give. Since the publication of this 
work, the subject of popular tradition has been 
handled to triteness; Vnlkswdhrchen have been 
written and collected without stint or limit; 
and critics, in admitting that Musaus was the 
first to open this mine of entertainment, have 
lamented the incongruity between his subject 
and his style. But the faculty of lauffhing has 
been given to all men, and the feeling of 
imaginative beauty has oeen given only to a 
few : the lovers of primeval poetry, in its un- 
adulterated state, may censure Musaus; but 
Ihey join witn the public at large in reading 
him. 

This book of Vnlksmdhrchen established the 
ciiaracter of its author for wit and general 



talent, and forms the chief support of his repu 
tation with posterity. A few years after, he 
again appeared before the public with a humor- 
ous performance, entitled. Friend Hein's Ap- 
paritions, in the style of Holberg, printed in 
1785. Friend Hein is a name under which 
Musaus, for what reason his commentator Wie- 
land seems unable to inform us, usually personi- 
fies Death : the essay itself, which I have never 
seen, may be less irreverent and offensive to 
pious feeling than its title indicates, and it is 
said to abound with " wit, humor, and know- 
ledge of life," as much as any of his former 
works. He had also begun a second series of 
Tales, under the title of Strnussfeilern (Os- 
trich-feathers): but only the first volume had 
appeared, when death put a period to his labors. 
He had long been in weakly health : often 
afflicted with violent head-aches: his disorder 
was a polypus of the heart, which cut him off 
on the 28th of October 1787, in the fifty-second 
year of his age. The Slraussfedern was com- 
pleted by another hand ; and a small volume 
of i?emo?ns, edited by Kotzebue in 1791, con- 
cludes the list of his writings. A simple but 
tasteful memorial, we are told, was erected 
over his grave by some unknown friend. 

Musaus was a practical believer in the Ho- 
ratian maxim, Nil admirari : of a jovial heart, 
and a penetrating, well-cultivated understand- 
ing, he saw things as they were, and had little 
disposition or aptitude to invest them with any 
colors but their own. Without much effort, 
therefore, he stood aloof from every species of 
cant; and was the maq he thought himself, 
and wished others to think him. Had his tem- 
per been imsocial and melancholic, such a creed 
might have rendered him spiteful, narrow, and 
selfish: but nature had been kinder to him than 
education ; he did not quarrel with the world, 
though he saw its barrenness, and knew not 
how to make it solemn any more than lovely; 
for his heart was gay and kind, and an imper- 
turbable good-humor, more potent than a pano- 
ply of brass, defended him from the stings and 
arrows of outrageous Fortune to the end of his 
pilgrimage. Few laughers have walked so 
circumspectly, and acquired or merited so much 
affection. By profession a Momus, he looked 
upon the world as little else than a boundless 
Chase, where the wise were to recreate them- 
selves with the hunting of Follies; and perhaps 
he is the only satirist on record of whom it can 



MUSAUS. 



157 



be said, that his jesting never cost hitn a friend. 
His humor is, indeed, untinctured with bitter- 
ness; sportful, ebullient, and guileless, as the 
frolics of a child. He could not reverence men ; 
but with all their faults he loved them; for 
they were his brethren, and their faults were 
not clearer to him than his own. He inculcated 
or entertained no lofty principles of generosity ; 
yet though never rich in purse, he was always 
ready to divide his pittance with a needier fel- 
low-man. Of vanity, he showed little or none : 
in obscurity he was contented ; and when his 
honors came, he wore them meekly, and was 
the last to see that they were merited. In 
society he was courteous and yielding; a uni- 
versal favorite ; in his chosen circle, the most 
fascinating of companions. From the slenderest 
trifle, he could spin a boundless web of drollery ; 
and his brilliant mirth enlivened without wound- 
ing. With the foibles of others, he abstained 
from meddling; but among his friends, we are 
informed, he could for hours keep the table in 
a roar, when, with his dry inimitable vein, he 
started some banter on himself or his wife, 
and, in trustful abandonment, laid the reins on 
the neck of his fancy to pursue it. Without 
enthusiasm of character, or any pretension to 
high or even earnest qualities, he was a well- 
conditioned, laughter-loving, kindly man ; led 
a gay, jestful lite; conquering by contentment 
and mirth of heart, the long series of difficulties 
and distresses with which it assailed him; and 
died regretted by his nation, as a forwarder of 
harmless pleasure; and by those that knew him 
better, as a truthful, unassuming, affectionate, 
and, on the whole, very estimable person. 

His intellectual character corresponds with 
his moral and social one ; not high or glorious, 
but genuine so far as it goes. He does not 
approach the first rank of writers; he attempts 
not to deal with the deeper feelings of the 
heart ; and for instructing the judgment, he 
ranks rather as a sound, well-informed, com- 
mon-sense thinker, than as a man of high wis- 
dom or originality. He advanced few new 
truths, but he dressed many old ones in sprightly 
apparel ; and it ought to be remembered, that 
he kept himself unspotted from the errors of 
his time; a merit which posterity is apt to un- 
derrate; for nothing seems more stolid than a 
past delusion; and we forget that delusions, 
destined also to be past, are now present with 
ourselves, about us and within us, which, were 



the task so easy, it is pity that we do not forth- 
with convict and cast away. Musaus had a 
quick vigorous intellect, a keen eye for the 
common forms of the beautiful, a fancy ever 
prompt with allusions, and an overflowing store 
of sprightly and benignant humor. These na- 
tural gifts he had not neglected to cultivate by 
study both of books and things ; his reading 
distinguishes him even in Germany; nor does 
he bear it about him like an ostentatious burden, 
but in the shape of spiritual strength and plenty 
derived from it. As an author, his beauties and 
defects are numerous and easily discerned. His 
style sparkles with metaphors, sometimes just 
and beautiful, often new and surprising; but it 
is laborious, unnatural, and difl^use. Of his 
humor, his distinguishing gift, it may be re- 
marked, that it seems copious rather than fine, 
and originates rather in the understanding than 
in the character: his heart is not delicate, or 
his affections tender ; but he loves the ludicrous 
with true passion ; and seeing keenly, if he 
feels obtusely, he can choose v/ith sufficient 
skill the point of view from which his object 
shall appear distorted, as he requires it. This 
is the humor of a Swift or a Voltaire, but not 
of a Cervantes, or even of a Sterne in his best 
passages ; it may produce a Zadig or a Battle 
of the Books; but not a Don Quixote or a 
Corporal Trim. Musaus is, in fact, no poet ; 
he can see, and describe with rich graces what 
he sees; but he is nothing, or very little, of a 
maker. His imagination is not powerless : it 
is like a bird of feeble wing, which can fly from 
tree to tree ; but never soars for a moment into 
the Ether of Poetry, to bathe in its serene 
splendor, with the region of the Actual lying far 
below, and brightened into beauty by radiance 
not its own. He is a man of fine and varied 
talent, but scarcely of any genius. 

These characteristics are apparent enough 
in his Popular Tales ; they may be traced even 
in the few specimens of that work, by which he 
is now introduced to the English reader. As 
has been already stated, his Volksmuhrchen 
exhibit himself much better than his subject. 
He is not admitted by his critics to have seized 
the finest spirit of this species of fiction, or 
turned it to the account of which it is capable 
in other hands. Whatever was austere or 
earnest, still more, whatever bordered upon 
awe or horror, his riant fancy rejected with 
aversion : the rigorous moral sometimes liid in 
these traditions, the grim lines of primeval feel- 
14 



108 



MUSAUS. 



ing and imagination to be traced in them, had 
no charms for him. These ruins of the remote 
time he has not attempted to complete into a 
perfect edifice, according to the first simple 
plan ; he has rather pargetted them anew, and 
decorated them with the most modern orna- 
ments and furniture ; and he introduces his 
guests, with a roguish smile at the strange, 
antic contrast they are to perceive between tiie 
movable-s and the apartment. Sometimes he 
rises into a flight of simple eloquence, and for 
a sentence or two, seems really beautiful and 
affecting; but the knave is always laughing in 
his sleeve at our credulity, and returns with 
double relish to riot at will in his favorite do- 
main. 

Of the three Tales* here offered to the reader, 
nothing need be said in explanation; for their 
whole significance, with all their beauties and 

*Oiily one is given in this volume. —Ed. 



blemishes, lies very near the surface. I have 
selected them, as specimens at once of his man- 
ner and his materials, in the hope that, convey- 
ing some impression of a gifted and favorite 
writer, they may furnish a little entertainment 
both to the lovers of intellectual novelty, and 
of innocent amusement. To neither can I pro- 
mise very much : Musaus is a man of sterling 
powers, but no literary monster ; and his Tales, 
though smooth and glittering, are cold ; they 
have beauty, yet it is the beauty not of living 
forms, but of well-proportioned statues. Mean- 
while, I have given him as I found him, endea- 
voring to copy faithfully; changing nothing, 
whether I miglit think it good or bad, that my 
skill enabled me to keep unchanged. With all 
drawbacks, I anticipate some favor for him: 
but his case admits no pleading; being clear 
by its own light, it must stand or fall by a first 
judgment, and without the help of advocates. 



DUMB LOVE. 

Theiie was once a wealthy merchant, Mel- 
cliior of Bremen by name, who used to stroke 
his beard with a contemptuous grin, when he 
heard the Rich Man in the Gospel preached of, 
whom, in comparison, he reckoned little better 
than a petty shopkeeper. Meichior had money 
in such plenty, that he floored his dining-room 
all over with a coat of solid dollars. In those 
frugal times, as in our own, a certain luxury 
prevailed among the rich ; only then it had a 
move substantial shape than now. But though 
this pomp of Melchior's was sharply censured 
by his fellow-citizens and consorts, it was, in 
truth, directed more to trading speculation than 
to mere vain-glory. The cunning Brumer easily 
observed, that those who grudged and blamed 
this seeming vanity, would but diffuse the repu- 
tation of his wealth, and so increase his credit. 
He gained his purpose to the full ; the sleeping 
capital of old dollars, so judiciously set up to 
public inspection in the parlour, brought interest 
a hundred fold, by the silent surety which it 
offered for his bargains in every market ; yet, 
at last, it became a rock on which the welfare 
of his family made shipwreck. 

Meichior of Bremen died of a surfeit at a 
city-feast, witliout liaving time to set his house 
in order; and left all his goods and chattels to 
an only son, in the bloom of life, and just arrived 
at the years when the laws allowed him to 
take possession of his inheritance. Franz Mel- 
clierson was a brilliant youth, endued by nature 
•with the best capacities. His exterior was 
gracefully .<brmed, yet firm aud sinewy withal; 



his temper was cheery and jovial, as if hnng- 
beef and old French wine had joined to influ- 
ence his formation. On liis cheeks bloomed 
health; and from his brown eyes looked mirth- 
fulness and love of joy. He was like a marrowy 
plant, which needs but water and the poorest 
ground to make it grow to strength; but which, 
in too fat a soil, will shoot into luxuriant over- 
growth, witliout fruit or usefulness. The father's 
heritage, as often happens, proved the ruin of 
tlie son. Scarce had he felt the joy of being 
sole possessor and disposer of a large fortune, 
when he set about endeavouring to get rid of it 
as of a galling burden; began to play the Rich 
Man in the Gospel to the very letter; went 
clothed in fine apparel, and fared sumptuously 
everyday. No feast at the bishop's court could 
be compared for pomp and superfluity with his; 
and never while the town of Bremen shall en- 
dure, will such another public dinner be con- 
sumed, as it yearly got from him ; for to every 
burgher of the place he gave a Krusel-.sonp and 
a jug of Spanish wine. For this, all people cried : 
Long life to him ! and Franz became the hero 
of the day. 

In this unceasing whirl of joviality, no thought 
was cast upon the Balancing of Entries, which, 
in those days, was the merchant's vademecum, 
though in our times it is going out of fashion, 
and for want of it the tongue of the commercial 
beam too frequently declines with a magnetic 
virtue from the vertical position. Some years 
passed on without the joyful Franz's noticins a 
diminution in his incomes; for at his father's 
death every chest and coffer had been full. The 
voracious host of table-friends, the airy compau ' 
of jesters, gamesters, parasites, and all who ht»* 



MUSAUS. 



i59 



their living by the prodigal son, took special 
care to keep reflection at a distance from him ; 
they hurried him frojn one enjoyment to another ; 
kept him constantly in play, lest in some sober 
moment Reason miglit awake, and snatch him 
from their plurjdering claws. 

But at last their well of happiness went sud- 
denly dry; old Melchior's casks of gold were 
riow run off even to the lees. One day, Franz 
ordered payment of a large account; his cash- 
keeper was not in a state to execute the precept, 
and returned it with a protest. This counter- 
incident flashed keenly through the soul of 
Franz; yet he felt nothing else but anger and 
vexation at his servant, to whose unaccountable 
perver^ity, by nomeans to his own ill husbandry, 
he charged the present disorder in his finances. 
Nor did he give himself the trouble to investi- 
gate the real condition of the business ; but after 
flying to the common Fool's-litany, and thunder- 
ing out some scores of curses, he transmitted to 
his shoulder-shrugging steward the laconic or- 
der: Find means. 

Bill-brokers, usurers, and money-changers now 
came into play. For high interest, fresh sums 
were poured into the empty coffers ; the silver 
flooring of the dining-room was then more po- 
tent in the eyes of creditors, than in these limes 
of ours the promissory obligation of the Congress 
of America, with the whole thirteen United 
Slates to back it. This palliative succeeded for 
a season; but, underhand, the rumour spread 
about the town, that the silver flooring had been 
privily removed, and a stone one substituted in 
its stead. The matter was immediately, by 
application of the lenders, legally inquired into, 
and discovered to be actually so. Now, it could 
not be denied, that a marble-floor, worked into 
nice Mosaic, looked much better in a parlour, 
than a sheet of dirty, tarnished dollars: the 
creditors, however, paid so little reverence to 
the proprietor's refinement of taste, that on the 
spot they, one and all, demanded payment of 
their several moneys; and as this was not com- 
plied with, they proceeded to procure an act of 
bankruptcy; and Melchior's house, with its ap- 
purtenances, offices, gardens, parks, and furni- 
ture, were sold by public auction, and their late 
owner, who in this extremity had screened 
hiuiself from jail by some chicanery of law, 
judicially ejected. 

It was now too late to moralize on his ab- 
surdities, since pliilosophical reflections could 
not alter what was done, and the most whole- 
some resolutions would not bring him back his 
money. According to the principles of this our 
cultivated century, the liero at this juncture 
ought to have retired with dignity from the 
stage, or in some way terminated his existence; 
fX) have entered on his travels into foreign parts, 
or opened his carotid artery; since in his native 
town he could live no longer as a man of honour. 
Franz neither did the one nor the other. The 
qu'eii-(!ira-t-on, which French morality employs 
as bit and curb for thoughtlessness and folly. 



had never once occurred to the unbridled 
squanderer in the days of his profusion, and 
his sensibility was still too dull to feel so keenly 
the disgrace of his capricious wastefulness. He 
was like a toper, who has been in drink, and 
on awakening out of his carousal, cannot rightly 
understand how matters are or have been with 
him. He lived according to the manner of un- 
prospering spendthrifts ; repented not, lamented 
not. By good fortune, he had jiicked some relics 
from the wreck; a few small heir-looms of the 
family; and these secured him for a time from 
absolute starvation. 

He engaged a lodging in a remote alley, into 
which the sun never shone throughout the year, 
except for a few days about the solstice, when 
it peeped for a short while over the high roofs. 
Here he found the little that his now much-con- 
tracted wants required. The frugal kitchen of 
his landlord screened him from hunger, the 
stove frotn cold, the roof from rain, the four 
walls from wind ; only from the pains of tediuin 
he could devise no refuge or resource. The 
light rabble of parasites had fled away with 
his prosperity; and of his foimer friends there 
was now no one that knew him. Reading had 
not yet become a necessary of life; people did 
not yet understand the art of killing time by 
means of those amusing shapes of fancy which 
are wont to lodge in empty heads. There 
were yet no sentimental, pedagogic, psychologic, 
popular, simple, comic, or moral tales ; no novels 
of domestic life, no cloister-stories, no romances 
of the middle ages; and of the innumerable 
generation of our Henrys, and Adelaides, and 
Cliffords, and Emmas, no one had as yet lifted 
up its mantua-maker voice, to weary out the 
patience of a lazy and discerning public. In 
those days, knights were still diligently prickiVig 
round the tilt-yard; Dietrich of Bern, Hilde- 
brand, Seyfiied with the Horns, Rennewart the 
Strong, were following their snake and dragon 
hunt, and killing giants and dwarfs of twelve 
men's strength. The venerable epos, Theucr- 
dank, was the loftiest ideal of German art and 
skill, the latest product of our native wit, but 
only for the cultivated minds, the poets and 
thinkers of the age. Franz belonged to none 
of those classes, and had therefore nothing to 
employ himself upon, except that he tuned his 
lute, and sometimes twanged a little on it; then, 
by way of variation, took to looking from the 
window, and instituted observations on the 
weather; out of which, indeed, there came no 
inference a whit more edifying than from all 
the labours of the most rheumatic meteorologist 
of this present age. Meanwhile, his turn for 
observation ere long found another sort of 
nourishment, by which the vacant spa/'e in his 
head and heart was at once filled. 

In the narrow lane right opposite his win- 
dow, dwelt an honest matron, who, in hope of 
better times, was earning a painful living by 
the long threads, which, assisted by a nuir- 
vellously fair daughter, she winded daily from 



160 



MUSAUS. 



her spindle. Day after day the couple spun a 
length of yarn, with which the whole town of 
Bieuien, with its walls and trenches, and all its 
suburbs, might have been begirt. These two 
spinners had not been born for tlie wheel; they 
were of good descent, and had lived of. old in 
pleasant affluence. The fair Meta s father had 
once had a ship of his own on the sea, and, 
flighting it himself, had yearly sailed to Ant- 
werp ; but a heavy storm had sunk the vessel, 
"with man and mouse," and a rich cargo, into 
the abysses of the ocean, before Meta had 
pass-ed the years of her childhood. The mo- 
ther, a staid and reasonable woman, bore the 
loss of her husband and all her fortune with a 
wise coujposnre ; in her need she refused, out 
of noble pride, all help from the charitable sym- 
pathy of her relations and friends ; considering 
it as shameful alms, so long as she believed, 
that in her own activity she might find a living 
by the labour of her hands. She gave up her 
large house, and all her costly furniture, to the 
rigorous creditors of her ill-fated husband, hired 
a little dwelling in the lane, and span from 
early morning till late night, though the trade 
went sore against her, and she often wetted the 
thread with her tears. Yet by this diligence 
she reached her object, of depending upon no 
one, and owing no mortal any obligation. By 
and by she trained her growing daughter to the 
same employment; and lived so thriftily, that 
she laid by a trifle of her gainings, and turned 
it to account by carrying on a little trade in 
flax. 

She, however, nowise purposed to conclude 
her life in these poor circumstances; on the 
contrary, the honest daine kept up her heart 
with happy prospects into the future, and hoped 
that she should once more attain a prosperous 
situation, and in the autumn of her life enjoy 
her woman's-summer. Nor were these hopes 
grounded altogether upon empty dreams of 
fancy, but upon a rational and calculated ex- 
pectation. She saw her daughter budding up 
like a spring rose, no less virtuous and modest 
than she was fair; and with such endowments 
of heart and spirit, that the mother felt delight 
and comfort in her, and spared the morsel from 
her own lips, that nothing might be wanting in 
an education suitable to her capacities. For 
she thought, that if a maiden could come up to 
the sketch which Solomon, the wise friend of 
woman, has left of the ideal of a perfect wife, 
it could not fail that a pearl of such price would 
be sought after, and bidden for, to ornament 
some good mans house; for beauty, combined 
with virtue, in the days of Mother Brigitta, were 
as important in the eyes of wooers, as, in our 
days, birth combined with fortune. Besides, 
the numberof suitors was in those times greater ; 
it was then believed that the wife was the most 
essential, not, as in our refined economical 
theory, the most superfluous item in the house- 
liold. The fair Meta, it is true, bloomed only 
like a nrecious rare flower in the green-house, 



not under the gay, free sky; she lived ir 
maternal oversight and keeping, sequestered 
and still; was seen in no walk, in no company 
and scarcely once in the year passed through 
the gate of her native town ; all which seemed 
utterly to contradict her mother's principle. The 
old Lady E of Memel understood it other- 
wise, in her time. She sent the itinerant Sophia, 
it is clear as day, from Memel into Saxony, sim- 
ply on a marriage speculation, and attained' her 
purpose fully. How many hearts did the wan- 
dering nymph set on fire, how many suitors 
courted her ? Had she stayed at home, as a do- 
mestic modest maiden, she might have bloomed 
away in the remoteness of her virgin cell, with 
out even making a conquest of Kubbuz the 
schoolmaster. Other times, other manners. 
Daughters with us are a sleeping capital, which 
must be put in circulation if it is to yield any 
interest; of old, they were kept like thrifty 
savings, under lock and key; yet the bankers 
still knew where the treasure lay concealed, 
and how it might be come at. Mother Brigitta 
steered towards some prosperous son-in-law, 
who might lead her back from the Babylonian 
captivity of the narrow lane into die land of 
superfluity, flowing with milk and honey; and 
trusted firmly, that in the urn of Fate, her 
daughter's lot would not be coupled with a 
blank. 

One day, while neighbour Franz was look- 
ing from the window, making observations on 
the weather, he perceived the charming Meta 
coming with her mother from church, whither 
she went daily, to attend mass. In the times 
of his abundance, the unstable voluptuary had 
been blind to the fairer half of the species; the 
finer feelings were still slumbering in his breast; 
and all his senses had been overclouded by the 
ceaseless tumult of debauchery. But now the 
stormy waves of extravagance had subsided ; 
and in this deep calm, the smallest breath of 
air sufficed to curl the mirror surface of his 
soul. He was enchanted by the aspect of this, 
the loveliest lemale figure that had ever flitted 
past him. He abandoned from that hour th 
barren study of the winds and clouds, and now 
instituted quite another set of Observations foi 
the furtherance of Moral Science, and one 
which aflbrded to himself much finer occupa- 
tion. He soon extracted from his landlord in 
telligence of this fair neighbour, and learned 
most part of what we know already. 

Now rose on him the first repentant though 
for his heedless squandering; there awoke a 
secret good-will in his heart to this new ac 
quaintance; and for her sake he wished that 
his paternal inheritance were his own again, 
that the lovely Meta might be fitly dowered 
with it. His garret in the narrow lane was 
now so dear to him, that he would not have 
exchanged it with the Schudding itself* 

* One of the lar/^est buililings in Bremen, where the 
mcetinjjs of the merchants are usually held. 



MUSAUS. 



16- 



Throughout the day he stirred not from the 
window, watching for an opportunity of glan- 
cing at the dear maiden ; and when she chanced 
to show herself, he felt more rapture in his 
soul than did Horrox in his Liverpool Observa- 
tory, when he saw, for the first time, Venus 
passing over the disk of the Sun. 

Unhappily the watchful mother instituted 
counter-observations, and ere long discovered 
what the lounger on the other side was driving 
at; and as Franz, in the capacity of spendthrift, 
already stood in very bad esteem with her, this 
daily gazing angered her so much, that she 
shrouded her lattice as with a cloud, and drew 
the curtains close together. Meta had the strict- 
est orders not again to appear at the window ; 
and when her mother went with her to mass, 
she drew a, rain-cap over her face, disguised 
her like a favourite of the Grand Signior, and 
hurried till she turned the corner with her, and 
escaped the eyes of the lier-in-wait. 

Of Franz, it was not held that penetration 
was his master faculty; .but Love awakens all 
the talents of the mind. He observed, that by 
his imprudent spying, he had betrayed himself; 
and he thenceforth retired from the window, 
with the resolution not again to look out at it, 
though the Venerabile itself were carried by. On 
the other hand, he meditated some invention 
for proceeding with his observations in a private 
manner ; and witliout great labour, his combin- 
ing spirit mastered it. 

He hired the largest looking-glass that he 
could find, and hung it up in his room, with 
such an elevation and direction, that he could 
distinctly see whatever passed in the dwelling 
of his neighbours. Here, as for several days 
the watcher did not come to light, the screens 
by degrees went asimder; and the broad mirror 
now and then could catch the form of the noble 
maid, and, to the great refreshment of the vir- 
tuoso, cast it truly back. The more deeply love 
took root in his heart,* the more widely did his 
wishes extend. It now struck him that he ought 
to lay his passion open to the fair Meta, and 
investigate the corresponding state of her opi- 
nions. 'J'lie commonest and readiest way which 
lovers, under such a constellation of their wishes, 
strike into, was in his position inaccessible. In 
those mo<lest ages, it was always difficult for 
Paladins in love to introduce tliemselves to 
daughters of the family; toilette calls were not 
in fashion; trustful interviews t6te-a-tete were 
punished by the loss of reputation to the female 
sharer; promenades, esplanades, masquerades, 
pic-nics, goutes, soupes, and other inventions of 
modern wit for forwarding sweet courtship, 
had not then been hit upon ; yet, notwithstand- 
ing, all things went their course, much as they 
do with us. Gossipings, weddings, lykewakes, 
were, especially in our Imperial Cities, privi- 
leged vehicles for carrying on soft secrets, and 
expediting marriage contracts; hence the old 



proverb. One wedding makes a score. But a pool 
runagate no man desired to number among his 
baptismal relatives; to no nuptial dinner, to no 
wake-snpper, was he bidden. Tlie by-way of 
negotiating, with the woman, with the young 
maid, or any other serviceable spirit of a go-be- 
tween, was here locked up. Mother Brigitta 
had neitlier maid nor woman ; the flax and 
yarn trade passed through no hands but her 
own ; and she abode by her daughter as closely 
as her shadow. 

In these circumstances, it was clearly impos- 
sible for neighbour Franz to disclose his heart 
to the fair Meta, either verbally or in wriring. 
Ere long, however, he invented an idiom, which 
appeared expressly calculated for the utterance 
of the passions. It is true, the honour of the 
first invention is not his. Many ages ago, the 
sentimental Celadons of Italy and Spain had 
taught melting harmonies, in serenades beneath 
the balconies of their dames, to speak the lan- 
guage of the heart; and it is said that this me- 
lodious pathos had especial virtue in love mat- 
ters ; and, by the confession of the ladies, was 
more heart-affecting and subduing, than of yore 
the oratory of the reverend Chrysostom, or the 
pleadings of Demosthenes and Tully. But of 
all this the simple Bremer had not heard a syl- 
lable; and, consequently, the invention of ex- 
pressing his emotions in symphonious notes, and 
trilling them to his beloved Meta, was entirely 
his own. 

In an hour of sentiment, he took his lute : he 
did not now tune it merely to accompany his 
voice, but drew harmonious melodies from its 
strings; and Love, in less than a month, had 
changed the musical scraper to a new Amphion. 
His first efforts did not seem to have been no- 
ticed ; but soon the population of the lane were 
all ear, every time the dilettante struck a note. 
Mothers hushed their children, fathers drove 
the noisy urchins from the doors, and the per- 
former had the satisfaction to observe that Meta 
herself, with her alabaster liand, would some- 
times open the window as he began to prelude. 
If he succeeded in enticing her to lend an ear, 
his voluntaries whirled along in gay allegro, or 
skipped away in niirthl'ul jigs; but if the turn- 
ing of the spindle, or her thrifty mother, kept 
her back, a heavy-laden andante rolled over the 
bridge of the sighing lute, and expressed, in 
languishing modulations, the feeling of sadness 
which love-pain poured over his soul. 

Meta was no dull scholar; she soon learned 
to interpret this expressive speech. She made 
various experiments to try whether she had 
rightly understood it, and found that she could 
govern at her will the dilettante humours of the 
unseen lute - twanger ; for your siletit modest 
maidens, it is well known, have a much sharper 
eye than those giddy flighty girls, who hurry 
with the levity of butterflies from one object tc' 
another, and take proper heed of none. She 
felt her female vanity a little flattered ; and i 
pleased her that she had it in her power, by .1 
14* 



1G2 



M US A US. 



secret magic, to direct the neighbouring lute, 
and tune it now to the note of joy, now to the 
■whimpering moan of grief Mother Brigitta. 
on the other hand, had her head so constantly 
employed with her traffic on the small scale, 
that she minded none of these things; and the 
sly little daughter took especial care to keep her 
in the dark respeetmg the discovery; and, in- 
stigated either by some toucli of kindness for 
her cooing neighbour, or perhaps by vanity, that 
she might show her hermeneiitic penetration, 
meditated on the means of making some sym- 
bolical response to these harmonious apostrophes 
to her heart. She expressed a wish to have 
flower-pots on the outside of the window ; and 
to grant her this innocent amusement was a 
light thing for the mother, who no longer feared 
the coney-catching neighbour, now that she no 
longer saw him with her eyes. 

Henceforth Mela hail a frequent call to tend 
her flowers, to water them, to bind them up, 
and guard them from approaching storms, and 
watch their growth and flourishing. With in- 
expressible tlelight the happy Franz explained 
this hieroglyphic altogether in his favour; and 
the speaking lute did not fail to modulate his 
glad emotions, through the alley, into the heed- 
ful ear of the fair friend of flowers. This, in 
her tender virgin heart, worked wonders. She 
began to be secretly vexed, when Mother Bri- 
gitta, in her wise table-talk, in which at times 
she spent an hour chatting with her daughter, 
brought their melodious neighbour to her bar, 
and called him a losel and a sluggard, or com- 
pared him with the Prodigal in the Gospel. 
She always tpok his part; threw the blame of 
his ruin on the sorrowful temptations he had 
met with ; and accused him of nothing worse 
than not liaving fitly weighed the golden pro- 
verb, Ji -penny saved is a penny got. Yet she de- 
fended him with cunning prudence; so that it 
rather seemed as if she wished to help the conver- 
sation, than took any interest in the thing itself 

While Mother Brigitta within her four walls 
was inveighing against the luckless spendthrift, 
he on his side entertained the kindest feelings 
towards her; and was considering diligently 
how he might, according to his means, improve 
her straitened circumstances, and divide with 
her the little that remained to him, and so that 
she might never notice that a portion of his pro- 
perty had passed over into hers. This pious 
outlay, in good truth, was specially intended not 
for the mother, but the daughter. Underhand 
he had come to know, that the fair Meta had a 
liatd<ering for a new gown, which her mother 
had excused herself from buying, under pretext 
of hard times. Yet he judged quite accurately, 
that a present of a piece of stuft', from an un- 
known hand, would scarcely be received, or 
cut into a dress for Meta; and that he should 
spoil all, if he slept forth and avowed himself 
the author of the benefaction. Chance afforded 
him an opportunity to realize this purpose in 
the way he wished. 



Mother Brigitta was complaining to a neigh- 
bour, that flax was very dull; that it cost hei 
more to purchase than the buyers of it would 
repay; and that hence this branch of industry 
was nothing better, for the present, than a 
withered bough. Eaves-dropper Franz did not 
need a second telling; he ran directly to the 
goldsmith, sold his mother's ear-rings, bought 
some stones of flax, and, by means of a negoti- 
atress, whom he gained, had it offered to the 
mother for a cheap price. The bargain was 
concluded; and it yielded so richly, that on 
All-Saints' day the fair Meta sparkled in a 
fine new gown. In this decoration she had 
such a splendour in her watchful neighbour's 
eyes, that he would have overlooked the 
Eleven Thousand Virgins, all and sundry, had 
it been permitted him to choose a hearts-mate 
from among them, and fixed upon the charm- 
ing Meta. 

But just as he was triumphing in the result 
of his innocent deceit, the secret was betrayed. 
Mother Brigitta had resolved to do the flax- 
retailer, who had brought her that rich gain, a 
kindness in her turn; and was treating her 
with a well-sugared rice-pap, and a quarter- 
stoop of Spanish sack. This dainty set in mo- 
tion not only the toothless jaw, but also the 
garrulous tongue of the crone : she engaged to 
continue the flax-brokerage, should her con- 
signer feel inclined, as from good grounds she 
guessed he would. One word produced an- 
other; Mother Eve's two daughters searched, 
with the curiosity peculiar to their sex, till at 
length the brittle seal of female secresy gave 
way. Meta grew pale with affright at the dis- 
covery, which would have charmed her, had 
her mother not partaken of it. But she knew 
her strict ideas of morals and decorum ; and 
these gave her doubts about the preservation of 
her gown. The serious dame herself was no 
less struck at the tidings, and wished, on her 
side too, that she alone had got intelligence of 
the specific nature of her flax-trade; for she 
dreaded that this neighbourly munificence might 
make an impression on her daughter's heart, 
which would derange her whole calculations. 
She resolved, therefore, to root out the still ten- 
der germ of this weed, in the very act, from the 
maiden heart. The gown, in spite of all the 
tears and prayers of its lovely owner, was first 
hypothecated, and next day transmitted to tlie 
huckster's shop ; the money raised from it, with 
the other profits of the flax speculation, accurate- 
ly reckoned up, were packed together, and un- 
der the name of an old debt, returned to " Mr. 
Franz Melcherson, in Bremen,'' by help of the 
Hamburg post. The receiver, nothing doubting, 
took the little lot of money as an unexpected 
blessing; wished that all his father's debtors 
would clear off' their old scores as conscientious- 
ly as this honest unknown person; and had not 
the smallest notion of the real position of aff"airs. 
The talking brokeress, of course, was far from 
giving him a true disclosure of her blabbing; 



MUSAUS. 



163 



she merely told him, that Mother Brigitta liad 
given up her flax-trade. 

Meanwhile, the mirror taught him, tliat the 
aspects over the way had altered greatly in a 
single night. The flower-pots were entirely 
vanished ; and the clondy veil again obscured 
the friendly horizon of the opposite window. 
Meta was seldom visible; and if for a moment, 
like the silver moon from among her clouds in 
a stormy night, she did appear, her countenance 
was troubled, the fire of her eyes was ex- 
tinguished, and it seemed to him, that, at times, 
with her finger, she pressed away a pearly 
tear. This seized him sharply by the heart; 
and his lute resounded melancholy sympathy in 
soft Lydian mood. He grieved, and meditated 
to discover why his love was sad ; but all his 
thinking and imagining were vain. After some 
days were past, he noticed, to his consternation, 
that his dearest piece of furniture, the large 
mirror, had become entirely useless. He set 
himself one bright morning in liis usual nook, 
and observed that the clouds over the way had, 
like natural fog, entirely dispersed ; a sign which 
he at first imputed to a general washing; but 
ere long he saw that, in the chamber, all was 
waste and empty; his pleasing neighbours had 
in silence withdrawn the night before, and 
broken up their quarters. 

He might now, once more, with the greatest 
leisure and convenience, enjoy the free prospect 
from his window, without fear of being trouble- 
some to any ; but for him, it was a dead loss to 
miss the kind countenance of his Platonic love. 
Mute and stupified, he stood, as of old his fel- 
low-craftsman, the harmonious Orpheus, when 
the dear shadow of his Eurydice again vanish- 
ed down to Orcus; and if the bedlam humour 
of those "noble minds," who raved among us 
through the by-gone lustre, but have now like 
drones disappeared with the earliest frost, had 
then been ripened to existence, tliis calm of his 
would certainly have passed into a sudden hur- 
ricane. The least he could have done, would 
have been to pull his hair, to trundle himself 
about upon the ground, or run his head against 
the wall, and break his stove and window. All 
this he omitted; from the very simple cause, 
that true love never makes men fools, but rather 
is the universal remedy for healitjg sick minds 
of their foolishness, for laying gentle fetters on 
extravagance, an<l guiding youthful giildiness 
from tlie broad way of ruin to the narrow path 
of reason ; for the rake whom love will not re- 
cover, is lost irrecoverably. 

When once his spirit had assembled its scat- 
tered powers, he set on foot a number of in- 
structive meditations on the unexpected pheno- 
menon, but t03 visible in the adjacent horizon. 
He readily conceived that he was the lever 
which had effected the removal of the wander- 
ing colony: his money-letter, the abrupt conclu- 
sion of the flax-trade, and the emigration which 
had followed thereupon, were like reciprocal 
exponents to each other, and explained the 



whole to him. He perceived that Mother 
Brigitta had got round his secrets, and saw from 
every circumstance that he was not her hero ; 
a discovery which yielded him but little satis- 
faction. The symbolic responses of the fair 
Meta, with her flowev-pots, to his musical pro- 
posals of love; her trouble, and the tear which 
he had noticed in her bright eyes shortly before 
her departure from the lane, again animated 
his hopes, and kept him in good heart. His 
first employment was to go in quest, and try to 
learn where Mother Brigitta had pitched her 
residence, in order to maintain, by some means 
or other, his secret understanding with the 
daughter. It cost him little toil to find her 
abode; yet he was too modest to shift his own 
lodging to her neighbourhood ; but satisfied 
himself with spying out the church where she 
now attended mass, that he might treat himself 
once each day with a glance of his beloved. 
He never failed to meet her as she returnetl, 
now here, now there, in some shop or door 
which she was passing, and salute her kindly; 
an equivalent for a billet-doux, rnd productive 
of the same effect. 

Had not Meta been brought up in a style too 
nun-like, and guarded by her rigid mother as a 
treasure, from the eyes of thieves, there is little 
doubt that neighbour Franz, with his secret 
wooing, would have made no great impression 
on her heart. But she was at the critical age, 
when Mother Nature and Mother Brigitta, with 
their wise nurture, were perpetually coming 
into collision. The former taught her, by a 
secret instinct, the existence of emotions, for 
which she had no name, and eulogized them as 
the panacea of life; the latter warned her to 
beware of the surprisals of a passion, which 
she would not designate by its true title, but 
which, as she maintained, was more pernicious 
and destructive to young maidens than the 
small-pox itself. The former, in the spring of 
life, as beseemed the season, enlivened her 
heart with a genial warmth ; the latter wished 
that it should always be as cold and frosty as 
an ice-house. These conflicting pedagogic sys 
tems of the two good mothers, gave the tract- 
able heart of the daughter the direction of a 
ship, which is steered against the wind, and 
follows neither the wind nor the helm, but a 
course between the two. She maintained the 
modesty and virtue which her education, from 
her youth upwards, had impressed upon her; 
but her heart continued open to all tender feel- 
ings. And as neighbour Franz was the first 
youth who had awakened these slumbering 
emotions, she took a certain pleasure in him, 
which she scarcely owned to herself, but which 
any less unexperienced maiden would have re- 
cognised as love. It was for this that her de- 
parture from the narrow lane had gone so near 
her heart ; for this that the little tear had trickled 
from her beautiful eyes; for this that, when the 
watchful Franz saluted her as she came from 
church, she thanked him so kindly, and grew 



164 



MUSAUS. 



scarlet to the ears. The lovers had in truth 
never spoken any v/ord to one another ; but he 
understood her, and she him, so perfectly, that 
in the most secret intervievv' they could not have 
explained themselves more clearly; and both 
contracting parties swore in their silent hearts, 
each for himself, under the seal of secresy, the 
oath of faithfulness to the other. 

In the quarter, where Mother Brigitta had 
now settled, there were likewise neighbours, 
and among these likewise girl-spiers, whom the 
beauty of the charming Meta had not escaped. 
Right opposite tlieir dwelling, lived a wealthy 
Brewer, whom the wags of the part, as he was 
strong in means, had named the Hop-King. He 
v.'as a young, stout widower, whose mourning 
/ear was just concluding, so that now he was 
entitled, without offending the precepts of de- 
corum, to look about him elsewhere for a new 
lielpmate to his household. Shortly after the 
departure of his whilom' wife, he had in secret 
entered into an engagement with his Patron 
Saint, St. Christopher, to offer him a wax-taper 
as long as a hop-pole, and as thick as a mash- 
ing-beara, if he would vouchsafe in this second 
choice to prosper the desire of his heart. 
Scarcely had he seen the dainty Meta, when 
he dreamed that St. Christopher looked in upon 
him, through the window of his bed-room in 
the second story,* and demanded payment of 
his debt. To the quick widower this seemed 
a heavenly call to cast out the net without de- 
lay. Early in the morning he sent for the 
brokers of the town, and commissioned them 
to buy bleached wax ; then decked himself like 
a Syndic, and set forth to expedite his marriage 
speculation. He had no musical talents, and 
in the secret symbolic language of love he was 
no better than a blockhead ; but he had a rich 
brewery, a solid mortgage on the city-revenues, 
a ship on the Weser, and a farm without the 
gates. With such recommendations, he might 
have reckoned on a prosperous issue to his 
courtship, independently of all assistance from 
St. Kit, especially as his bride was without 
dowry. 

According to old use and wont, he went 
directly to the master hand, and disclosed to 
the mother, in a kind neighbourly way, his 
christian intentions towards her virtuous and 
honourable daughter. No angel's visit could 
have charmed the good lady more than these 
glad tidings. She now saw ripening before 
her the fruit of her prudent scheme, and the 
lullilment of her hope again to emerge from 
her present poverty into her former abundance; 
she blessed the good thought of moving from 
the crooked alley, and in the first ebullition of 
her joy, as a thousand gay ideas were ranking 
themselves up within her soul, she also thought 

* St. Christopher never appears to liis favourites, like 
the oilier Sairils. in a solitary room, encircled with a 
glory : there is no room hi'jh enouah to admit him ; (hiis 
the celesti."l Son of Aiiak is obliged to transact all busi- 
f.css with his wards outside the window. 



of neighbour Franz, who had given occasion to 
it. Though Franz was not exactly her bosom- 
youth, she silently resolved to gladden him, as 
the accidental instrument of her rising star, 
with some secret gift or other, and by this 
means likewise recompense his well-intended 
flax-dealing. 

In the maternal heart the marriage-articles 
were as good as signed ; but decorum did not 
permit these rash proceedings in a matter of 
such moment. She therefore let the motion lie 
ad referendum, to be considered by her daughter 
and herself; and appointed a term of eight days, 
after which "she hoped she should have it in 
her power to give the much-respected suitor a 
reply that would satisfy him;'" all which, as the 
common manner of proceeding, he took in good 
part, and with his usual civilities withdrew. 
No sooner had he turned his back, tlian spin- 
ning-wheel and reel, swingling-stake and hat- 
chel, without regard being paid to their faithful 
services, and without accusation being lodged 
against them, were consigned, like some luck- 
less Parliament of Paris, to disgrace, and dis- 
missed as useless implements into the lumber- 
room. On returning from mass, Meta was 
astonished at the sudden catastrophe which had 
occurred in the apartment; it was all decked 
out as on one of the three high Festivals of the 
year. She could not understand how her thrifty 
mother, on a work-day, had so neglectfully put 
her active hand in her bosom ; but before she 
had time to question the kindly-smiling dame 
concerning this reform in household affairs, she 
was favoured by the latter with an explanation 
of the riddle. Persuasion rested on Brigitta's 
tongue ; and there flowed from her lips a stream 
of female eloquence, depicting the offered hap- 
piness in the liveliest hues which her imagina- 
tion could lay on. She expected from the chaste 
Meta the blush of soft virgin baslifulness, which 
announces the noviciate in love; and then a 
full resignation of herself to the maternal will. 
For of old, in proposals of marriage, daughters 
were situated as onr princesses are still ; they 
were not asked about their inclination, and had 
no voice in the selection of their legal helpmate, 
save the Yes before the altar. 

But Mother Brigitta was in this point widely 
mistaken ; the fair Meta did not at the unex- 
pected announcement grow red as a rose, but 
pale as ashes. An hysterical giddiness swam 
over her brain, and she sank fainting in her 
mother's arms. When her senses were recalled 
by the sprinkling of cold water, and she had in 
some degree recovered strength, her eyes over- 
flowed with tears, as if a heavy misfortune had 
befallen her. From all these symptoms, the 
sagacious inother easily perceived that the mar- 
riage-trade was not to her taste; at which she 
wondered not a little, sparing neither prayers 
nor admonitions to her daughter to secure her 
happiness by this good match, not flout it from 
her by caprice and contratliction. But Meta 
could not be persuaded that her happiness de- 



MUSAUS. 



165 



pended on a match to which her heart gave no 
assent. The debates between the mother and 
tiie daughter lasted several days, from early 
morning to late night: the term for decision 
was approaching; the sacred taper for St. Chris- 
topher, whicli Og King of Bashan need not 
have disdained had it been lit for him as a 
marriage torch at his espousals, stood in readi- 
ness, all beautifully painted with living flowers 
like a many-coloured light, though the Saint had 
all the while been so inactive in his client's 
cause, that the fair Meta's heart was still bolted 
and barred agaiust him fast as ever. 

Meanwhile she liad bleared her eyes with 
weeping, and the maternal rhetoric had worked 
so powerfully, that, like a flower in the sultry 
heat, she was drooping together, and visibly 
■ fading away. Hidden grief was gnawing at 
her heart; she had prescribed herself a rigorous 
fast, and for three days no morsel had she eaten, 
and with no drop of water moistened her parch- 
ed lips. By night sleep never visited her eyes; 
and with all this she grew sick to death, and 
began to talk about extreme unction. As the 
tender mother saw the pillar of her hope waver- 
ing, and bethought herself that she might lose 
both cajrital and interest at once, she found, on 
accurate consideration, that it would be more 
advisable to let the latter vanish, tl-.an to miss 
them both ; and with kindly indulgence plied 
into the daughter's will. It cost her much con- 
straint, indeed, and many hard battles, to turn 
away so advantageous an offer; yet at last, 
according to established or<ier in household 
governments, she yielded unconditionally to the 
inclination of her child, and remonstrated no 
more with her beloved patient on the subject. 
As the stout widower announced himself on 
the appointed day, in the full trust that his 
heavenly deputy had arranged it all according 
to his wish, he received, quite unexpectedly, a 
negative answer, which, however, was sweet- 
ened with sucli a deal of blandishment, that he 
swallowed it like wine-of-vvormwood mixed 
M'ith sugar. For the rest, he easily accommo- 
dMted himself to his destiny; and discomposed 
himself no more about it, than if some bargain 
for a ton of malt had chanced to come to no- 
thing. Nor, on the whole, had he any cause to 
soirow without hope. His native town has 
never wanted amiable daughters, who come up 
to the Solomonic sketch, and are ready to make 
perfect spouses; besides, notwithstanding this 
unprospered courtship, he depended with firm 
confidence upon his Patron Saint; who in fact 
did him such substantial service elsewhere, that 
ere a month elapsed, he had planted, with much 
})(jmp, his devoted taper at the friendly shrine, 

Miither Brigitta was now fain to recall the 
exiled spinning-tackle from its lumber-room, 
and again set it in action. AH once more went 
its usual course. Mota soon bloomed out anew, 
was active in business, and diligenily went to 
mass; hut the mother could not hi<le her secret 
grudging at the failure of her hopes, and the 



annihilation of her darling plan ; she was sple- 
netic, peevish, and dejected. Her ill-humour 
had especially the upper hand thafday when 
neighbour Hop-King held his nuptials. As the 
wedding-company proceeded to the church, with 
the town-band bedrumniing aiul becymballing 
them in the van, she whimpered and sobbed as 
in the evil hour when the Job's-news reached 
lier, tliat the wild sea had devoured her hus- 
band, with ship and fortime. Meta looked at 
the bridal-pomp with great equanimity; even 
the royal ornaments, the jewels in the myrtle- 
crown, and the nine strings of true pearls about 
the neck of the bride, made no impression on 
her peace of mind; a circumstance in some 
degree surprising, since a new Paris cap, or any 
other meteor in the gallery of Mode, will so 
frequently derange the contentment and domes- 
tic peace of an entire parish. Nothing but the 
heart-consuming sorrow of her mother discom- 
posed her, and overclouded the gay look of her 
eyes ; she strove by a thousand qaresses and 
little attentions to work herself into favour ; and 
she so far succeeded that the good lady grew a 
little more communicative. 

In the evening, when the wedding-dance be- 
gan, she said, " Ah, child ! this merry dance it 
might have been thy part to lead ofl^. What a 
pleasure, hadst thou recompensed thy mother's 
care and toil with this joy ! But thou hast 
mocked thy happiness, and now I shall never 
see the day when I am to attend thee to the 
altar." — "Dear mother," answered Meta, "I 
confide in Heaven ; and if it is written above 
that I am to be led to the altar, you will surely 
deck my gai-'.aiid : for when the right wooer 
comes, my heart will soon say Yes." — "Child, 
for girls without dowry there is no press of 
wooers; they are heavy ware to trade with. 
Now-a-days the baclielors are mighty stingy; 
they court to be happy, not to make happy. 
Besides, thy planet bodes thee no good; thou 
wert born in April. Let us see how it is writ- 
ten in the Calendar; 'A damsel born in this 
month is comely of countenance, slender of 
shape, but of changeful humour, has a liking to 
men. Should have an eye upon her maiden 
garland, and so a laughing wooer come, not 
miss her fortune.' Alas, it answers to a hair! 
The wooer has been here, comes not again: 
thou hast missed him." — '' Ah, mother, let the 
planet say its pleasure, never mind it ; my heart 
says to me that I should love and honour the 
man who asks me to be his wife: and if I do 
not find that man, or he do not seek me, I will 
live in good courage by the labour of my hatids, 
and stand byyou, and nurse you in your old 
age, as beseems a good daughter. But if the 
man of my heart do come, then bless my choice, 
that it may be well with your daughter on tho 
Earth ; and ask not whether he is noble, rich, 
or famous, but whether he is good and honest, 
whether he loves and is loved." — "Ah, daugh- 
ter! Love keeps a sorry kitchen, and feeds one 
poorly, along with bread and salt." — " But vt 



166 



MUSAUS. 



Unity and Contentment delight to dwell with 
him, and these season bread and salt with the 
cheerful enjoyment of our days." 

The pregnant subject of bread and salt con- 
tinued to be sifted till the night was far spent, 
and the last fiddle in the wedding-dance was 
resting from its labours. The moderation of the 
prudent Meta, who, with youth and beauty on 
her side, pretended only to an altogether bounded 
happiness, after having turned away an advan- 
tageous offer, led the mother to conjecture that 
the plan of some such salt-trade might already 
have been sketched in the heart of the virgin. 
Nor did she fail to guess the trading-partner in 
the lane, of whom she never had believed that 
he would be the tree for rooting in the lovely 
Metas heart. She had looked upon him only 
as a wild tendril, that stretches out towards 
every neighbouring twig, to clamber up by means 
of it. This discovery procured her little joy ; 
but she gave no hint tliat she had made it. 
Only, in the spirit of her rigorous morality, she 
compared a maiden who lets love, before the 
priestly benediction, nestle in her heart, to a 
worm-eaten apple, which is good for the eye, 
but no longer for the palate, and is laid upon a 
shelf and no more heeded, for the pernicious 
worm is eating its internal marrow, and cannot 
be dislodged. She now despaired of ever hold- 
ing up her head again in Bremen; submitted 
to her fate, and bore in silence what she thought 
was now not to be altered. 

Meanwhile the rumour of the proud Meta's 
having given the rich Hop -King the basket, 
spread over the town, and sounded even into 
Franz's garret in the alley. Franz was trans- 
ported witli joy to hear this tale confirmed ; and 
the secret anxiety lest some wealthy rival might 
expel him from tlie dear maiden's heart tor- 
mented him no more. He was now certain of 
his object; and the riddle, which for every one 
continued an insoluVjle problem, had no mystery 
for him. Love had already changed a sjiend- 
thrift into a dilettante ; but this for a bride- 
seeker was the very smallest of recommenda- 
tions, a gift which in those rude times was re- 
warded neither with such praise nor with such 
pudding, as it is in our luxurious century. The 
fine arts were not then children of superfluity, 
but of want and necessity. No travelling pro- 
fessors were at that time known, save the Prague 
students, whose squeaking symphonies solicited 
a charitable coin at the doors of the ricli. The 
beloved maiden's sacrifice was too great to be 
repaiil by a serenade. And now the feeling of 
his youthful dissipation became a thorn in the 
soul of Franz. Many a touching monodrama 
did he begin with an O and an Ah, besighing 
his past niadni-ss: "Ah, Meta," said he to him- 
self, "why did I not know thee sooner! Thou 
hadst been myguirdian angel, thou hadst saved 
me from destruction. Could I live my lost years 
over again, and be what I was, the world were 
now Elysium for me, and for thee I would^make 
t an Eden ! Noble maiden, thou sacrificest 



thyself to a wretch, to a beggar, who has nothing 
in the world but a heart full of love, and despair 
that he can offer thee no happiness such as thou 
deservest." Innumerable times, in the parox- 
ysms of these pathetic humours, he struck his 
brow in fury, with the repentant exclamation- 
"0 fool ! O madman! thou art wise too late." 

Love, however, did not leave its working 
incomplete. It had already brought about a 
wholesome fermentation in his spirit, a desire 
to put in use his powers and activity, to try if 
he might struggle up from his present nothing- 
ness: it now incited him to the attempt of exe- 
cuting these good purposes. Among inany spe- 
culations he had entertained for the recruiting 
of his wrecked finances, the most rational and 
promising was this: To run over his father's 
ledgers, and there note down any small escheats 
which had been marked as lost, with a view 
of going through the land, and gleaning, if so 
were that a lock of wheat might still be gathered 
fro:n these neglected ears. With the produce 
of this enterprise, he would then commence 
some little traffic, which his fancy soon extended 
over all the quarters of the world. Already, in 
his mind's eye, he had vessels on the sea, which 
were freighted with his property. He proceeded 
rapidly to execute his purpose; changed the 
last golden fragment of his heritage, his father's 
hour-egg,* into money, and bought with it a 
riding nag, which was to bear him as a Bremen 
merchant out into the wide world. 

Yet the parting with his fair Meta went sore 
against his heart. "What will she think," said 
he to himself, "of this sudden disappearance, 
when thou shalt no more meet her in the 
church-way? Will she not regard thee as faith- 
less, and banish thee from her heart?'" This 
thought atflicted him exceedingly; and for a 
great while he could think of no expedient for 
explaining to her his intention. But at last in- 
ventive Love suggested the idea of signifying 
to her from the pulpit itself his absence and its 
purpose. With this view, in the church, which 
had already favoured the secret understanding 
of the lovers, he bought a Prayer "for a young 
Traveller, and the happy arrangement of his 
aiTairs;" which was to last, till he should come 
again and pay his groschen, for the Thanks- 
giving. 

At the last meeting, he had dressed himself 
as for the road; he passed quite near his sweet- 
heart; saluted her expressively, and with less 
reserve than belbre ; so that she blushed deep- 
ly ; and Mother Brigitta found opportunity for 
various marginal notes, which indicared her 
displeasure at the boldness of this ill-bred fop, 
in attempting to get speech of her daughter, and 
with which she entertained the latter not in the 
most pleasant style the live-long day. From 
that morning Franz was no more seen in Bre- 
men, and the finest pair of eyes within its cir- 

• The oldesit watches, from the shape they had, were 
named hour-ei-'gs. 



MUSAUS. 



167 



cuit sought for him in vain. Meta often lieard 
the Prayer read, but she did not heed it, for her 
heart was troubled because her lover had be- 
come invisible. This di.-iappearance was inex- 
plicable to her; she knew not what to think 
of it. After the lapse of some months, when 
time had a little softened her secret care, and 
she was suffering his absence with a calmer 
mind, it happened once, as the last appearance 
of her love was hovering upon her fancy, that 
this same Prayer struck her as a strange matter. 
She coupled one thing with another, she guessed 
the true connection of the business, and the 
meaning of that notice. And although church 
litanies and special prayers have not the repu- 
tation of extreme potency, and for the worthy 
souls that lean on them, are but a supple staff, 
inasmuch as the fire of devotion in the Christian 
flock is wont to die out at the end of the sermon ; 
yet in the pious Meta's case, the reading of the 
last Prayer was the very thing which fanned 
that fire into a flame; and she never neglected, 
with her whole heart, to recommend the young 
traveller to his guardian angel. 

Under this invisible guidance, Franz was 
journeying towards Brabant, to call in some 
considerable sums that were due him at Ant- 
werp. A journey from Bremen to Antwerp, in 
the time when road blockades were still in 
fashion, and every landlord thought himself 
entitled to plunder any traveller who had pur- 
chased no safe-conduct, and to leave him pining 
in the ward-room of his tower, v/as an under- 
taking of more peril and difficulty, than in our 
days would attend a journey from Bremen to 
Kamtschatka: for the Landfried (or Act for sup- 
pressing Private Wars), wl)ich the Emperor 
Maximilian had proclaimed, was in force 
tlirougli the Empire, rather as a law than an 
observance. Nevertheless our solitary traveller 
succeeded in arriving at the goal of his pilgrim- 
age, without encountering more than a single 
adventure. 

Far in the wastes of Westphalia, he rode one 
sultry day till nightfall, without reaching any 
inn. Towards evening stormy clouds towered 
up at the horizon, and a heavy rain wetted him 
to the skin. To the fondling, who from his 
youth had been accustomed to all possible con- 
veniences, this was a heavy matter, and he felt 
himself in great embarrassment how in this 
condition he should pass tlie night. To his com- 
fort, when the tempest had moved away, he saw 
a light in the distance; and soon after, reached 
a mean peasant hovel, which afforded him but 
little consolation. The house was more like a 
cattle-stall, than a human habitation; and the 
unfriendly landlord refused him fire and water, 
as if he had been an outlaw. For the man was 
just about to stretch himself upon the straw 
among his steers; and too lirid to relight the 
fire on his hearth, for the sake of a stranger. 
Franz in his despondency uplifted a mournful 
miserere, and cursed the Westphalian steppes 
with strong maledictions: but the peasant took 



it all in good part; and blew out his light with 
great composure, troubling himself no farther 
about the stranger; for in the laws of hospitality 
he was altogether uninstructed. But as the 
wayfarer, standing at the door, would not cease 
to annoy him with his lamentations, he en- 
deavoured in a civil way to get rid of him, con- 
sented to answer, and said: "Master, if yon 
want good entertainment, and would treat your- 
self handsomely, you could not find what you 
are seeking here. But ride there to the left 
hand, through the bushes; a little way behind, 
lies the Castle of the valiant Eberhard Bronk- 
horst, a knight who lodges every traveller, as a 
Hospitaller does the pilgrims from the Holy 
Sepulchre. He has just one maggot in his head, 
which sometimes twitches and vexes him ; he 
lets no traveller depart from him unbasted. If 
you do not lose your way, though he may dust 
your jacket, you will like your cheer prodigi- 
ously." 

To buy a mess of pottage, and a stoop of wine, 
by surrendering one's ribs to the bastinado, is 
in truth no job for every man,, though your 
spungers and plate-lickers let themselves be 
tweaked and snubbed, and from rich artists 
willingly endure all kinds of tar-and-featheiing, 
so their palates be but tickled for the service. 
Franz considered for a while, and was unde- 
termined what to do; at last he resolved on 
fronting the adventure. "What is it to me," 
said he, "whether my back be broken here on 
miserable straw, or by the Ritter Bronkhorsf? 
The friction will expel the fever which is com- 
ing on, and shake me tightly if I cannot dry my 
clothes.'- Ho put spurs to his nag, and soon 
arrived before a castle-gate of old Gothic archi- 
tecture ; knocked pretty plainly on the iron door, 
and an equally distinct "Who's there?" re- 
sounded from within. To the freezing, pas- 
senger, the long entrance ceremonial of this 
door-keeper precognition was as inconvenient, 
as are similar delays to travellers who, at bar- 
riers and gates of towns, bewail or execrate the 
despotism of guards and tollmen. Nevertheless 
he must submit to use and wont, and patiently 
wait to see whether the philanthropist in the 
Castle was disposed that night for cudgelling a 
guest, or would choose rather to assign him a 
couch under the open canopy. 

The possessor of this ancient tower had 
served, in his youth, as a stout soldier in the 
Emperor's army, under the bold Georg vou 
Fronsberg, and led a troop of foot against the 
Venetians; had afterwards retired to repose, 
and was now living on his property; where, to 
expiate the sins of his campaigns, he employed 
himself in doing good works; in feeding the 
hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, lodging 
pilgrims, and cudgelling his lodgers out of doors. 
For he was a rude wild so-n of war; and could 
not lay aside his martial tone, though he l.ad 
lived for many years in silent peace. The 
traveller, who had now determined for good 
quarters to submit to the custom of the house. 



168 



MUSAUS. 



had not waited long till the bolts and locks be- 
gan rattling within, and the creaking gate-leaves 
moved asunder, moaning in doleful notes, as if 
to warn or to deplore the entering stranger. 
Franz felt one cold shudder after the other run- 
ning down his back, as he passed in: neverthe- 
less he was handsomely received ; some servants 
hastened to assist him in dismounting; speedily 
unbuckled his luggage, took his steed to the 
stable, and its rider to a large well-lighted 
chamber, where their master was in wailing. 

The warlike aspect of this athletic gentleman, 
— who advanced to meet his guest, and shook 
him by the hand so heartily, that he was like 
to shout with pain, and bade him welcome 
with a Steutor's voice, as if the stranger had 
been deaf, and seemed withal to be a person 
still in the vigour of life, full of fire and strength, 
^put the timorous wanderer into such a terror, 
that he coidd not hide his apprehensions, and 
began to tremble over all his body. 

" What ails you, my young master," asked the 
Ritter, with a voice of thunder, " that you quiver 
like an aspen leaf, and look as pale as if Death 
had you by the throat?'' 

Franz plucked up a spirit; and considering 
that his shoulders had at all events the score to 
pay, his poltroonery passed into a species of 
audarity. 

" Sir, ' replied he, "you perceive that the rain 
has soaked me, as if 1 had swum across the 
Weser. Let me have my clothes dried or 
changeil ; and get me, by way of luncheon, a 
well-spiced aleberry, to drive away the ague-fit 
that is quaking through my nerves ; then I shall 
come to heart, in some degree." 

"Good!" replied tlie Knight; "demand what 
you want; you are at home here." 

Franz made himself be served like a bashaw ; 
and having nothing else but currying to expect, 
he determined to deserve it ; he bantered and 
bullied, in his most imperious style, the servants 
that were waiting on him ; it comes all to one, 
thought he, in the long run. "This waistcoat," 
said he, " would go round a tun ; bring me one 
that fits a little better : this slipper barns like a 
coal against my corns ; pitch it over the lists: 
this rutf is slitFas a plank, and throttles me like 
a halter; bring one that is easier, and is not 
plastered with starch." 

At tills Bremish frankness, the landlord, far 
from showing any anger, kept inciting his ser- 
vants to go briskly through with their commands, 
and calling thejii a pack of blockheads, who 
were fit to serve no stranger. The table being 
furnished, the Ritter and his guest sat down to 
it, and both heartily enjoyed their aleberry. 
The Ritter asked: "Would you have aught 
farther, by way of supper'" 

" Bring us what you have," said Franz, "that 
I may see how your kitchen is provided." 

Immediately appeared the Cook, and placed 
upon the table a repast with which a duke 
night have been satisfied. Franz diligently 
fell to, without wailing to be pressed. When 



he had satisfied himself: "Your kitchen," said 
he, "is not ill-furnished, I perceive; if your 
cellar corresponds to it, I shall almost praise 
your house-keeping." 

Bronkhorst nodded to his Butler, who directly 
filled the cup of welcome with common table 
wine, lasted, and presented it to his master, and 
the latter cleared it at a draught to the health 
of his guest. Franz pledged him honestly, and 
Bronkhorst asked : " Now, fair sir, what say you 
to the wine?" 

" I say," answered Franz, " that it is bad. if 
it is the best sort in your catacombs; and good, 
if it is your meanest number." 

" You are a judge," replied the Ritter : " Here, 
Butler, bring us of the mother-cask." 

The Butler put a stoop upon the table, as a 
sample, and Franz having tasted it, said, "Ay, 
this is genuine last year's growth ; we will stick 
by this." 

The Ritter made a vast pitcher of it be 
brought in; soon drank himself into hilarity 
and glee beside his guest; began to talk of his 
campaigns, how he had been encamped against 
the Venetians, had broken through their barri- 
cado, and butchered the Italian squadrons, like 
a flock of sheep. In this narrative he rose into 
such a warlike enthusiasm, that he hewed down 
bottles and glasses, brandishing the carving-knife 
like a lance, and in the fire of action came so 
near his messmate with it, that the latter was 
in fright fur his nose and ears. 

It grew late, but no sleep came into the eyes 
of the Ritter ; he seemed to be in his proper 
element, when he got to speak of his Venetian 
campaigns. The vivacity of his narration in- 
creased with every cup he emptied ; and Franz 
was afraid that this would prove the prologue 
to the melodrama, in which he himself was to 
play the most interesting part. To learn whe- 
ther it was meant that he should lodge within 
the Castle, or without, he demanded a bumper 
by way of good-night. Now, he thought, his 
host would first force him to drink more wine, 
and if he refused, would, under pretext of a 
drinking quarrel, send him forth, according to 
the custom of the house, with the usual viaticum. 
Contrary to bis expectation, the request was 
granted without remonstrance ; the Ritter in- 
stantly cut asunder the thread of his narrative, 
and said : "Time will wait on no one; more of 
it to-morrow!" 

"Pardon me, Herr Ritter," answered Franz 
"to-morrow by sunrise I must over hill and 
dale; I am travelling a far journey to Brabant, 
and must not linger here. So let me take leave 
of you to-night, that my departure may not dis- 
turb you in the morning." 

"Uo your pleasure," said the Ritter; "but 
depart from this you shall not, till I am out of 
the feathers, to refresh you with a bit of bread, 
and a toothful of Dantzig, then attend you to 
the door, and dismiss you according to the 
fashion of the house." 

Franz needed no interpretation of these 



MUSAUS. 



169 



worcis. Willingly as he would have excused 
his host this last civility, attendance to the door, 
the latter seemed determined to abate no whit 
of the established ritual. He ordered his ser- 
vants to undress the stranger, and put him in 
the guest's-bed ; where Franz, once settled on 
elastic swan's-down, felt hiinself extremely 
snug, and enjoyed delicious rest; so that ere he 
fell asleep, he owned to himself that, for such 
royal treatment, a moderate bastinado was not 
too dear a price. Soon pleasant dreams came 
liovering round his fancy. He found liis charm- 
ing jVIeta in a rosy grove, where she was walk- 
ing with her mother, plucking fl'jwers. In- 
stantly he hid hiinself behind a thick-leaved 
hedge, that ihe rigorous duenna might not see 
him. Again liis imaicination placed him in the 
alley, and by his looking-glass he saw the 
snow-wliite liand of the maiden busied with 
her flowers; soon he was sitting with her on 
the grass, and longing to declare his heartl'elt 
love to lier, and the bashful shepherd ?jui)d no 
words to do it in. He would have dreamed 
till broad mid-day, had he not been roused by 
the sonorous voice and clanking spurs of the 
Ritter, who, with the earliest dawn, was hold- 
ing a review of kitchen and cellar, ordering a 
suflicient breakfast to be readied, and placing 
every servant at his post, to be at hand wlien 
the gue^t should awake, to dress him, and wait 
upon him. 

It cost the happy dreamer no small struggling 
to forsake liis safe and hospitable bed : he rolled 
to this side and to that; but the pealing voice 
of the worshiiiful Knight came heavy on his 
heart; and dally as he might, the sour apple 
must at last be bit. So he rose from his down; 
aiitl immediaicdy a dozen hands were busy 
dressing him. The Rittf-r led him into the par- 
lour, where a small weli-furiiished table waited 
them; but now, when the hour of reckoning 
had arrived, the traveller's appetite was gone.' 
The host endeavoursd to encourage liiin. " Why 
do you not get to? Come, take somewhat for 
the raw 'oggy morning.'' 

' " H"rr Riuer," answered Franz, " my stomach 
is still t<io n:\\ of your supper; but my pockets 
are empiy; these i may ii;i for the hunger that 
is to come. " 

With this he began sfoutly cramming, and 
stowed himself with the daintiest and best that 
was transportable, till all his pockets were 
bursting. Then observing that his horse, well 
currieil and equipt, v/as led past, he took a 
dram of Danl/.ig, for good-bye, in the thought 
thftl this wouhl be the watch-word for his host 
to catch him by thft neck, and exercise his 
household privileges 

But, to his ajUjuishment, the Ritter shook him 
Kindly by t.'ie hand, as at his first entrance, 
wished hiin luck by the way, and the bolted 
door was thrown open. He loitered not in 
putting spurs to his nag; and, tip! tap! lie was 
without the gate, and no hair of him harmed. 

A heavy sioue was lifted from his heart, as 



he found himself in safety, and saw tliat he had 
got away with a whole skin. He could not un 
derstand how the landlord had trusted him the 
shot, which, as he imagined, must have run 
pretty high on the chalk; and he embraced 
with warm love the hospitable man, whose 
club-law arm he had so much dreaded ; and he 
felt a strong desire to search out, at the foun- 
tain-head, the reason or unreason of the ill report 
which had affrighted him. Accordingly, he 
turned his horse, and cantered back. The 
Knight was still standing in the gate, and des- 
canting with his servants, for the forwarding of 
the science of horse-flesh, on the breed, shape, 
and character of the nag and his hard pace ; he 
supposed the stranger must have missed some- 
thing in his travelling gear, and he already 
looked askance at his servants for such negli- 
gence. 

'• What is it, young master," cried lie, " that 
makes you turn again, when you were for pro- 
ceeding?" 

"Ah! yet a word, valiant Knight," cried the 
traveller. "An ill report has gone abroad, that 
injures your name and breeding. It is said that 
you treat every stranger that calls upon you with 
your best; and then, when he leaves you, let 
him feei the weight of your strong fists. This 
story I have credited, and spared nothing to de- 
serve my due from you. I thought within my- 
self. His worship will abate me nothing; I will 
abate him as little. But now you let me go, 
without strife or peril ; and that is what sur- 
prises me. Pray, tell me, is there any shadow 
of foundation for the thing, or shall I call the 
foolish chatter lies next time I hear if?" 

The Ritter answered : " Report has nowise 
told you lies ; there is no saying, that circulates 
among the people, but contains in it some grain 
of truth. Let me tell you accurately how the 
matter stands. I lodge every stranger that comes 
beneath my roof, and divide my morsel with 
him, for the love of God. But I am a plain 
German man, of the okl cut and fashion ; speak 
as it lies about my heart, and require tliat my 
guest also should be hearty and confiding; 
should enjoy with me wliat I have, and tell 
IVankly what he wants. Now, there is a sort of 
jieople that vex me with all manner of grimaces; 
that banter me witlr smirkings, and bows, and 
crouchings; put all their words to the torture; 
make a deal of talk without sense or salt; think 
tliey will cozen me with smooth speeches; be- 
have at dinner as women at a christening. If I 
say. Help yourself! out of reverence, they pick 
you a fraction from the plate, which I would 
not ofl^er to my dog; if I say. Your health ! they 
scarcely wet their lips from the full cup, as if 
they set God's gifts at nought. Now, when the 
sorry rabble carry things too far with me, ar;d I 
cannot, for the soul of me, know what they 
would be at, I get into a rage at last, and use 
my household privilege; catch the noodle by 
the spall, thrash him sulhciently, and pack him 
out of doors. This is the use and w-onl vv'ih 
15 



170 



MUSAUS. 



me, and I do so with every guest that plagues 
me with these freaks. But a man of your stamp 
is always welcome : you told me plump out in 
plain German what you thought, as is the fashion 
with the Breniers. Call on me boldly again, if 
your road lead you hither. And so, God be with 
you." 

Franz now moved on, with a joyful humour, 
towards Antwerp ; and lie wished that he might 
everywhere find such a reception as he had met 
with from the Ritter Eberhard Bronkhorst. On 
approaching the ancient Queen of the Flemish 
cities, tl^e sail of his hope was swelled by a 
propitious breeze. Riches and suf?erfluity met 
liim in every street; and it seemed as if scarcity 
and want had been exiled from the busy town. 
In all probability, thought he, there must bo 
many of my father's debtors who have risen 
again, and will gladly make me full payment 
whenever I substantiate my claims. After rest- 
ing for a while from his fatigues, he set about 
obtaining, in the inn where he was quartered, 
some preliminary knowledge of the situation of 
his debtors. 

"How stands it with Peter Martens?'" in- 
quired he one day, of his companions at table; 
"is he still living, and doing much bu.'iiness?" 

" Peter Martens is a warm man," answered 
one of the party ; " has a brisk commission trade, 
and draws good profit from it." 

"Is Fabian van Pliirs still in good circum- 
stances 1" 

"0 ! there is no end to Fabian's wealth. He 
is a Councillor; his woollen manufactories are 
thriving incredibly." 

" Has Jonathan Frischkier good custom in his 
trader' 

" Ah ! Jonathan were now a brisk fellow, 
had not Kaiser Max let the French chouse him 
out of his Princess.* Jonathan had got the 
furnishing of the lace for the bride's dress, but 
the Kaiser has left poor Frischkier in the 
hucli, as the bride has left himself If you have 
a fair one, whom you would remember with a 
bit of lace, he will give it you at half price." 

"Is the firm Op de Bfltekant still standing, 
or has it sunk?" 

" There was a crack in the beams there some 
years ago; but the Spanish caravelles have put 
a new prop lo it, and it now holds fast." 

Franv iriquired about several other merchants, 
who were on his list ; found that most of them, 
though in his fadier's tiino. they had " failed," 
Were now standing firmly on their legs; and 
inftirred from this, that a judicious bankruptcy 
hail, as from of old, been the wine of future 
gains. This intelligence refreshed him mightily: 
he hastened to put his documents in order, and 
sul.niit them to the proper parties. But with 
•he Antwerpers, he fared as his itinerating 
soiintrymen (io with shopkeepers in the Ger- 
man -.owns; they find everywhere a friendly 
welcome at their first appearance, but are looked 

* Anne uf Britanny. 



upon with cheerfulness nowhere, when they 
come collecting debts. Some would have no- 
thing to do with these former sins ; and were 
of opinion, that by the tender of the legal five- 
per-cent. composition, they had been entirely 
abolished : it was the creditor's fault if he had 
not accepted payment in time. Others could 
not recollect any Melchior of Bremen ; opened 
their Infallible Books, found no debtor-entry 
marked for this unknown name. Others, again, 
brought out a strong counter-reckoning ; and 
three days had not passed, till Franz was sitting 
in the Debtor's Ward, to answer for his father's 
credit, not to depart till he had paid the utter, 
most farthing. 

These were not the best prospects for the 
young man, who had set his hope and trust 
upon the Antwei-p patrons of his fortune, and 
now saw the fair soap-bubble vanish quite 
away- In his strait confinement, he felt him- 
self in the condition of a soul in Purgatory, now 
that his skiff had run ashore and gone to pieces, 
in the middle of the haven where he thought 
to find security. Every thought of Meta was as 
a thorn in his heart ; there was now no shadow 
of a possibility, that from the whirlpool which 
had sunk him, he could ever rise, and stretch 
out his hand to her ; nor, suppose he should get 
his head above water, was it in poor Meta's 
power to pull him on dry land. He fell into a 
sullen desperalicm ; had no wish but to die 
speedily, and give his woes the slip at once ; 
and, in fact, he did attempt to kill himself by 
starvation. But this is a sort of death which is 
not at the heck of every one, so ready as the 
shrunk Pomponius Atticns found it, when his 
digestive apparatus had already struck work. 
A sound peptic stomach does not yield so tame- 
ly to the precepts of the head or heart. After 
the moribund debtor had abstained two days 
from food, a ravenous hunger suddenly usurped 
the government of his will, and performed, of 
its own authority, all the operations which, in 
other cases, are directed by the mind. It 
ordered his hand to seize the spoon, his mouth 
to receive the victual, his inferior maxillary 
jaw to get in motion, and itself accomplished 
the usual functions of digestion, unordered. 
Thus did this last resolve make shipwreck, on 
a hard bread-crust; for, in the seven-and -twen- 
tieth year of life, it has a heroism connected 
with it, which in the seven-and-seventieth is 
entirely gone. 

At bottom, it was not the object of the bar- 
barous Antwerpers to squeeze money from the 
pretended debtor, but only to pay him none, as 
his demands were not admitted to be liquid. 
Whether it were, then, that the public Prayer 
in Bremen had in truth a little virtue, or that 
the supposed creditors were not desirous of 
supporting a superfluous boarder for life, true it 
is, that after the lapse of three months, Franz 
was delivered from his imprisonment, under 
the condition of leaving the city within four- 
and-twenty hours, and never again setting foot 



MUSAUS. 



171 



on the soil and territory of Antwerp. At the 
same time, he received five crowns for travel- 
ling expenses from the faithful liands of Justice, 
which had taken charge of his horse and lug- 
gage, and conscientiously balaticed the produce 
of the same against judicial and curatory ex- 
penses. 

With heavy-laden heart, in the humblest 
mood, wilh his staff in his hand, he left the rich 
city, into which he had ritlden some time before 
with high-soaring hopes. BroUen down, and 
undetermined what to do or rather altogether 
without thought, he plodded through the streets 
to the nearest gate, not minding whither the 
road into which chance conducted him might 
lead. He saluted no traveller, he asked for no 
inn, except when fatigue or hunger forced him 
to lift up his eyes, and look arotmd for some 
church-spire, or sign of human lubitalion, when 
he needed human aid. Many days he had 
wandered on, as if unconsciously ; and a secret 
instmct had still, by means of his uncrazed feet, 
led him right forward on the way to home ; 
when, all at once, he awoke as from an op- 
pressive dreain, and perceived on what road 
he was travelling. 

He halted instantly, to consider whether he 
should proceed or turn back. Shame and con- 
fusion took possession of his soul, when he 
thought of skulking about in his native town as 
a beggar, branded wilh the mark of contempt, 
anil claiming the charitable help of his towns- 
men, whom of old he had eclipsed by his 
wealth and magnificence. And how in this 
form could he present himself before his fair 
IVleta, without disgracing the choice of her 
heart? He did not leave his fancy time to finish 
this doleful picture; but wheeled about to take 
the other road, as hastily as if he had been 
standing even then at the gate of Bremen, and 
the ragged apprentices had been assembling to 
accompany him with jibes and mockery through 
the streets. His jjurpose was formed ; he would 
make for the nearest seaport in the Nether- 
lands; engage as a sailor in a Spanish sliip, to 
work his passage to the new world ; and not 
return to his country, till in the Peruvian land 
ol gold he should have regained the wealth, 
which he had squandered so heedlessly, before 
he knew the worth of money. In the shaping 
of this new plan, it is true, the fair Meta fell so 
far into the back-ground, that even to the 
sharpest prophetic eye she could only hover as 
a faint shadow in the distance; yet t!ie wan- 
dering projector pleased himself with thinking 
that she was again interwoven with the scheme 
of his life; and he took large steps, as if by this 
rapidity he meant to reach her so much the 
sooner. 

Already he was on the Flemish soil once 
more; and found himself at sunset not far from 
Rheinberg, in a little hamlet, Rummelsburg by 
name, which has since, in the Thirty Years' 
War, been utterly <lestroyed. A caravan of 
carriers from Lyke had already filled the inn 



so that Mine Host had no room left, and re- 
ferred him to the next town ; tlie rather that he 
did not draw too flattering a presage, from his 
present vagabond physiognomy, and held him 
to be a thieves' purveyor, who had views upon 
the Lyke carriers. He was forced, notwith- 
standing his excessive weariness, to gird hiin- 
self for march, and again to take his bundle on 
his back. 

As in retiring, he was muttering between his 
teeth some bitter complaints and curses of the 
Landlord's hardness of heart, the latter seemed 
to take some pity on the forlorn wayfarer, and 
called after him, from the door: "Stay, neigh- 
bour, let me speak to you : if you wish to rest 
her^r, I can accommodate you after all. In that 
Castle are empty rooms enow, if they be not 
too lonely; it is not inhabited, and I have got 
the keys." Franz accepted the proposal with 
joy, praised it as a deed of mercy, and requested 
only shelter and a supper, were it in a castle 
or a cottage. Mine Host, however, was privily 
a rogue, whom it had galled to hear the stranger 
drop some half-auilible contumelies against him, 
and meant to be avenged on him, by a Hob- 
goblin that inhabited the old fortress, and had 
many long years belbre expelled the owners. 

The Castle lay hard by the hamlet, on a steep 
rock, right opposite the inn, from which it was 
divided merely by the highway, and a little 
gurgling brook. The situation being so agree 
able, the eilifice was still kept in repair, and 
well provided with all sorts of house-gear; for 
it served the owner as a hunting-lodge, where 
he frequently caroused all day ; and so soon as 
the stars began to twirdtle in the sky, retired 
wilh his whole retinue, to escape the mischief 
of the Ghost, who rioted about in it the whole 
night over, but by day gave no disturbance. 
Unpleasant as the owner felt this spoiling of 
his mansion by a bugbear, the nocturnal sprite 
was not without advantages, for the great 
security it gave from thieves. The Count could 
have appointed no trustier or more watchful 
keeper over the Castle, than this same Spectre, 
for the rashest troop of robbers never ventured 
to approach its station. Accordingly he knew 
of no safer place for laying up his valuables, 
than this old tower, in the hamlet of Rummels- 
burg, near Rheiiiberg. 

The sunshine had sunk, the dark night was 
coming heavily on, when Franz, with a lantern 
in his hand, jn'oceeded to the castle-gate, under 
the guidance of Mine Host, who carried in his 
hand a basket of victuals, with a flask of wine, 
which he said should not be marked against 
him. He had also taken along with hiui a 
pair of candlesticks, and two wax-lights; for in 
the whole Castle there was neither lamp nor 
taper, as no one ever staid in it after twilight. 
In the way, Franz noticed the creaking, heavy- 
laden basket, and the wax-lights, which he 
thought he should not need, and yet must pay 
for. Therefore he said : "What is this sujier- 
fluity and waste, as at a banquet? The lignf 



172 



MUSAUS. 



in the lantern is enough to see with, till I go to 
bed; and when I awake, the sun will be high 
enoush, for I am tired completely, and shall 
sleep with both eyes.' 

"1 will not hide from you,'' replied the Innd 
lord, "that a story runs of there being mischiel 
ill the Castle, and a Goblin that frequents it. 
You, however, need not let the thing disturb 
you; we are near enough, you see, for you to 
call us, should y^.-. meet with aught unnatural; 
I and my folks will oe at your hand in a twink- 
ling 10 assist y(>r.. Down in the house there, 
we iieep astir all night through, some one is 
always UTOving. I have lived here theso thirty 
years; yrtl 1 cannot say that 1 liave ever seen 
aught. If there be now and then a little iiiirly- 
bm'yi'g at nights, it is nothing but caca :.'.uil 
rna.teris rummaging about the granary. As a 
preciution, I have provided you with cauilles : 
the night is no friend of man; and the tapers 
are consecrated, so that sprites, if there be such 
in the Castle, will avoid their shine." 

It was no lying in Mine Host to say that he 
had never seen a'.iything of spectres in the 
Castle ; for by night he had taken special care 
not once to set foot in it; and by day, the 
Gobl-n did not come to sight. In the presc.it 
case, too, the traitor would not risk himself 
across the border. After opening the door, be 
handed Franz the basket, directed him v.'hal 
way to go, and wished him good-night. Franz 
entered the lobby without anxiely or fear; be- 
iieving the ghost story to be empty tattle, or a 
distorted tradition of some real occurrence in 
the place, which idle fancy had shaped into an 
unnatural adventure. He lemembered the stout 
Ritter Eberhard Bronkhorst, from whose heavy 
arm he had apprehended such maltreat.-nent, 
and with whom, notwithstanding, he had found 
so hospitable a reception. On this groimd he 
bail laid it down as a rule deduced from his 
travelling experiences, when he heard any com- 
mon rumour, to believe exactly the reverse, and 
lelt the grain of truth, which, in the opinion of 
the wise Knight, always lies in such reports, 
entirely out of sight. 

Pmsnant to Mine Host's direction, he as- 
cended the winding stone stair; and reache('. a 
bolted door, which he opened with his key. A 
long daric gallery, where his ibotsteps resound- 
ed, led him into a large hall, and IVom this, a 
siile-door, into a suite of apartments, richly pro- 
vided with all furniture for decoration or con- 
venience. Out of these he chose the room which 
bad the friendliest aspect, where he found a 
well-pillowed bed ; and from the window could 
look right down upon the inn, and catch every 
loud word that was spoken there. He lit liis 
wax-tapers, furnished his table, and feasted 
with the commodiousness and relish of an 
Otaheitean noble. The big-bellied flask was 
an antidote to thirst. So long as his teeth were 
in full occupation, he had no time to think of 
the reported devilry in the Castle. If aught 
now and then made a stir in the distance, and 



Fear called to him. "Hark! hark! There comes 
the Goblin;" Courage answered: "Stuff! It is 
cats and martens bickering and caterwauling." 
But in the digestive half-hour after meat, when 
the sixth sense, that of hunger and thirst, no 
longer occupied the soul, she directed her atten- 
tion from the other five exclusively upon the 
sense of hearing; and already Fear was whis- 
pering three timid thoughts into the listener's 
ear, before Courage had time to answer once. 

As the first resource, he locked the door, and 
bolted it; made his retreat to the walled seat 
in the vaalt of the window. He opened tliis, 
and to dissipate his thoughts a little, looked out 
on the spangled sky, gazed at the corroded 
moon, and counted how often the stars snuffed 
themselves. On the road beneath him all was 
void ; and in spite of the pretended nightly 
hustle in the inn, the doors were shut, the lights 
out, and everything as still as in a sepulchre. 
On the • other hand, the watchman blew his 
horn, making his "List, gentlemen!" sound 
over all the hamlet ; and for the composure of 
the timorous astronomer, who still kept feasting 
his eyes on the splendour of the stars, uplifted 
a rusty evening-hymn right under his window ; 
so that Franz might easily have carried on a 
conversation with him, which, for the sake of 
company, he would willingly have done, had 
he in the least expected that the watchman 
would make answer to him. 

In a populous city, in the middle of a numer- 
ous household, where there is a hubbub equal 
to that of a bee-hive, it may form a pleasant 
entertainment for the thinker to philosophize 
on Solitude, to decorate her as the loveliest 
playmate of the human spirit, to view her un- 
der all her advantageous aspects, and long for 
her enjoyment as for hidden treasure. But in 
scenes, where she is no exotic, in the isle of 
Juan Fernandez, where a solitary eremite, 
escaped from shipwreck, lives with her through 
long years; or in the dreary night-time, in a 
deep wood, or in an old uninhabited castle, 
where empty walls and vaults awaken horror, 
and nothing breathes of life, but the moping 
owl in the ruinous turret; there, in good sooth, 
she is not the most agreeable companion for the 
timid anchorite that has to pass his time in her 
abode, especially if he is every moment looking 
for the entrance of a spectre to augment the 
party. In such a case it may easily chance that 
a window conversation with the watchman 
shall afford a richer entertainment for the spirit 
and the heart, than a reading of the most attrac- 
tive eulogy on solitude. If Ritter Zimmerman 
had been in Franz's place, in the castle of 
Rummelsburg, on the VVestphalian marches, he 
would doubtless in this position have struck out 
the fundamental topics of as interesting a trea- 
tise on Soc-ifZy, as, inspired to all appearance by 
the irksomeness of some ceremonious assembly 
he has poured out from the fulness ol his heart 
in praise of SotUude.. 

Midnight is the hour at which the world of 



MUSAUS. 



173 



spirits acquires activity and life, wlien hebe- 
tati-'d animal nature lies entombed in deep slum- 
ber. Franz inclined g:etting through this critical 
hour iri sleep rather than awake; so he closed 
his wii-'^ow, went the rounds of his room once 
more, spj ing every nook and crevice, to see 
whether all was safe and earthly, snuffed the 
lights to make them burn clearer ; and without 
undressing or delaying, threw liimself upon his 
bed. with which his wearied person felt unusual 
satisfaction. Yet he could not get asleep so fast 
as he wished. A slight palpitation at the heart, 
which he ascribed to a tumult in the blood, 
arising from the sultriness of the day, kept him 
■waking for a while ; and he failed not to employ 
this respite in offering up such a pithy evening 
prayer, as he had not prayed for many years. 
Ihis produced the usual effect, that he softly 
fell asleep while saying it. 

After about an hour, as he supposed, he 
starled up with a sudden terror ; a thing not at 
all surprising when there is tumult in the blood. 
He was broad awake: he listened whether all 
was quiet, and heard nothing but the clock 
strike twelve; a piece of news which the watch- 
man ibrthwith communicated to the hamlet in 
doleful recitative. Franz listened for a while, 
turned on the odier side, and was again about 
to sleep, when he caught, as it were, the sound 
of a door grating in the distance, and imme- 
diately it shut with a stifled bang. "Alack! 
Alack!" bawled Fright into his ear; "this is 
the Ghost in very deed !" — "'Tis nothing but 
the wind," said Courage manfully. But quickly 
it came nearer, nearer, like the sound of heavy 
footsteps. Clink here, clink there, as if a cri- 
minal were rattling his irons, or as if the porter 
were walking about the Castle M'ith his bunch 
of keys. Alas, here was no wind business! 
Courage held his peace ; and quaking Fear drove 
all the blood to the hearr, and made it thump 
like a smith's forehammer. 

The thing was now beyond jesting. If Fear 
would still have let Courage get a word, the 
latter would have put the terror-struck watcher 
in mind of his subsidiary treaty with Mine Host, 
and incited him to claim the stipulated assist- 
ance loudly from the window; but for this there 
was a want of proper resolution. The quaking 
Franz had recourse to the bed-clodies, the last 
fortress of the timorous, and drew them close 
over his ears, as Bird Ostrich sticks his head in 
the grass, when he can no longer escape the 
huntsman. Outside it came along, door up, 
door to, with hideous uproar; and at last it 
reached the bed-rooin. It jerked sharply at the 
lock, tried several keys till it found the right 
one; yet the bar still held the door, till a bounce 
like a thunderclap made bolt and rivet start, 
and threw it wide open. Now stalked in a 
long lean man, with a black beard, in ancient 
garb, and with a gloomy countenance, his eye- 
brows hanging down in deep earnestness from 
his brow. Over his right shoulder he had a 
icarlet cloak ; and on his head he wore a peaked 



hat. With a heavy step, he walked thrice in 
silence up and down the chamber; looked at 
the, consecrated tapers, and snuffed them that 
they might burn brighter. Then he threw aside 
his cloak, girded on a scissor-pouch which he 
had under it, produced a set of shaving-tackle, 
and immediately began to whet a sharp razor 
on the broad strap which he wore at his 
girdle. 

Franz perspired in mortal agony under his 
coverlet; recommended himself to the keeping 
of the Virgin; and anxiously speculated on the 
object of this manoeuvre, not knowing whether 
it was meant for his throat or his beard. To 
his comfort, the Goblin poured some water from 
a silver flask into a basin of silver, and with his 
skinny hand lathered the soap into light foam ; 
then set a chair, and beckoned with a .solemn 
look to the quaking looker-on to come forth from 
his recess. 

Against so pertinent a sign, remonstrance was 
as bootless as it is against the rigorous cominaiids 
of the Grand Turk, when he transmits an exiled 
vizier to the Angel of Death, the Capichi Bashi 
M'ith the Silken Cord, to take delivery of his 
head. The most rational procedure that can 
be adopted in this critical case, is to comply 
with necessity, put a good face on a bad busi- 
ness, and with stoical composure let one's throat 
be noosed. Franz honoured the Spectre's order ; 
the coverlet began to move, he sprang sharply 
from his couch, and took the place pointed out 
to him on the seat. However strange this quick 
transition from the uttermost terror to the boldest 
resolution may appear, I doubt not but Moritz 
in his Psychological Journal could explain the 
matter till it seemed quite natural. 

Immediately the Goblin Barber tied the towel 
about his shivering customer ; seized the comb 
au<l scissors, and clipped off his hair and beard. 
Then he soaped him scientifically, first the beard, 
next the eye-brows, at last the temples and the 
hind-head ; and shaved him from throat to nape, 
as smooth and bald as a Death's-head. This 
operation finished, he washed his head, dried 
it clean, made his bow, and buttoned up his 
scissor-pouch; wrajiped himself in his scarlet 
mantle, and tnade for departing. The conse- 
crated tapers had burnt with an exquisite bright- 
ness through the whole transaction; and Franz, 
by the light of them, perceived in the mirror 
that the shaver had changed him into a Chinese 
pagoda. In secret he heartily deplored the loss 
of his fair brown locks; yet now took fresh 
breath, as he observed that with this sacrifice 
the account was settled, and the Ghost had no 
more power over him. 

So it was in fact; Redcloak went towards 
the door, silently as he had entered, without 
salutation or good-b'ye ; and seemed entirely the 
contrast of his talkative guild-brethren. But 
scarcely was he gone three steps, when lie 
paused, looked round with a mournful expres 
sioii at his well -served customer, and stroked 
the flat of his hand over his black bushy brard 
•5* 



174 



MUSAUS. 



He did the same a second time ; and again, just 
as he was in the act of stepping out at the door. 
A thought struck Franz that the Spectre wanted 
something; and a rapid combination of ideas 
suggested, that perhaps he was expecting the 
very service he himself had just performed. 

As the Ghost, notwithstanding his rueful look, 
seemed more disposed for banter than for se- 
riousness, and had played his guest a scurvy 
trick, not done him any real injury, the panic 
of the latter had now almost subsided. So he 
ventured the experiment, and beckoned to the 
Ghost to take the seat from which he had him- 
self just risen. The Goblin instantly obeyed, 
■ threw off his coat, laid his barber tackle on the 
table, and placed himself in the chair, in the 
posture of a man that wishes to be shaved. 
Franz carefully observed the same procedure 
which the Spectre had observed to him, clipped 
his beard with the scissors, cropt away his hair, 
lathered his whole scalp, and the Ghost all the 
wliile sat steady as a wig-block. The awkward 
journeyman came ill at handling the razor; be 
bad never had another in his hand ; and he shore 
the beard right against the hair ; whereat the 
Goblin made as strange grimaces as Erasmus's 
A})e, when imitating its inasler's shaving. Nor 
was the unpractised bungler hiaiself well at 
ease, and he thought more than once of the sage 
aphorism, What is not tiiy trade make not thy 
business; yet he struggled through the task, the 
best way he could, and scraped the Ghost as 
bald as be himself was. 

Hitherto the scene between the Spectre and 
the traveller hK.d been played pantomimically ; 
the action now became dramatic. " Stranger," 
said the Ghost, "accept my thanks for the ser- 
vice thou hast done me. By thee I am delivered 
from the long imprisonment, which has chained 
nie for three hundred years within these walls; 
to which my departed soul was doomed, till a 
mortal hand should consent to retaliate on me 
what I practised on others in my lifetime. 

" Know that of old a reckless scorner dwelt 
within this tower, who took his sport on priests 
as well as laics. Count Hardman, such bis 
name, was no philanthropist, acknowledged no 
superior and no law, but practised vain caprice 
and waggery, regarding not the sacredness of 
hospitable rights: the wanderer who came be- 
neath his roof, the needy man who asked a cha- 
ritable alms of him, he never sent away unvi- 
sited by wicked joke. I was his Castle Barber, 
still a willing instrument, and did whatever 
pleased him. Many a pious pilgrim, journeying 
past us, I allured with friendly siieeches to the 
hall; prepared the bath for him, and when he 
thought to take good comfort, shaved him smooth 
and bald, and packed him out of doors. Then 
would Count Hardman, looking from the win- 
dow, see with pleasure how the foxes' whelps 
of children gathered from the hamlet to assail 
the outcast, and to cry as once their fellows to 
Elijah: 'Baldhead! Baldhead !' In this the 
-cofi'ir took his pleasure, laughing with a devil- 



ish joy, till he would hold his pot-paunch, an.l 
bis eyes ran down with water. 

"Once came a saintly man, from foreign 
lands; he carried, like a penitent, a heavy cross 
upon his shoulder, and had stamped five nail- 
marks on his hands, and feet, and side; upon 
his head there was a ring of hair like to the 
Crown of Thorns. He called u))on us here, re- 
questing water for his feet, and a small crust of 
bread. Immediately I took him to the bath, to 
serve him in my common way ; respected not 
the sacred ring, but shore it clean from otf him. 
Then the pious pilgrim spoke a heavy malison 
upon me : ' Know, accursed man, that when 
thou diest. Heaven, and Hell, and Purgatory's 
iron gate, are shut against thy soul. As goblin 
it shall rage within these walls, till unrequired, 
unhid, a traveller come and exercise retaliation 
on thee.' 

"That hoi-r I sickened, and the marrow in 
my bones dried up; I faded like a shadow. My 
spirit left the wasted carcase, and was exiled to 
this Castle, as the saint had doomed it. In vain 
I itniggied for deliverance from the torturing 
bouiis that fettered me to Earth ; for thou must 
know, that when the soul forsakes her clay, she 
panteth for her place of rest, and this sick long 
ing spins her years to aeons, while in foreign 
elements she languislies for Imiue. \ow self- 
tormenting, I pursued the mournful occup.ilion 
I had fiiUoweil in my lifetime. Alas! my up- 
roar soon made desolate this bouse ! But seldom 
came a pilgrim here to lodge. And though I 
treated all like thee, no one would understand 
me, and perform, as thou, the service which has 
freed my soul from bondage. Henceforth shall 
no hobgoblin wander in this Castle ; I return to 
my long-wished-for rest. And now, young stran- 
ger, once again my thanks, that thou hast loosed 
me ! Were I keeper of deep-hidden treasures, 
they were thine ; but wealth in life was not my 
lot, nor in this Castle lies there any cash en- 
tombed. Yet mark my counsel. Tarry here 
till beard and locks again shall cover chin and 
scalp; then turn thee homewards to thy native 
town; and on the Weser-bridge of Bremen, at 
the time when day and night in Autumn are 
alike, wait for a Friend, who there will meet 
thee, who will tell thee what to do, that it be 
well with thee on Earth. If from the golden 
horn of plenty, blessing and abundance flow to 
thee, then think of me; and ever as the day 
thou freedst me from the curse comes round 
cause for my soul's repose three masses to be 
said. Now fare thee well. I go, no more re- 
turning."* 

With these words the Ghost, having by his 
copiousness of talk satisfactorily attested his for- 
mer existence as court-barber in the Castle of 
Rummelsburg, vanished into air, and left his 
deliverer full of wonder at the strange adven- 

* r know not whether the reader has observed that our 
Author [nnkes the Spectre speak in iambics, a whirn which 
here and there comes over him in other tales also. — IVie 
land. 



MUSAUS. 



17;, 



ture. He stood for along while motionless; in 
doubt whether the wliole matter had actually 
happened, or an unquiet dream had deluded 
his senses ; but his bald head convinced liim 
that here had been a real occurrence. He re- 
turned to bed, and slept, after the fright he had 
undergone, till the hour of noon. The treacher- 
ous Landlord had been watching since morning, 
when the traveller with the scalp was to come 
forth, that lie might receive him with jibing 
speeches under pretext of astonishment at his 
nocturnal adventure. Butas the stranger loitered 
too long, and mid-day was approaching, the 
affaii: became serious: and Mine Host began to 
dread that the Goblin miglit liave treated liis 
guest a little harshly, have beaten him to a jelly 
perhaps, or so frightened him that he had died 
of terror ; and to carry his wanton revenge to 
snch a length as this had not been his intention. 
He therefore rung his people together, liastened 
out widi man and inaid to the tower, and reach- 
ed the door of tlie apartment where he had 
observed the light on the previous evening. He 
found an unknown key in the lock ; but the door 
was barred within, for after the disappearance 
of the Goblin, Franz had again secured it. He 
knocked with a perturbed violence, till the Se- 
ven Sleepers themselves would have awoke at 
the din. Franz started up, and thought in his 
first confusion tliat the Ghost was again stand- 
ing at the door, to favour him with another call. 
But hearing Mine Host's voice, wlio required 
nothing more but that his guest would give some 
sign of life, he gathered himself up and opened 
the room. 

With seeming horror at the sight of liim. Mine 
Host, striking his hands together, exclaimed: 
"By Heaven and all the saints! Redcloak " (by 
this name the Ghost was known among them) 
^^ has been here, and has shaved you bald as a 
block! Now, it is clear as day that the old story 
is no fable. But tell me how looked the Goblin : 
what did he say to you? what did he do?' 

Franz, who had now seen through the ques- 
tioner, made answer: "The Goblin looked like 
a man in a red cloak; what be did is not hidden 
from you, and what he said I well remember: 
'Stranger,' said he, 'trust no innkeeper who is 
a Turk in grain. What would befall thee here 
lie knew. Be wise and happy. I withdraw 
from this my ancient dwelling, for my time is 
run. Henceforth no goblin riots here; I now 
become a silent Incubus, to plague the Landlord ; 
nip him, tweak him, harass him, unless the 
Turk do expiate his sin; do freely give thee 
prog and lodging till brown locks again shall 
cluster round thy head.' * 

The Landlord shuddered at these words, cut 
a large cross in the air before him, vowed by 
the Holy Virgin to give t!ie traveller fr?e board 
so long as he liked to continue, led him over to 
his house, and treated him with the best. By 

* Here, too, on the spi^ctre's score, Franz makes extem- 
pore iambics. — Wietand. 



this adventure, Franz had well nigh got the re- 
putation of a conjurer, as the spirit thenceforth 
never once showed face. He often passed the 
night in the tower; and a desperado of the vil 
lage once kept him company, without having 
beard or scalp disturbed. The owner of the 
place, having learned that Redcloak no longer 
walked in Rummelsburg, was, of coitrse, de- 
lighted at the news, and ordered that the stran- 
ger, who, as he supposed, had laid him, should 
be well taken care of. 

By the time when the clusters were beginning 
to be coloured on the vine, and the advancing 
autumn reddened the apples, Franz's brown 
locks were again curling over his temples, and 
he girded up his knapsack; for all his thoughts 
and meditations were turned upon the Weser- 
bridge, to seek the Friend, who, at the behest 
of the Goblin Barber, was to direct him how to 
make his fortune. When about taking leave of 
Mine Host, that charitable person led from his 
stable a horse well saddled and equipt, which 
the owner of the Castle had presented to the 
stranger, for having made his house again habit- 
able; nor had the Count forgot to send a suffi- 
cient purse along with it, to bear its travelling 
charges; and so Franz came riding back into 
his native city, brisk and light of heart, as he 
had ridden out of it twelve months ago. He 
sought out his old quarters in the alley, but 
kept himself quite still and retired; only in- 
quiring underhand how matters stood with the 
fair Meta, whether she was still alive and iin- 
wedded. To this inquiry he received a satis- 
factory answer, and contented himself with it 
in the meanwhile; for, till his fate were de- 
cided, he would not risk appearing in her sight, 
or making known to her his arrival in Bremen. 

With unspeakable longing, he waited the 
equinox ; his impatience made every interven 
ing day a year. At last the long-wished-for term 
appeared. The night before, he could not close 
an eye, for thinking of the wonders that were 
coming. The blood was whirling and beating 
in his arteries, as it had done at the Castle of 
Rummelsburg, when he lay in expectation of 
his spectre visitant. To be sure of not missing 
his expected Friend, he rose by day-break, and 
proceeded with the earliest dawn to the Weser- 
biidge, which as yet stood empty, and uiitrod 
by passengers. He walked along it several 
times in solitude, with that presentiment of 
coming gladness, which includes in it the real 
enjoyment of all terrestrial felicity; for it is not 
the attainment of our wishes, but the undoubted 
hope of attaining them, which offers to the 
human soul the full measure of highest and 
most heart-felt satisfaction. He formed many 
projects as to how he should present himself to 
his beloved Meta, when his looked-for happi- 
ness should have arrived; whether it would be 
better to appear before her in full splendour, or 
to mount from his former darkness >vith the 
first gleam of morning radiance, and discover 
to her by I'egrees the change in his ror.J-'ion 



i76 



MUSAUS. 



Curiosity, moreover, put a tliousand questions 
to Reason in regard to the adventure. Who can 
the Friend be that is to meet me on the Weser- 
bvidge? Will it be one of my old acquaintances, 
by whom, since my ruin, I have been entirely 
forgotten? How will he pave the way to me 
for happiness? And will this way be short or 
long, easy or toilsome? To the whole of which 
Reason, in spite of all her thinking and specu- 
lating, answered not a word. 

In about an hour, the Bridge began to get 
awake; there was riding, driving, walking to 
and fro on it; and much commercial ware 
passing this way and that. The usual day- 
guard of beggars and importunate persons also 
by degrees took up this post, so favourable for 
their trade, to levy contributions on the public 
benevolence ; for of poor-houses and work- 
houses, the wisdom of the legislature had as 
yet formed no scheme. The iirst of the tatter- 
ed cohort that applied for alms to the jovial 
promenader, from whose eyes gay hope laughed 
forth, was a discharged soldier, provided with 
the military badge of a timber leg, which had 
been lent him, seeing he had fought so stoutly 
in former days for his native country, as the 
recompense of his valour, with the privilege of 
begging where he pleased; and who now, in 
the capacity of physiognomist, pursued the 
study of man upon the Weser-bridge, with such 
success, that he very seldom failed in his at- 
tempts for charity. Nor did his exploratory 
glance in anywise mislead him in the present 
instance; for Franz, in the joy of his heart, 
threw a white engelgroschen into the cripple's 
hat. 

During the morning hours, when none but 
the laborious artisan is busy, and the more 
exalted tovvnsman still lies in sluggish rest, he 
scarcely looked for his promised Friend; he 
expected him in the higher classes, and took 
little notice of the present passengers. About 
the council-hour, however, when the Proceres 
of Bremen were driving past to the hall, in 
their gorgeous robes of office, and about ex- 
change-time, he was all eye and ear;' he spied 
the passengers from afar ; and when a right 
man came along the bridge, his blood began to 
flutter, and he thought here was the creator of 
his fortune. Meanwhile hour after hour passed 
on ; the sun rose high ; ere long the noontide 
brought a pause in business: the rushing crowd 
faded away; and still the expected Friend ap- 
peared not. Franz now walked up and down 
the Bridge quite alone ; had no society in view 
but the beggars, who were serving out their 
cold collations, without moving from the place. 
He made no scruple to do the same; and, not 
tjeing furnished with provisions, he purchased 
tiome fruit, and took his dinner inter ambulan- 
<lum. 

The whole club that was dining on the 
Weser-oricige nad remarked the young man, 
watching here from early morning till noon, 
without addressing any one, or doing any sort 



of business. They held him to be a lounger; 
and though all of them had tasted his bounty, 
he did not escape their critical remarks. In 
jest, they had named him the Bridge-bailitf. 
The physiognomist with the timber-toe, how- 
ever, noticed that his countenance was not now 
so gay as in the morning; he appeared to be 
reflecting earnestly on something; he had drawn 
his liat close over his face ; his movement was 
slow and thoughtful ; he had nibbled at an ap- 
ple-rind for some time, without seeming to be 
conscious that he was doing so. From this ap- 
pearance of affairs, the man-spier thought he 
might extract sorne profit; therefore he put his 
wooden and his living leg in motion, and stilted 
off to the other end of the Bridge, and lay in 
wait for the thinker, that he might assail him, 
under the appearance of a new arrival, for a 
fresh alms. This invention prospered to the 
full: the musing philosopher gave no heed to 
the mendicant, put his hand into his pocket 
naechanically, and threw a six-groat piece into 
the fellow's hat, to be rid of him. 

In the afternoon, a thousand new faces once 
more came abroad. The watcher was now 
tired of his unknown Friend's delaying, yet 
hope still kept his attention on the stretch. He 
stept into the view of every passenger, hoped 
that one of them would clasp him in his arms; 
but all proceeded coldly on their way ; the most 
did not observe him at all, and few returned 
his salute with a slight nod. The sun was 
already verging to decline, the shadows were 
becoming longer, the crowd upon the Bridge 
diminished; and the beggar-piquet by degrees 
drew back into their barracks in the Matten- 
burg. A deep sadness sank upon the hopeless 
Franz, when he saw his expectation mocked, 
and the lordly prospect which had lain before 
him in the morning, vanish from his eyes at 
evening. He fell into a sort of sulky despera- 
tion; was on the point of springing over the 
parapet, and dashing himself down from the 
Bridge into the river. But the thought of Meta 
kept him back, and induced him to postpone 
his purpose till he had seen her yet once more 
He resolved to watch next day when she should 
go to church, for the last time to drink delight 
from her looks, and then forthwith to still his 
wann love for ever in the cold stream of the 
Weser. 

While about to leave the Bridge, he was met 
by the invalided pikeman with the wooden leg, 
who, for pastime, had been making many 
speculations as to what could be the young 
man's object, that had made him watch tipon 
the Bridge from dawn to darkness. He him- 
self had lingered beyond his usual time, that he 
might wait him out; but as the matter hung too 
long upon the pegs, curiosity incited him to turn 
to the youth himself, and question him respect- 
ing it. 

" No offence, yotmg gentleman," said he 
"allow me to ask you a question." 

Franz, who was not in a very talking humour 



MUSAUS. 



177 



and was now meetin^g, from the mouth of a 
cripple, tlie address which he had looUed for 
with suah longing from a friend, answered 
rather testily: " Well, then, what is iti Speak, 
old graybeard !" 

"We two," said the other, "were the first 
upon the Bridge to-day, and now, you see, we 
are the last. As to me and others of my kidney, 
it is our vocation brings us hither, our trade of 
alms-gathering; but for you, in sooth you are 
not of our guild ; yet you have watched here 
the whole blessed day. Now I pray you, tell 
me, if it is not a secret, what it is that brings 
you hither ; or what stone is lying on your heart, 
that you wished to roll away." 

" What good were it to thee, old blade," said 
Franz, bitterly, " to know where the shoe pinches 
me, or what concern is lying on my lieartl It 
will give thee small care." 

" bir, I have a kind wish towards you, be- 
cause you opened your hand to me, and twice 
gave ine alms, for which God reward you; but 
your countenance at night was not so cheerful* 
as in the morning, and that griev-s my heart." 

The kindly sympathy of urij old wariior 
please<i the misanthrope, so tliat he willingly 
pursued the conversation. 

"Why, then," answered he, " if thou wouldst 
know what has made me battle here all day 
with tedium, thou must understand that I was 
waiting for a Friend, who appointed me hither, 
and now leaves me to expect in vain." 

"Under favour," answered Timbertoe, "if I 
might speak my mind, this Friend of yours, be he 
who lie like, is little better than a rogue, to lead 
you such a dance. If he treated me so, by my 
faith, his crown should get acquainted with my 
crutch next time we met. If he could not keep 
bis word, lie should have let you know, and not 
bamboozled you as if you were a child." 

" Yet I cannot altogether blame this Friend," 
said Franz, "for being absent; he did not pro- 
mise; it was but a dream that told me I should 
meet him here." 

The goblin tale was too long for him to tell, 
so he veiled it under cover of a dream. 

'•Ah! that is another story," said the beggar; 
"if you build on dreams, it is little wonder tliat 
your hope deceives you. I myself have dream- 
ed much foolish stuff in my time; but I was 
never such a madman as to heed it. Had I all 
the treasures that have been allotted to me in 
dreams, I might buy the city of Bremen, were 
it sold by auction. But I never credited a jot 
of them, or stirred band or foot to prove their 
worth or worth lessness : I knew well it would 
be lost. Ha! I must really laugh in your face, 
to think that on the order of an empty dream, 
you have squandered a fair day of your life, 
which you might have spent better at a merry 
banquet." 

"The issue shows that thou art right, old 
man, and that dreams many times deceive. 
But," continued Franz, defensively, " I dreamed 
so vividly and circumstantially, above three 



months ago, that on this very day, in this very 
place, I should meet a Friend, who would tell 
me things of the deepest importance, that it 
was well worth while to come and see if it would 
come to pass." 

" O, as for vividness," said Timbertoe, " no 
man can dream more vividly than I. There is 
one dream I had, which I shall never in my 
life forget. I dreamed, who knows how many 
years ago, that my Guardian Angel stood before 
my bed in the figure of a youth, with golden 
hair, and two silver wings on his hack, and said 
to me : ' BertholJ, listen to the words of my 
mouth, that none of them be lost from thy heart. 
There is a treasure appointed thee, which thou 
shalt dig, to comfort thy heart withal for the re- 
maining Jays of thy life. To-morrow, about 
evening, when the sun is going down, take spade 
and shovel on thy shoulder; go forth from the 
Mattenburg on the right, across the Tieber, by 
the Balkenbriicke, past the Cloister of St. John's, 
and on to the Great Roland.* Then take thy 
way over the Court of the Cathedral, through 
the Schiisselkorb, till thou arrive without the 
city at a garden, which has this mark, that a 
stair of three stone steps leads down from the 
highway to its gate. Wait by a side, in secret, 
till the sickle of the moon shall shine on thee, 
then push with the strength of a man against 
the weak-barred gate, which will resist thee 
little. Enter boldly into the garden, and turn 
thee to the vine trellices which overhang the 
covered-walk ; behind this, on the left, a tall 
apple-tree overtops the lowly shrubs. Go to the 
trunk of this tree, thy face turned right against 
the moon ; look three ells before thee on the 
ground, thou shalt see two cinnamon-rose bushes; 
there strike in, and dig three spans deep, till 
thou find a stone plate ; under this lies the trea- 
sure, buried in an iron chest, full of money, and 
monev's worth. Though the chest be heavy and 
clumsy, avoid not the labour of lifting it from 
its bod; it will reward thy trouble well, if thou 
seek the key which lies hid beneath it.'" 

In astonishment at what he heard, Franz 
stared and gazed upon the dreamer, and could 
not have concealed his amazement, had not the 
dusk of night been on his side. By every mark 
in the description, he had recognized his own 
garden, left him by his father. It had been the 
good man's bobby in his life; but on this ac- 
count had little pleased his son; according to 
the rule that son and father seldom sympathize 
in their favourite pursuit, unless indeed it be a 
vice, in which case, as the adage runs, the apple 
often falls at no great distance from the trunk. 
Father Melchior had himself laid out this gar- 

* The ruiie fij;iire of a man in armour, usunliy erpcted 
in the public square, or mark.ntplace of old German 
towns, is called the Rolaiidsduie, or liutlaiidsdute, from 
its supposed reference to Roland the famous I'eer of 
C'harleniacne. The proper and ancient name, it seems, 
is RiigeLandsdule, or Pillar of Juilgr.ient ; and the ston>. 
indicated, of old, that the town possessed an indepemJen 
jurisdiction.— £rf. .. 



178 



M U S A U S. 



den, altogether to his own taste, in a style as 
wondeiful and varied as that of his great-great- 
grandson, who has immortalized his paradise 
by an original description in Hirschfeldls Garden- 
Calendar. He had not, it is true, set up in it 
any painted menagerie for the deception of the 
eye ; but he kept a very large one, notwithstand- 
ing, of springing-horses, winged-lions, eagles, 
grilfins, unicorns, and other wondrous beasts, 
all stamped on pure gold, which he carefully 
concealed from every eye, and had hid in their 
iron case beneath the ground. This paternal 
Tempe the wasteful son, in the days of his ex- 
travagance, had sold for an old song. 

To Franz, the pikeman had at once become 
extremely interesting, as he perceived that this 
was the very Friend, to whom the Goblin in 
the Castle of Rummelsburg had consigned him. 
Gladly could he have embraced the veteran, 
and in the first rapture called him friend and 
father : but he restrained himself, and found it 
more advisable to keep his thoughts about this 
piece of news to himself. So he said : " Well, 
this is what I call a circumstantial dream. But 
what didst thou do, old master, in the morning, 
on awakening 1 Didst thou not follow whither 
thy Guardian Angel beckoned theel" 

" Pooh," said the dreamer, " Why should I 
toil, and have my labour for my pains 1 It was 
nothing, after all, but a mere dream. If my 
Guardian Angel had a fancy for appearing to 
me, I have had enow of sleepness nights in my 
time, when he might have found me waking. 
But he takes little charge of me, I think, else [ 
should not, to his shame, be going hitching here 
on a wooden leg." 

Franz took out the last piece of silver he had 
on him: "There," said he, "old father, take 
this other gift from me, to get thee a pint of 
wine for evening-cup ; thy talk has scared away 
my ill humour. Neglect not diligently to fre- 
quent this Bridge ; we shall see each other here, 
I hope, again." 

The lame old man had not gathered so rich a 
stock of alms for many a day, as he was now 
possessed of; he blessed his benefactor for his 
kindness, hopped away into a drinking-shop, to 
do himself a good turn ; while Franz, enlivened 
with new hope, hastened otf to his lodging in 
the alley. 

Next day he got in readiness everything that 
is required for treasure-digging. The unessential 
equipments, conjurations, magic-formulas, magic- 
girdles, hieroglyphic characters, and such like, 
were entirely wanting: but these are not indis- 
pensable, provided there be no failure in the 
three main requisites : shovel, spade, and before 
all — a treasure under ground. The necessary 
implements he carried to the place a little be- 
fore sunset, and hid them for the meanwhile in 
a hedge ; and as to the treasure itself, he had 
the firm conviction that the Goblin in the Castle, 
and the Friend on the bridge, would prove no 
liars to him. With longing impatience he ex- 
pected the rising of the moon; and no sooner 



did she stretch her silver horns over the bushes, 
than he briskly set to work, observing exactly 
everything the Invalid had taught him ; and 
happily accomplished the raising of the trea- 
sure, without meeting any adventure in the pro- 
cess, without any black dog having frightened 
him, or any bluish flame having lighted him to 
the spot. 

Father Melchior, in providently burying- this 
penny for a rainy day, had nowise meant that 
his son should be deprived of so considerable a 
part of his inheritance. The mistake lay in this, 
that Death had escorted the testator out of the 
world in another way than said testator had 
expected. He had been completely convinced, 
that he should take his journey, old and full of 
days, after regulating his temporal concerns 
with all the formalities of an ordinary sick-bed ; 
for so it had been prophesied to him in his 
youth. In consequence he purposed, when, 
according to the usage of the Church, extreme 
unction should have been dispensed to him, to 
call his beloved son to his bed-side, having pre- 
viously dismissed all bystanders; there to give 
him the paternal blessing, and by way of fare- 
well memorial direct him to this treasure buried 
in the garden. All this, too, would have hap- 
pened in just order, if the light of the good old 
man ha(' departed like t'jat of a wick whose 
oil is done , but as D<'ath had privily snuffed 
him out at a feast, hf undesignedly took along 
with him his Mammon secret to the grave ; and 
almost as many fortunate concurrences were 
required before the secreted patrimony could 
arrive at the proper heir, as if it had been for- 
warded to its address by the hand of Justice 
itself. 

With immeasurable joy the treasure-digger 
took possession of the shapeless Spanish pieces, 
which, with a vast multitude of other finer 
coins, the iron chest had faithfully preserved. 
When the first intoxication of delight had in 
some degree evaporated, he bethought him how 
the treasure was to be transported, safe and 
unobserved, into the narrow alley. The burden 
was too heavy to be carried without help ; thus, 
with the possession of riches, all the cares at. 
tendant on them were awakened. The new 
CrcBsus found no better plan, than to entrust his 
capital to the hollow trunk of a tree that stood 
behind the garden, in a meadow: the empty 
chest he again buried under the rose-bush, and 
smoothed the place as well as possible. In the 
space of three days, the treasure had been faith- 
fully transmitted by instalments from the hollow 
tree into the narrow alley; and now the owner 
of it thought he might with honour lay aside his 
strict incognito. He dressed himself with the 
finest ; had his Prayer displaced from the church ; 
and required, instead of it, "a Christian Thanks- 
giving for a Traveller, on returning to his native 
town after happily arranging his affairs." He 
hid himself in a corner of the, church, where he 
could observe the fair Meta, without himself 
being seen; he turned not his eye from the 



MUSAUS. 



179 



maiden, and drank from her looks the actual 
rapture, which in foretaste had restrained him 
from the break-neck somerset on the Bridge of 
the Weser. When the Thanksgiving came in 
hand, a glad sympathy shone forth from all her 
features, and the cheeks of the virgin "glowed 
with joy. The customary greeting on the way 
homewards was so full of emphasis, that even 
to the third party who had noticed them, it 
would have been intelligible. 

Franz now appeared once more on the Ex- 
change : began a branch of trade, which in a 
few weeks extended to the great scale; and as 
his wealth became daily more apparent, Neigh- 
bour Grudge, the scandal-chewer, was obliged 
to conclude, that in the cashing of his old debts, 
he must have had more luck than sense. He 
hired a large house, fronting the Roland, in the 
Market-place ; engaged clerks and warehouse- 
men, and carried on his trade unweariedly. 
Now the sorrowful populace of parasites again 
diligently handled the knocker of his door ; ap- 
peared in crowds, and suffocated him with 
assurances of friendship, and joy-wishings on 
his fresh prosperity ; imagined they should once 
more catch him in their robber claws. But ex- 
perience had taught him wisdom ; he paid them 
in their own coin, feasted their false friendship 
on smooth words, and dismissed them with 
fasting stomachs ; which sovereign means for 
scaring off the cumbersome brood of pickthanks 
and toad-eaters, produced the intended effect, 
that they betook themselves elsewhither. 

In Bremen, the remounting Melcherson had 
become the story of the day ; the fortune which 
in some inexplicable manner he had realized, 
as was supposed, in foreign parts, wus the sub- 
ject-matter of all conversations at formal din- 
ners, in the Courts of Justice, and at the Ex- 
change. But in proportion as the fame of his 
fortune and affluence increased, the contented- 
ness and peace of mind of tlie fair Meta dimin- 
ished. The friend in petto was now, in her 
opinion, well qualified to speak a plain word. 
Yet still his Love continued Dumb; and except 
the greeting on the way from church, he gave 
no tidings of himself. Even this sort of visit 
was becoming rarer; and such aspects were 
the sign not of warm, but of cold weather in 
the atmosphere of Love. Jealousy,* the baleful 
Harpy, fluttered round her little room by night, 
and when sleep was closing her blue eyes, 
croaked many a dolorous presage into the ear 
of the re-awakened Meta. " Forego the flatter- 
ing hope of biniiing an inconstant heart, which, 
like a leather, is the sport of every wind. He 
loved thee, and was faithful to thee, while his 
lot was as thy own : like only draws to like. 
Now a propitious destiny exalts the Changeful 
far above thee. Ah ! now he scorns tlie truest 
thoughts in mean apparel, now that pomp, and 
wealth, and splendour dazzle him once more; 

* Jealousy, loo, (at bottom a very sad spectre, but not 
here introduced as one), now creates in iambics, as the 
Goblin Barber lately spoke in liiuva.— melaiid. 



and courts, who knows what haughty fair one 
that disdained him when he lay among tiie 
pots, and now with siren call allures him back 
to her. Perhaps her cozening voice has turned 
him from thee, speaking with false words: 'For 
thee, God's garden blossoms in thy native town ; 
friend, thou hast now thy choice of all our 
maidens; choose with prudence, not by the eye 
alone. Of girls are many, and of fathers many, 
who in secret lie in wait for thee; none will 
withhold his darling daughter. Take happiness 
and honour with the fairest; likewise birth and 
fortune. The councillor dignity awaits thee, 
where vote of friends is potent in the city.' " 

These suggestions of Jealousy disturbed and 
tormented her heart without ceasing: she re- 
viewed her fair contemporaries in Bremen, 
estimated the ratio of so many splendid matches 
to herself and her circumstances; and the re- 
sult was far from favourable. The first tidings 
of her lover's change of situation had in secret 
charmed her ; not in the selfish view of be- 
coming participatress in a large fortune ; but 
for her mother's sake, who had abdicated all 
hopes of earthly happiness, ever since the mar- 
riage project with neighbour Hop-King had 
made shipwreck. But now poor Meta wished 
that Heaven had not heard the Prayer of the 
Church, or granted to the traveller any such 
abundance of success; but rather kept him by 
the bread and salt, which he would willingly 
have shared with her. 

The fair half of the species are by no means 
calculated to conceal an inward care: Motlicr 
Brigitta soon observed the trouble of her 
daughter ; and without the use of any great 
penetration, likewise guessed its cause. The 
talk about the re-ascending star of her former 
flax-negotiator, who was now celebrated as the 
pattern of an orderly, judicious, active trades- 
man, had not escaped her, any more than the 
feeling of the good Meta towards him ; and it 
was her opinion, that if he loved in earnest, it 
was needless to hang off so long, without ex- 
plaining what he meant. Yet out of tender- 
ness to her daughter, she let no hint of this dis- 
covery escape her; till at length poor Meta's 
heart became so full, that of her own accord 
she made her mother the confident of her sor- 
row, and disclosed to her its true origin. The 
shrewd old lady learned little more by this dis- 
closure than she knew already. But it afforded 
opportunity to mother and daughter for a full, 
fair, and free discussion of this delicate affair. 
Brigitta made her no reproaches on the subject; 
she believed that what was done could not be 
undone; and directed all her eloquence to 
strengthen and encourage the dejected Meta to 
bear the failure of her hopes with a steadfast 
mind. 

With this view, she spelt out to her the ex- 
tremely reasonable moral a, 6, ab ; discoursing 
thus: "My child, thou hast already said a, thou 
must now say 6 too; thou hast scorned lliy for 
tune wh(m it sought thee, now thou must .sM) 



180 



MUSAUS. 



mit when it will meet thee no longer. Ex- 
perience has taught nie, that the most confident 
Hope is the first to deceive us. Therefore, fol- 
low my example; abandon the fair cozener 
utterly, and thy peace of mind will no longer 
be disturbed by her. Count not on any im- 
provement of thy fate ; and thou wilt grow con- 
tented with thy present situation. Honour the 
spinning-wheel, which supports thee: what are 
fortune and riches to thee, \vhen thou canst do 
without themi" 

Close on this stout oration followed a loud 
humming symphony of snap-reel and spinning- 
wheel, to make up for the time lost in speaking. 
Mother Brigitta was in truth philosophising 
from the heart. After her scheme for the 
restoration of her former atHuence had gone to 
ruin, she had so simplified the plan of her life, 
that Fate could not perplex it any more. But 
Meta was still far from this philosophical centre 
of indifference ; and hence this doctrine, con- 
solation, and encouragement, aflected her quite 
otherwise than had been intended : the con- 
scientious daughter now looked upon herself as 
the destroyer of her mother's fair hopes, and 
suffered from her own mind a thousand re- 
proaches for this fault. Though she had never 
adopted the maternal scheme of marriage, and 
had reckoned only upon bread and salt in her 
future wedlock ; yet, on hearing of her lover's 
riches and spreading commerce, her diet-project 
had directly mounted to six plates; and it de- 
lighted her to think, that by her choice she 
should still realize her good mother's wish, and 
see her once more planted in her previous 
abundance. 

This fair dream now vanished by degrees, 
as Franz continued silent. To make matters 
worse, there spread a rumour over all the city, 
that he was furnishing his house in the most 
splendid fashion for his marriage with a rich 
Antwerp lady, who was already on her way to 
Bremen. This Job's-news drove the lovely 
maiden from her last defence, she passed on 
the apostate sentence of banishment from her 
heart : and vowed from that hour never more 
to think of him ; and as she did so, wetted the 
twining thread with her tears. 

In a heavy hour she was breaking this vow, 
and thinking, against her will, of the faithless 
lover: for she had just spun off a rock of flax; 
and there was an old rhyme which had been 
taught her by her mother for encouragement to 
diligence ; 

Spin, daughterkin, spin, 
Tliy sweetlieart 's within I 

which she always recollected when her rock 
was done ; and along with it the memory of 
the Deceitful necessarily occurred to her. In 
:his heavy hour, a finger rapped with a most 
dainty patter at the door. Mother Brigitta look- 
ed forth: the sweetheart was without. And 
u So could it bel Who else but neighbour 
F/anz, from the alley? He had decked himself 
with a gallant wooing-suit: and his well-dress- 



ed, thick brown locks shook forth perfume. 
This stately decoration boded, at all events, 
something else than flax-dealing. Mother Bri- 
gitta started in alarm : she tried to speak, but 
words failed her. Meta rose in trepidation 
from her seat, blushed like a purple rose, and 
was silent. Franz, however, had the power of 
utterance ; to the soft adagio which he had in 
former days trilled forth to her, he now ap- 
pended a suitable text, and explained his dumb 
love in clear words. Thereupon he made 
solemn application for her to the mother ; jus- 
tifying his proposal by the statement, that the 
preparations in his house had been meant for 
the reception of a bride, and that this bride w^as 
the charming Meta. 

The pointed old lady, having brought her 
feelings or^ce more into equilibrium, was for 
protracting the affair to the customary term cC 
eight days for deliberation ; though joyful tear; 
were running down her cheeks, presaging no 
impediment on her side, but rather answer of 
approval. Franz, however, was so pressing in 
his suit, that she fell upon a middle path be- 
tween the wooer's ardour and maternal use and 
wont, and empowered the gentle Meta to de 
cide in the affair according to her own good 
judgment. In the virgin heart there had occur- 
red, since Frr=.nz's entrance, an important revo- 
lution. His presence here was the most speak- 
ing proof of h:s innocence ; and as, in the course 
of conversation, it distinctly came to light, that 
his apparent coldness had been nothing else 
than zeal and diligence in putting his commer- 
cial affairs in order, and preparing what was 
necessary for the coming nuptials, it followed 
that the secret reconciliation would proceed 
forthwith without any stone of stumbling in its 
way. She acted with the outlaw, as Mother 
Brigitta with her disposted spinning gear, or the 
First-born Son of the Church with an exiled 
Parliament; recalled him with honour to her 
high-beating heart, and reinstated him in all his 
former rights and privileges there. The decisive 
three-lettered little word, that ratifies the happi- 
ness of love, came gliding with such unspeak- 
able grace from her soft lips, that the answered 
lover could not help receiving it with a warm 
melting kiss. 

The tender pair had now time and opportu- 
nity for deciphering all the hieroglyphics of their 
mysterious love; which afforded the most^ilea- 
sant conversation that ever two lovers carried 
on. They found, what our commentators ought 
to pray for, that they had always understood 
and interpreted the text aright, without once 
missing the true sense of their reciprocal pro- 
ceedings. It cost the delighted bridegroom al- 
most as great an effort to part from his charming 
bride, as on the day when he set out on his cru- 
sade to Antwerp. However, he had an impor- 
tant walk to take; so at last it became time o 
withdraw. 

This walk was directed to the Wese?-bi.da;0| 
to find Timbertoe, whom he had not forgotten, 



MUSAUS. 



181 



though he had long delayed to keep his word 
to liim. Sharply as the physiognomist, ever 
since his interview with tUe open-handed 
Bridge-bailiff, had been on the outlook, he could 
never catch a glimpse of him among .the pas- 
sengers, although a second visit had been faith- 
fully promised. Yet the figure of his benofactor 
had not vanished from his memory. The mo- 
ment he perceived the fair -apparelled youth 
from a distance, he stilted towards him, and 
gave him kindly welcome. Franz answered 
his salutation, and said: "Friend, canst thou 
take a walk with me into the Neustadt, to trans- 
act a small affair? Thy trouble shall not be 
unpaid.'' 

"Ah! why not?" replied the old blade; 
"though I have a wooden leg, I can step you 
with it as stoutly as the lame dwarf that crept 
round the city-common ;* for the wooden leg, 
you must know, has this good property, it never 
tires. But excuse me a little while till Gray- 
cloak is come: he never misses to pass along 
the Bridge between day and night."' 

" What of Graycloak ?' inquired Franz : "let 
me know about him." 

"Graycloak brings me daily about nightfall a 
silver groschen, I know not from whom. It is 
of no tise prying into things, so I never mind. 
Sometimes it occurs to me Graycloak must be 
the devil, and means to buy my soul with the 
money. But, devil or no devil, what care II 
I dill not strike him on the bargain, so it cannot 
hold." 

" I should not wonder," answered Franz, with 
a smile, "if Graycloak were a piece of a knave. 
But do thou follow me: the silver groschen shall 
not fail thee." 

Timbertoe set forth, hitched on briskly after 
his guide, who conducted him up one street 
and down another, to a distant quarter of the 
city, near the wall; then halted before a neat 
little new-built house, and knocked at the door. 
When it was opened : "Friend,'' said he, "thou 
madest one evening of my life cheerful; it is 
just that I should make the evening of thy life 
cheerful also. This house, with its appurte- 



* There is an old tradition, that a neighbouring Coun- 
tees promised in jest to give the Brenicrs as much land as 
Q cripple, who was just asking her for alms, wimid creep 
round in a day, Tliey took her at her word; and the 
cripple crawled so well, that the town obtained this large 
common by means of hini. 



nances, and the garden where it stands, are 
tljine ; kitchen and cellar are full; an attendant 
is appointed to wait upon thee; and the silver 
groschen, over and above, thou wilt find every 
noon lying under thy plate. Nor will I hide 
from thee that Graycloak was my servant, whom 
I sent to give thee daily an honourable alms, 
till I had got this house made ready for thee. 
If thou like, thou mayest reckon me thy proper 
Guardian Angel, since the other has not acted 
to thy satisfaction." 

He then led the old man into his dwelling, 
where the table was standing covered, and 
everything arranged for his convenience and 
comfortable living. The grayhead v,'as so as- 
tonished at his fortune, that he could not un- 
derstand or even believe it. That a rich man 
should take such pity on a poor one, was incom- 
prehensible : he felt disposed to take the whole 
affair for magic or jugfglery, till Franz removed 
his doubts. A stream of thankful tears flowed 
down the old man's cheeks ; and his benefactor, 
satisfied with this, did not wait till he should 
recover from his amazement and thank him in 
words, but, after doing this angel-message, va- 
nished from the old man's eyes, as angels are 
M-ont; and left him to piece together the affair 
as he best could. 

Next morning, in the habitation of the lovely 
Meta, all was as a fair. Franz despatched to 
her a crowd of merchants, jewellers, milliners, 
lace-dealers, tailors, sutors, and semstresses, in 
part to offer her all sorts of wares, in part their 
own good services. She passed the whole day 
in choosing stuffs, laces, and other requisites for 
the condition of a bride, or being measured for 
her various new apparel. The dimensions of 
her dainty foot, her beautifully-formed arm, and 
her slim waist, were as often and as carefully 
meted, as if some skilful statuary had been tak- 
ing from her the model for a Goddess of Love. 
Meanwhile, the bridegroom went to appoint the 
bans; and before three weeks were past, he led 
his bride to the altar, with a solemnity by which 
even the gorgeous wedding-pomp of the Hop- 
King was eclipsed. Mother Brigitta had the 
happiness of twisting the bridal-garland for her 
virtuous Meta ; she completely attained her wish 
of spending her wonian's-summer in propitious 
affluence ; and deserved this satisfaction, as a 
recompense for one praiseworthy quality which 
she possessed : She was the most tolerable nn - 
ther-in-law that has ever been discovered. 



MATTHIAS CLAUDIUS. 



Born 1740. Died 1815, 



This writer, better known in Germany by 
the assumed name of Asmus, is not usually 
numbered with the Classics of his country, but 
enjoyed a wider popularity than many who are 
so ranked. He is eminently a writer of and for 
the people, and would seem in some cases to 
affect a certain "Jack Downing" rudeness for 
the sake of rendering himself acceptable to un- 
cultivated readers. But this sort of petulance, 
with him, never degenerates into gross vul- 
garity ; and though we feel the want of refine- 
ment in all his productions, he never positively 
disgusts. The coarseness is in the manner, 
never in the thought. For the rest, he is tho- 
roughly healthy, and acts with tonic efiect on 
mind and heart. He is a humorist, never grace- 
ful, but always genial, hearty, downright. He 
resembles Jean Paul in childlike freshness of 
feeling and nobility of sentiment; and com- 
mends himself ' to every man's conscience' by 
the pure morality and moral purpose which 
pervade his writings; as also by his independent 



confession and defence of the popular religioOi 
in a period of which Tieck says, that religion 
was then a contraband article in literature, and 
was pardoned in Asmus only on account of his 
genuine Germanism. 

He was born at Reinfeld in Holstein, studied 
at Jena, and spent the greater part of his life 
as private citizen at Wandsbeck, where, under 
the name of Asmus, he wrote for the Wands- 
becker Bote, (Wandsbeck Messenger). In 1776, 
he received the appointment of " Upper Land- 
Commissioner" at Darmstadt, where he was 
expected to edit a popular newspaper. But not 
liking the situation he resigned it the following 
year, and returned to Wandsbeck. In 1778, 
he was made first inspector of the Schleswig- 
Hol^ein bank at Altona, with the privilege of 
residing at Wandsbeck. He died, aged seventy- 
five, at the house of his son-in-law, the book- 
seller Friedrich Perthes: Hamburg, January 
21st, 1815. 



T)EDICATION TO FRIEND HAIN.* 

I HAVE the honour, Sir, to be acquainted with 
Mister, your brother ; he is my good fiiend and 
patron. 1 have also, it may be, other introduc- 
tions to you ; but I think it best to come to you 
directly, in person. You are not in favour of 
introductions, and are not used to make many 
rompliments. 

I am told there are people — they are called 
men of strong minds — who never, in their life, 
aave troubled themselves about Main; and who, 
behind his back, even mock at him and his thin 
legs. I am not a man of strong mind. To tell 
the truth, my blood runs cold whenever I look 
at you, Sir. And yet I am willing to believe 
that you are a good man, when one is sufficiently 
acquainted with you ; and yet I seem to have a 
kind of home-sickness and longing after thee, 
thou old porter, Ruprecht, — that thou rnayest 
one day come and loose my girdle and lay me 
safely to rest in the place appointed, in expecta- 
tion of better times. 

* Death. Tr. 



Here I 've been writing a little book, and I 
bring it to you. It's poetry and prose. Don't 
know whether you are fond of poems. Should 
hardly think yon were, since, as a general thing, 
you don"t like jokes, and the times are past 
when poems were anything more than jokes. 
There are some things in the book which I hope 
will not be wholly displeasing to you. The 
greater part is mere setting, and trifling enter- 
tainment. Do what you please with it. 

Your hand, dear Hain! And when you draw 
near at last, be not too hard upon me and my 
friends. 



ADVERTISEMENT FOR SUBSCRIBERS. 

I AM going to collect my works, like other 
folks, and publish them. No one has asked me 
to do so, it is true, as is sometimes the case ; and 
I know better than any benevolent reader, how 
little would be lost if my works should remain 
as unknown as I am myself. But then sub- 
scribing and publishing is so nice, and such 9 

(182) 



CLAUDIUS. 



183 



pleasure and honour for me and my old aunt! 
Besides, it is every man's own choice whether 
he will subscribe or not. Therefore, I mean to 
publish them with the title, " jlsmus omnia sua 
secum pnrlans, or Complete works of the Wands- 
beck Carrier." » * » * * 

I meant, at first, to have the portraits of all 
the subscribers engraved in the frontispiece. 
But they told me that would be inconvenient ; 
so I gave it up. » » * » • 

Finally, benevolent readers know, from the 
Gbtlinger Musen-Mmanach, where I sometimes 
give myself another name, and particularly from 
the Waudsbeck Carrier, what they are to expect ; 
and it is not my fault if any one subscribes and 
afterwards is dissatisfied. 

Nov. 8th, 1774. AsMUS. 



SPECULATIONS ON NEW-YEARS' DAY. 

A HAPPT new year ! A happy new year to 
my dear country, the land of ohl integrity and 
truth ! A happy new year to friends and ene- 
mies. Christians and Turks, Hottentots and 
Cannibals! To all on whom God permits his 
sun to rise and his rain to fall ! Also to the poor 
negro slaves who have to work all day in the 
hot sun. It 's wholly a glorious day, — the new- 
years' day! At other times, I can bear'that a 
man should be a little bit patriotic, and not make 
court to other nations. True, one must not speak 
evil of any nation. The wiser part are, every- 
where, silent; and who would revile a whole 
nation for the sake of the loud ones 1 As I said, 
I can bear at other times, that a man should be 
a little patriotic; but on new-year's day my 
patriotism is dead as a mouse ; and it seems to 
me on that day as if we were all brothers, and 
had one Father who is in heaven; as if all the 
goods of the world were water which God has 
created for all men, as 1 once heard it said, &c. 

And so I am accustomed, every new-years' 
morning, to sit down on a stone by the way- 
siile, to scratch with my staff" in the sand before 
me, and to think of this and of that. Not of my 
readers. I hold them in all honour ; but on new- 
years' mornitig, on the stone by the way-side, I 
think not of them ; but I sit there and tliiuk that 
during the past year I saw the sun rise so often, 
and the moon, — that I saw so many rainbows 
and flowers, and breathed the air so often, and 
drank from the brook, — and then I do not like 
to look up, and I take, with both hands, my cap 
from my head and look into that. 

Then I think also of my acquaintance who 
have died during the year; and how they can 
talk now with Socrates and Numa, and other 
men of whom I have heard so much good, and 
with John Huss. And then it seems as if graves 
opened round about me, and shadows with bald 
crowns and long gray beards came out of them 
and shook tlie dust out of their beards. That 
must be the work of the ^' Evei-lasting Hunts- 



man" who has his doings about the twelfth. 
The old pious long-beards would fain sleep. 
But a glad new year to your memory and to the 
ashes in your graves!! 



THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER. 

FIRST AND SECOND PART. LEIPZIG. 1774. 

Doir"T know whether it's history or poetry. 
It is all very natural, and has a way of drawing 
the tears from one's head right movingly. Well, 
love is a strange thing! It will not be played 
with like a bird. I know it, how it goes through 
body and life, and beats and rages in every vein, 
and plays tricks with the head and reason. 

Poor Werther ! He had else such fine cony 
ceits and thoughts. Had he but taken a journey 
to Paris or to Pekin ! But no ! He would not 
leave the fire and the spit, and went round and 
round it till he went to pieces. 

And there's the misery, that one can have 
such talents and gifts, and yet be so weak. 
Therefore they ought to make a turf-seat by his 
grave under the Linden-tree by the church-yard 
wall, that one might sit down upon it and lay 
his head in his hand, and weep over human 
weakness. But when thou hast finished weep- 
ing, good gentle youth ! when thou hast finished 
weeping, lift up thy head with joy, and place 
thy hand against thy side! For there is such a 
thing as Virtue. That too goes through body 
and life, and beats and rages in every vein. She 
is said not to be attainable without much earnest- 
ness and conflict, and therefore not to be much 
known or loved. But he who has her has a ric'n 
reward in sunshine and frost and rain, and 
when Friend Hain comes with his scythe. 



ON PRAYER. 

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER " TO MV FRIEND ANDREW." 
* * * t * * * 

To distort one's eyes in prayer does not seem 
to me necess-try ; I hold it better to be natural. 
But then one must not blame a man on that ac- 
count, provided he is no hypocrite. But that a 
man should make himself great and broad in 
prayer, — that, it seems to me, deserves reproacii, 
and is not to be endured. One may have cou- 
rage and confidence, but he must not be con- 
ceited and wise in his own conceit; for if one 
knows how to counsel and help himself, the 
shortest way is to do it. Folding the hands is a 
fine external decorum, and looks as if one sur- 
rendered himself without capitulation, and laid 
down his arms. But the inward, secret yearning, 
billow-heaving, and wishing of the heart, — that, 
in my opinion, is the chief thing in prayer; and 
therefore I cannot understand what people mean 
who will not have us pray. It is just as if theyJ^. 
said one should not wish, or one should have no 



184 



CLAUDIUS. 



beard and no ears. That must be a blockhead 
of a boy who should have nothing to ask of his 
father, and who should deliberate the whole 
day whether he will let it come to that extre- 
mity. When the wish within you concerns you 
nearly, Andrew, and is of a warm complexion, 
it will not question long; it will overpower you 
like a strong and armed man. It will just hurry 
on a few rags of words, and knock at the door 
of heaven. ****** 
******* 

Whether the prayer of a moved soul can ac- 
complish and effect anything, or whether the 
Nexus Rerum does not allow of that, as some 
learned gentlemen think — on that point I shall 
enter into no controversy. I liave great respect 
for the Nexus Rerum, but I cannot help thinking 
of Samson who left the Nexus of the gate-leaves 
uninjured and carried the whole gate, as every 
one knows, to the top of the hill. And, in short, 
Andrew, I believe that the rain comes when it 
is dry, and that the heart does not cry in vain 
after fresh water, if we pray aright and are 
rightly disposed. 

" Our Father" is once for all the best prayer, 
for you know who made it. But no man on 
God's earth can pray it after him, precisely as 
he meant it. We cripple it with a distant imita- 
tion ; and each more miserably than the other. 
But that matters not, Andrew, if we only mean 
well ; the dear God must do the best part at 
any rate, and he knows how it ought to be. 
Because you desire it, I will tell you sincerely 
how I manage with " Our Father.'' But it seems 
to tue a very poor way, and I would gladly be 
taught a better. 

Do you see, when I am going to pray, I think 
first of my late father, how he was so good and 
loved so well to give to me. And then I picture 
to myself the whole world as my Father's house, 
and all the people in Europe, Asia, Africa and 
America, are then, in my thoughts, my brothers 
ajid sisters ; and God is sitting in heaven on a 
golden chair, and has his right hand stretched 
out over the sea to the end of the world, and 
his left full of blessing and good ; and all around 
the mountain-tops smoke — and then 1 begin: — 

Our Father who art in heaven. 
Hallowed be thy name. 
Here I am already at fault. The Jews are 
said to have known special mysteries respect- 
ing the name of God. But I let all that be, and 
only wish that the thought of God and every 
trace by which we can recognise him, may be 
great and holy above all things, to me and all 
men. 

Thy kingdom come. 
Here I think of myself, how it drives hither 
and thither within me, and now this governs 
and now that; and that all is sorrow of heart 
and I can light on no green branch. And then 
I think how good it would be for me, if God 
^ would put an end to all discord and govern me 
himself. 



Thy will he done as in heaven so on earth. 

Here I picture to myself heaven and the holy 
angels who do his will with joy, and no sorrow 
touches them, and they know not what to do 
for love and blessedness, and frolic night and 
day; and then I think: if it were only so here 
on the earth ! 

Give us this day our daily bread. 
Everybody knows what daily bread means, 
and that one must eat as long as one is in the 
world, and also that it tastes good, i think of 
that. Perhaps too, tny children occur to me, 
how they love to eat and are so lively and joyful 
at table. Anu then 1 pray that the dear God 
would only give us something to eat. 

Forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors. 

It hurts when one receives an affront; and 
revenge is sweet to man. It seems so to me, 
too, and my inclination leads that way. But 
then the wicked servant in the gospel passes 
before my eyes and my heart fails, and I resolve 
that I. will forgive my fellow-servant and not 
say a word to him about the hundred pence. 

And lead us not into temptation. 

Here I think of various instances where peo- 
ple, in such and such circumstances, have stray- 
ed from the good and have fallen; and that it 
would be no better with me. 

But deliver us from evil. 
Here I still think of temptations and that man 
is so easily seduced and may stray from the 
straight path. But at the same time I think of 
all the troubles of life, of consumption and old 
age, of the pains of child-birth, of gangrene and 
insanity and the thousand-fold misery and heart- 
sorrow that is in the world and that plagues and 
tortures poor mortals, and there is none to help. 
And you will find, Andrew! if tears have not 
come before, they will be sure to come here; 
and one can feel such a hearty yearning to be 
away and can be so sad and cast down in one's 
self, as if there were really no help at all. But 
then one must pluck up courage again, lay the 
band upon the mouth and continue, as it were, 
in triumph : 

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the 
glory forever. Amen. 



A CORRESPONDENCE 

BETWEEN ME AND MY COUSIN RESPECTING ORTHODOXY AND IM- 
PROVEMENTS IN RELIOION. 

Highly Lamed, 

Highly to be honoured Mr. Cousin,— 
I have heard, for some tiine past, so much 
about the religion of reason and the religion of 
the bible, about orthodox and philosophical 
Theologians, that my head turns round, and I 
know no longer who is right and who is wrong 



CLAUDIUS. 



1S5 



To mend religion witii reason, — that, to be sure, 
seems to uie as if I sliould undertake to correct 
the sun by my old wooden house-clock. But, 
on the other hand, philosophy seems to me a 
good thinii, too ; and much that is objected to 
the orthodox strikes me as true. Mr. Cousin 
\v,il do me a real favour, if he will expound 
tins matter to me. Especially whether phi- 
lu^oplly is a broom to sweep the rilih out of the 
temple; and whether I must take my hat off 
with a more profound reverence to an orthodox 
or to a philosophical Herr Pastor. 

I have the honour to remain with special 
esteem, 

My highly lamed, 

Highly to be honoure<l Mr. Cousin's 
obedient servant and Cousin, 

ASMUS. 

Answer. 

Dear Cousin, — 

PhilosO|)hy is good and people are wrong 
who treat it with scorn. But revelation relates 
to phdosophy, not as more and less but as 
heaven and earth, upper and under. I cannot 
explain it to you better than by the chart which 
you once made of the pond behind your late 
father's garden. You used to be fon<l of sailing 
on the pond, cousin, and so you had constructed, 
with your own hand, a chart of all the depths 
and shallows of the pond; and according to 
that you sailed about, and it answered very 
well. But if now a whirlwind, or the Queen 
of Otnheite, or a water-spout had taken you, 
with your boat and your chart, and had set you 
down in the midst of the ocean, Ooil.sia, and 
you had attempted to sail there too hy ycrar 
chart, it would not have answered. The fault 
is not in the chart; it was a very good chart for 
the pond ; hut the pond is not the ocean, you 
see. Here you would have to make another 
chart; but that other chart would remain, for 
the most part, blank, because the sand-banks 
here lie very deep. And, Cousin, sail away 
there without fear; you may meet with sea- 
wonders, hut you will not run ashore. 

Hence, you may judge, yourself, how far phi-. 
losophy is a broom to sweep the cobwebs from 
*.lie temple. In a certain sense, it may be such 
a broom. Or you may call it a hare's foot to 
brush the dust from the sacre<l statues. But 
whoso should undertake therewith to carve and 
whittle at tlie statues himself, — look you ! he 
expects more of the hare's foot than it is equal 
to. Aiid that is highly ridiculous and a scandal 
to behold. 

******* 

That Christianity is to level all heights, that 
it is not merely, like virtue, to modify and regu- 
late, but, like corruption, to carry away every 
peculiar form and beauty, in order that some- 
thing new may be born out (W if. that, indeed, 
will not appear to Reason. Nor need it, if only 
■t lie true. When Abraham was commanded 
o leave his country and his kindred and his 

V 



father's house and to go out into a country which 
was afterward to be made known to him, do 
you not think that his natural feeling rebelled 
and that Reason had all sorts of well-grounded 
scruples and stately doubts to oppose to such a 
journey? But Abraliam believed the word and 
went out. And there is and was no other way. 
For he couhl not see the promised land from 
Haran ; and "Niebuhr's Travels'' was not pub- 
lished then. If Abraham had debated the 
matter with his reason, he would certainly have 
remained in his country and with his kindred 
and would have taken his ease. The promised 
land would have lost nothing, in that case; but 
he would not have entered it. See, Cousin, so 
it is, and so it stands in the Bible. 

Since then, the sacred statues cannot be re- 
stored by the help of Reason, it is patriotic, in 
a high sense of the word, to leave the ancient 
Ibrm uninjured and to let one's-self be sla.in i'or 
a tittle of the Law. And if that is what is 
meant by an orthodox Herr Pastor, yoa cannot 
bow too low to such an one. But they call 
other thinirs orthodox, besides that. 

Now farewell, dear Cousin, and wish for 
peace. But, for the rest, do not let the strife 
and the field-oiy harm a hair of your head ; and 
use religion more wisely than they. Touching 
that matter, I have Potiphar's wife before my 
eyes. You know the Potiphar? That sanguine 
and rheumatic person seized the mantle, and 
Joseph fled. Regarding the point saillant, the 
spirit of religion, it is idle to dispute; because, 
according to the Scripture, no one knows that 
but he who receives it; and then there is no 
time to doubt and to dispute. 

To sum up all, Cousin, Truth is a giant who 
lies by the wayside and sleeps. They who 
pass by, see well his giant form, hut him they 
see not, and in vain they lay the finger of their 
vanity on the nose of their reason. When he 
puts off the veil, then you will see his face. 
Until then, our consolation must be that he is 
inider the veil. And do you go reverently and 
tremblingly by ; and be not over wise, dear 
Cousin, &c. 



ON KLOPSTOCK'S ODES.* 

No, they 're not verses ; verses must rhyme 
togetlier, — that's what Master Ahrens used to 
tell us at school. He would set me before him 
when he said so, and pull me by the ears, ajid 
say : Here an ear,and there an ear, — that rhymes, 
and so must verses. — And then, too, I can read 
a matter of two hundred verses an hour, and 
very often it alfects me no more than wading 
through the water: the rhymes, too, play about 
one's head, as the waves do about one's heels; 
but here I can't stir from the spot, and it seems 
as if all the time shapes were putting themselves 
in my way, that I have seen before in dreams, 

* Translated by Rev. C. T. Brioks. 
Ifi* 



186 



CLAUDIUS. 



To be sine, it 's printed like verse, and there 's 
a deal of melody and harmony in it, and yet it 
can't be verse, anyhow. Some time I 'U ask 
cousin about it. 

Cousin says they are verses, too, and that al- 
most every verse is a bold steed with free neck, 
that scents the warm-seated rider afar off and 
neighs inspiration. I had understood from 
Master Ahrens that verses were a sort of sound- 
ing, foamy substance, that must rhyme ; but Herr 
Ahrens! Herr Ahrens! you have operated on my 
eye-teeth there. Cousin says it must not foam at 
all, but must be clear as a dew-drop, and pene- 
trating as a sigh of love, and that in this dewy 
clearness and in warm-breathing tenderness lies 
the whole merit of modern poetry. He took 
the book out of my hand, and read (page 41) 
from the piece called " The Comforter." 
• *••»*»» 

"Does that foam, cousin? How do you feel 
under if?" — How do I feel? It stirs up a Hal- 
lehijah in me, too, but I daren't express it, be- 
cause I 'm such a common churl ; I could pluck 
the stars from heaven and strew them at the 
Comforter's feet, and then sink into the earth. 
That s how I feel ! " Bravo ! cousin ! Those 
must be verses, that infect you with such an 
itching to pluck the stars. Read the book 
through; you'll relish it, and for the rest, don't 
be ashamed of the Hallelujah that stirs in you. 
Common! what 's common ? With odes there 's 
no respect of persons; you or a king, one's 
as good as t' other ! And, cousin, let me tell 
you, the fairest seraph, in the dreadful solemn 
pomp of his six wings, is only a poor vulgar 
churl in the sight of God ! But, as I said, read 
the book through." — Have read it, and now I'll 
tell you how it went with me. When you read 
one of the pieces for the first time, you come 
out of the bright day into a glimmering chamber 
full of paintings; at first you see little or no- 
thing, but when you have been there a while, 
bye-and-bye the paintings begin to be visible and 
to take right hold of you, and then you shut-to 
the door and lock yourself in, and walk up and 
down, and find yourself mightily quickened 
with the pictures, and the rose-clouds, and fine 
rainbows, and light Graces with soft sensibility 
in their looks, and all that. Here and there 
I 've hit upon passages, where I felt quite giddy, 
and it seemed just as if an eagle set out to fly 
right up to heaven, and now had got so high, 
that you could only see motion, but couldn't tell 
v/hether the eagle made it or whether it was 
culy a lusus aeris, a play of the air. Then I like 
^o put the book down, and take a wliiff" with 
Uncle Toby. 



About the dove-tailing of the words, too, in 
these Odes, I 've often had my own notions, and 
about the metre, and I'd be willing to bet, 
there 's some special trick there, too, if one only 
imderstood it right. The metre isn't the same 
in all the Odes ; not at all ; in some it's like the 
roaring of a storm through a great forest, in 
others soft as the moon walking through the 
sky ; and this don't seem to have come so acci 
dentally either. 

THE EARLT GRATES. 

" All hail to thee, silvery moon, 
Lovely, lonely companion of ni?ht ! 

Dost thou flee ? Hnste thee not ; linsrer, friend of thoosht ! 
Lo, she abides ! 't was the cloud, only, swept by. 

*' Naught but the waking of May 
Sweeter is than the summer night, 
When the dew, pure as lif^ht, trickles from his locks, 
And o'er the brow of the hill redly he climbs. 

"Ye nobler ones, ah, even now 
Sober moss on your grave-stones grows. 
Oh how blest was 1 once, when with you 1 saw 
Redden the dawn of the day. glimmer the night !" 

There — I should like to have made that, or, 
at least, to be sleeping with the rest of 'em under 
a stone all overgrown with " sober moss," and 
hear, overhead, such a sigh from a good youth, 
v.'hom in life I had held dear. My handful of 
dust would stir in the grave, and my shade 
would come up through the moss to the good 
youth, give him a hearty grip of the paw, and 
smack awhile at his neck in the moonshine. 

And then the Titles over the pieces ! yes, they 
are always so short and well given, and a good 
title over a piece is like a good face to a man. 
The Dedication, too, is brave — " To Bernstorf," 
and nothing more. And in fact what use of 
such a long talk about Maecenas and grace and 
gracious? The great man don't relish it, and 
it eats up the little one's stomach. 

On the whole this book has shed me a real 
light on Herr Ahrens and verse-making. I figure 
the poet to myself as a noble, tender-hearted 
youth, who at certain hours grows as plethoric- 
ally desperate, as when one of us is ridden by 
the nightmare, and then comes on a fever which 
makes the fine, tender-hearted youth hot and 
sick, until the materia peccans secretes itself in 
the shape of an ode, elegy, or something of the 
sort; and whoever comes near him, catches the 
infection: 

Braga comes down through the oak foliage to 
impregnate the soul of the patriot-poet, that it 
may bring to light in its time a ripe and vigor- 
ous fruit; but he who is wanton and flirts with 
foreigners, lays wind eggs. 

The author is said to be one Klopstock; — 
should like right well to see him some day. 



JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER. 



BOFD 1741. Died 1801. 



Switzerland comes in for a share in the 
literary honors of Germany, whose language 
extends beyond the Rhine, and whose litera- 
ture rejoices in the contributions of such men 
as Bodmer, Gessner, Lavater, von Zimmerman, 
von Salis, Pestalozzi. 

Among these, the name of Lavater stands 
first in cosmopolitan significance, denoting one 
of the most remarkable men of his time ; wor- 
shipped by one-half the world, and flouted by 
the other; a man in whom strength and weak- 
ness, depth and simplicity, liberality and nar- 
rowness were singularly blended. On the 
whole, an original mind and a true philosopher. 
His physiognomical essays, by which he is 
principally known at the present day, consti- 
tute but a small part of his literary labors. He 
wrote with acceptance on a great variety of 
subjects, and on none more effectively than on 
questions of theology. He was also a maker 
of poems. Among those who knew him best, 
he was distinguished more by his moral traits 
than by his intellectual gifts; by his purity of 
heart, his deep humility, his fervent piety, his 
Christian charity and zeal for mankind. A 
more thoroughly good man the annals of litera- 
ture do not exhibit, nor a more devoted Chris- 
tian. 

Lavater* was born at Zurich, on the 14th 
November, 1741. His father, Henry Lavater, 
was Doctor of Medicine, and IVIember of the 
Government of Zurich ; a man of universally 
acknowledged integrity, of unwearied applica- 
tion, and a sound understanding ; an excellent 
economist. His mother, whose maiden name 
was Regula Escher, was a woman of marked 
character and extraordinary gifts. Whatever 
of genius he inherited, must have come from 
that side of the house. 

His childhood promised poorly. He repre- 
sents himself as excelling, at that period, in 
nothing but awkwardness and stupidity; "any- 
thing but apt to learn, very inattentive, change- 
ful, impatient, pettish, thoughtless, and simple. 

• Thf; follnwintf sketch 13 taknn principally from the 
MiMrioir, hy Thoniaa HnliTi)f(. prnfixed to liis tran-olation 
of Lavater's Essays on Physiojfnomy. There is a bio- 
graphy of him, by his sonin-law, G. Gessner. 



The slightest tendency to pleasantry or wit 
was never discovered in me. I recollect how 
much I suffered, at this early period of my life, 
from timidity and bashfulness. I observed and 
felt, but could never communicate my feelings 
and observations ; or if I attempted such a com- 
munication, the manner in which I did it was 
so absurd and drew upon me so much ridicule, 
that I soon found myself incapable of uttering 
another word." 

His imagination appears to have been, at this 
season, the most active of his mental powers. 
" My imagination was continually at work to 
conceive and plan what might appear uncom- 
mon and extraordinary. Every building ap- 
peared to me too small, every tower too low, 
every animal too diminutive." * * 
" My indefatigably inventive imagination was 
frequently occupied with two singular subjects, 
— with framing plans for impenetrable prisons, 
and with the idea of becoming the chief of a 
troop of banditti. In the latter case, however, 
it is to be understood that not the least tincture 
of cruelty or violence entered into my thoughts. 
I meant neither to murder nor distress; my 
timid and good heart shuddered at such an 
idsa. But to steal with ingenious artifice and 
then bestow the stolen property with similar 
adroitness and privacy on another who might 
want it more ; to do no serious injury, but to 
produce extraordinary chnnges and visible ef- 
fects, while I myself remained invisible, was 
one of my favorite conceptions." Notwith- 
standing these mental vagaries, his religious 
feelings were early developed and very intense. 
He was, through life, a firm believer in the 
power of faith and the immediate, objective 
efficacy of prayer, of which he conceived him- 
self to have had extraordinary personal ex- 
perience. " It is scarcely possible to conceive 
the strength of my faith in these years, when 
I was in difficulty and trouble. If I could 
pray, it seemed to me that I had already ob- 
tained the object of my prayer. Once, when 
1 had given in a Latin exercise on wliich much 
depended, I recollected, after it was in tiie 
hands of the master, that I had written relata 

(187) 



instead of revelata. Can there be a stronger 
proof of the simplicity and strengtii of my 
childish faith than that I prayed to God that 
he would correct the word and write ve above 
it with black ink? The ve was written above 
in another hand with black ink, somewhat 
blacker than mine, and my exercise was ad- 
judged faultless. I believe the correction was 
made by the master, from the partial kindness 
he entertained for me, and I think it was 
anxiety and presentiment on my part which 
assumed the form of prayer." 

While at school in Zurich, he conceived the 
idea of being a minister of the gospel. It was 
suggested to him in the following manner: 
" Mr. Caspar Ulrich, minister at Fraumunster, 
and one of the superintendents of the gym- 
nasium or college, came one day into the school 
and exclaimed among the scholars, " Which 
of you will be a minister 1" Young Lavater, 
without ever having thought of such a thing 
before, cried out so hastily and loudly that all 
his companions burst out into a loud laugh, " I ! 
l!" He answered thus without any considera- 
tion, or mclination. But scarcely had the word 
passed his lips when lie began to feel a desire 
which soon became a wish, and that wish a 
firm resolution." 

In 1755, Lavater left the grammar-school 
and entered the college in his native city, 
where he contracted an intimate friendship 
with Fuseli, afterwards so celebrated as a 
painter. In 1759 he was received into tha 
theological class under Zimmerman, professor 
of divinity; and in 1762, was ordained a 
minister. 

About this time, he distinguished himself, as 
a friend of the oppressed, by his efforts, in con- 
junction with his friends Fuseli and Pestalozzi, 
to bring to justice the bailiff" of Griiningen, one 
of the bailiwicks of Zurich; Felix Grebel, a 
man "who grossly abused his authority as a 
magistrate and was notoriously guilty of acts 
of oppression and extortion, but whose victims 
being poor, dared not complain to the magis- 
trates of Zurich, because the burgo-master 
was father-in-law of the delinquent." 

In June, 1766, he married Miss Anna Schinz, 
the daughter of a respectable merchant, who 
held an office in the civil magistracy. The 
Ibllowing year, he published his Swiss Songs 
which passed through a greater number of 
editions than any other of his numerous works. 



In 1769 he was appointed deacon and 
preacher to the orphan-house at Zurich. In 
this situation he was unwearied in acts of 
benevolence. In the great dearth which oc- 
curred in Switzerland, in the years 1770 and 
1771, a large portion of his own small income 
was given in charity, which, with his personal 
applications at the houses of the rich, caused 
him to be long remembered as the benefactor 
of the poor. 

His first work on physiognomy was publish- 
ed in 1772; in 1775 the first volume of his 
celebrated Physiognomical Fragments for the 
Promotion of the Knowledge and Love of Man- 
kind. In 1775 Lavater was made pastor or 
first preacher to the orphan-house, and, ten 
years afler, pastor of the church of St. Peter, 
which office he held till his death. 

When the French took possession of Switzer- 
land in 1798, he protested against their ravages 
in a publication addressed to the Directory, 
entitled, " Words of a free Switzer to the 
Great Nation," which gained him the applause 
of Europe for its high-toned courage. The 
following year, he was seized and carried 
prisoner to Basel, on the charge of a con- 
spiracy against the French, but was released, 
after a confinement of several weeks, for want 
of evidence. 

In September, 1799, he received a gun-shot 
wound from a French soldier while standing 
before his door, which, though it healed for a 
while, proved ultimately fatal. The last year 
of his life was one of great bodily suffering 
occasioned by his wound which he bore with 
admirable patience, praying for the man who 
had wounded him, " that he might never suffer 
the pains he had caused him to endure." In 
the intervals of suffering his mental activity 
continued unabated, and several small works 
were published, during this period. On one 
occasion, he caused himself to be carried to 
church and addressed an affectionate farewell 
exhortation to his beloved flock. 

About a fortnight before his death, he finished 
his last literary production, which was a poem (I) 
written with great spirit, and entitled " Zurich 
at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century." 
On the last of December he was so much ex- 
hausted that what he said could only be heard 
by applying the ear to his lips. Yet even in 
this condition he dictated som.e verses (German 
hexameters) for his colleague to read to his 



LAVATER. 



J8- 



congreg^tion on the morning of the new year's 
day. 

He died Friday, January 2d, 1801. 

As a physiognomist, the character to which 
he is principally indebted for his fame, Lavater 
has shown himself an original observer, and 
may even claim to be called, in some sense, a 
discoverer. He differed from all who had pre- 
ceded him in this science, in directing his at- 
tention rather to the firm and stationary — " the 
defined and definable" — parts of the counte- 
nance than to those which are movable and 
accidental. He distinguished between what is 
superficial in the character, — the passions and 
accidental determinations of the individual, — 
and the original self The former he supposed 
to be indicated by the movable and muscular 
parts of the countenance, the latter by the firm 
and bony. In order to form an opinion of the 
character from the face, he required to see the 
face at rest, — in sleep or in an unconscious 
state. "The greater part of the physiogno- 
mLsts," he says, " speak only of the passions, or 
rather of the exterior signs of the passions, and 
the expression of them in the muscles. But 
these exterior signs are only transient circum- 
stances, which are easily discoverable. It has 
therefore always been my object to consider the 
general and fundamental character of the man, 
from which, according to the state of his exte- 
rior circumstances and relations, all his passions 
arise as from a root."* 

The following anecdote is related by his son- 
in-law, G. Gessner, as an instance of his prac- 
tical skill in this science. "A person to whom 
he was an entire stranger was once announced 
and introduced to him as a visitor. The first 
idea that rose in his mind, the moment he saw 
him, was: ' This man is a murderer.' He how- 
ever immediately suppressed the thought as 
unjustifiably hasty and severe, and conversed 
with the person with his accustomed civility. 
The cultivated understanding, extensive infor- 
mation and ease of manner which he discovered 
in his visitor, inspired him with the highest re- 
spect for his intellectual endowments; and his 
esteem for these, added to his natural candor 
and benevolence, induced him to disregard the 
unfavorable impression he had received from 
his first appearance, with respect to his moral 

♦ From a converBation with the Emperor Joseph II., 
qiiote.l by Holcroft. 



character. The next day h« dined with him 
by invitation ; but soon after it was known that 
this accomplished gentleman was one of the 
assassins of the late king of Sweden ; and he 
found it advisable to leave the country as soon 
as possible." 

The following extracts from Goethe's remi- 
niscences of Lavater, contained in the " Bichl- 
ung nnd Wahrheit," give us the reflection of 
his personality in a mind of a very different 
order from his own. 

" Not long after this, I came into connection 
with Lavater also. The 'Letter of a Pastor 
to his Colleagues'* had been very luminous to 
him, in passages ; for there was much in it that 
fully coincided with his own sentiments. With 
his ceaseless driving, our correspondence soon 
became very brisk. He was just making ear- 
nest preparations for his larger Physiognomik. 
He called upon everybody to send him draw- 
ings, profiles, but especially pictures of Christ; 
and although what I could render in this way 
amounted to almost nothing, he insisted upon 
it, once for all, that he would have a Saviour 
drawn according to my conception of him. 
Such requisitions of the impossible gave rise to 
many jests, and I knew no other way of defend- 
ing myself against his peculiarities but by turn- 
ing out my own." * * * "He had com- 
missioned a not unskilful painter in Frankfort 
to send him the profiles of several individuals 
whom he mentioned. The sender allowed 
himself the jest of sending Bahrdt's portrait at 
first, instead of mine ; whereupon came back a 
pleasant indeed, but atbimdering epistle, with 
all sorts of trumps and asseverations that this 
could not be my picture, and with whatever else 
Lavater, on such an occasion, might have to 
say in confirmation of his physiognomical doc- 
trine." "The idea of humanity which bad 
formed itself in him from his own humanity 
was so intimately connected with the concep- 
tion of Christ, which he carried living within 
him, that it was inconceivable to him, how a 
man could live and breathe without being a 
Christian." "One must either be a Christian 
with him, a Christian after his sort, or one must 
draw him over to one's self, and convince him, 
too, of the truth of that in which one found re- 
pose. This requisition, so immediately opposed 
to the liberal, cosmopolitan feeling to which I 
gradually confessed myself, had not the best 

* One of Goethe's youthful Droductions. 



190 



LAVATER. 



effect with nie. All attempts at conversion, 
when they are unsuccessful, render the intended 
proselyte obstinate and hardened ; and this was 
my case ; the rather when Lavater came for- 
ward at last with the hard dilemma; 'Either 
Christian or atheist' I replied to this, that if 
he would not leave me my Christianity, as I 
had hitherto cherished it, I could perhaps make 
up my mind to atheism ; especially, since I saw 
that no one knew exactly what was meant by 
either." 

" Our first meeting was hearty; we embraced 
in the most friendly manner, and I immediately 
found him as he had been represented to me m 
so many pictures. An individual, unique, dis- 
tinguished in a way which has not been seen 
and will not be seen again, I saw Jiving and 
effective before me. Me, on the contrary, be- 
trayed in the first moment, by sundry singular 
exclamations, that he had expected me other- 
wise. Whereupon I told him, agreeably to my 
inborn and incultivatcd realism, that since Gotl 
and Nature had once for all been pleased te 
make me so, we too would content ourselves 
with that. Now, the most important points 
upon which we had been least able to agree in 
our letters, came indeed into immediate discus- 
sion ; but space was not allowed us for a tho- 
rough treatment of them, and 1 experienced 
what had never occurred to me before. 

" We others, when we wished to discuss mat- 
ters of the mind and heart, were accustcmied to 
withdraw ourselves from the crowd, and even 
from society ; because, with the manifold ways 
of thinking and different stages of culture, it is 
difficult to come to an understanding even with 
a few. But Lavater was of quite a different 
mind. He loved to extend his operations far 
and wide. He was never at home but in tlie 
congregation, for the instruction and entertain- 
ment of which he had a special talent, based 
on his great physiognomical gift. To him was 
given a correct discernment of persons and of 
spirits; so that he saw in each one quickly what 
was the probable state of his mind." "The 
profound meekness of his look, the determined 
loveliness of his lips, even his true-hearted 
Swiss dialect which sounded through his High 
German, — and how much else that distinguish- 
ed him — imparted to every one with wliom he 
conversed the most agreeable repose of mind. 
Even his somewhat forward bending position 
■jf the body — a consequence of his flat chest — 
contributed not a little to equalize the prepon- 



derance of his presence with the rest of the 
company. 

"Toward assumption and conceit he knew 
how to bear himself very quietly and dexter- 
ously. For while he seemed to evade, hje turned 
forth suddenly some great view, which the nar- 
row-minded opponent could never have thought 
of, like a diamond shield ; and yet knew then 
how to temper the light which flashed from it 
so agreeably, that men of this kind generally 
felt themselves instructed and convinced, at 
least in his presence. Perhaps the impression 
may have continued with many ; for selfish men 
may be good too. at the same time. All that is 
required is that the hard shell which encloses 
the fruitful kernel should be dissolved by a 
gentle influence." 

" For me the intercourse with Lavater was 
highly important and instructive." Very re- 
markable and rich in results for me were the 
conversations of Lavater with the Friiulein von 
Klettenberg. Here now stood two decided 
Christians over against each other, and it was 
plain to see how the same confession changes 
its aspect with the sentiments of different indi- 
viduals," — "how men and women need a dif- 
ferent Savior. Frauleiu von Klettenberg related 
to her's, as to a lover to whom one yields one- 
self unconditionally." " Lavater, on the other 
hand, treated his as a friend whom one emulates 
without envy, and full of love." 

"Notwithstanding the religious and moral, 
but by no means anxious tendency of his mind, 
he was not insensible when the spirits were 
stimulated to cheerfulness and mirth by the 
events of life. He was sympathizing, ingenious 
and witty, and loved the same in others, pro- 
vided it remained within the bounds which his 
delicate feelings prescribed to him. If one 
ventured beyond these, he used to pat him on 
the shoulder, and call the offender to order 
with a true-hearted ' Behave now!'"* 

" One became virginal by his side, in order 
not to touch him with anything disgusting." 

" Lavater's mind was altogether imposing. 
In his neighborhood one could not resist a de- 
cided influence." 

"He who feels a synthesis right pregnant 
within himself, has properly the right to ana- 
lyze ; because, in external particulars, he proves 
and legitimates his inward whole. Of Lavater'a 
manner of proceeding in this matter be one only 

* " £isch guet" " be good." Swiss dialect. 



LAVATER. 



IJI 



example given. Sundays, after the sermon, he | 
was required, as minister, to present the short- 
handled velvet bag to each one who came out, 
and to receive the alms with a blessing. Now 
he would impose it upon himself e. g. this Sun- 
day, to look no one in the face, but only to 
watch the hands, and to interpret to himself 
their form. And not only the form of the fingers, 
but their expression in dropping the gift, did 
not escape his attention ; and he had much to 
communicate to me about it afterward. How 
instructive and stimulating must such commu- 
nications be to me who was also en the way to 
qualify myself for a painter of men !" 

"Lavater's mind inclined strictly to realism. 
He knew nothing ideal, except under a moral 
form. If we hold fast this idea, we shall best 



understand a rare and singular man." " Scarcely 
ever was there one more passionately concerned 
to be rightly known than he; and it was this, 
especially, which qualified him for a teacher." 

"The realization of the person of Christ was 
his favourite object." 

" Every talent, which is founded in a decided 
natural tendency, appears to us to have some- 
thing magical, because we cannot classify it oi 
its effects, qnder an idea. And, really, Lava- 
ter's insight into individual men transcended 
all ideas. It was astounding to hear him, when 
he spoke confidentially of this or that person ; 
nay, it was fearful to live in the vicmity of a 
man by whom every limit, with which Nature 
has been pleased to limit us individuals, wa.s 
clearly perceived !" 



ON THE NATURE OF MAN, WHICH IS 
THE FOUNDATION OF THE SCIENCE 
OF PHYSIOGNOMY. 

Of all earthly creatures man is the most per- 
fect, the most imbued with the principles of 
life. 

Each particle of matter is an immensity ; each 
leaf a world; each insect an inexplicable com- 
penilium. Who then shall enumerate the grada- 
tions between insect and man? In him ail the 
powers of nature are united. He is the essence 
of creation. The son of earth, he is the earth's 
lord; the summary and central point of all exist- 
ence, of all powers, and of all life, on that earth 
which he inhabits. 

Of all organized being? with which we are 
acquainted, man alone excepted, there are none 
in which are so wonderfully united the three 
different kinds of life, tlie animal, the intellectual, 
and the moral. Each of these lives is the cofi.- 
pendium of various faculties, most wonderfully 
compounded and harmonized. 

To know, to desire, to act, or accurately to 
observe and meditate; to perceive and to wish; 
to possess the powers of motion and of resist- 
ance ; these combined, constitute man an animal, 
intellectual, and moral being. 

Man, endowed with these faculties, with this 
triple life, is in himself the most worthy subject 
of observation, as he likewise is himself the 
most worthy observer. Under whatever point 
of view he may be considered, what is more 
worthy of contemplation than himself? In him 
each species of life is consjiicuous ; yet never 
can his properties be wholly known, except by 
the aid of his external form, his body, his super- 
ficies. How spiritual, how incorporeal soever, 
nis internal essence may be, still is he only visi- 
ble and conceivable from the harmony of his 
I'onatituenl parts. From these he is inseparable. 



He exists and moves in the body he inhabits, 
as in hi? element. This material man must be 
come the subject of observation. All the know- 
ledge we can obtain of man must be gained 
through the medium of our senses. 

This threefold life, which man cannot be de- 
nied to possess, necessarily first becomes the 
subject of disquisition and research, as it pre- 
sents itself in the form of body, and in such of 
his faculties as are apparent to sense. 

There is no object in nature, the properties 
and powers of which can be manifeet to us in 
any other manner than by such external ap- 
pearances as affect the senses. By these all 
beings are characterized. They are the founda- 
tions of all human knowledge. Man must 
wander in the darkest ignorance, equally with 
respeot to himself and the objects that surround 
him, did he not become acquainted with their 
properties and powers by the aid of their ex- 
ternals ; and had not each object a character 
peculiar to its nature and essence, which ac- 
quaints us with what it is, and enables us to 
distinjiuish it from what it is not. 

All bodies which we survey appear to sight 
under a certain form and superficies. We be- 
hold those outlines traced which are the result 
of their organization. I hope I shall be pardoned 
the repetition of such commonplace truths, since 
on these are built the science of physiognomy, 
or the proper study of man. However true these 
axioms, with respect to visible objects, and par- 
ticularly to organized bodies, they are still more 
extensively true when applied to man, and his 
nature. The organization of man peculiarly 
distinguishes him from all other earthly beings ; 
and his physiognomy, that is to say, the superfi- 
cies and outlines of this organization, show him 
to be infinitely superior to all those visible be- 
ings by which he is surrounded. 

We are unacquainted with any form equally 



192 



LAVATER. 



noDle, equally majestic, with that of man, and 
in which so many kinds of life, so many powers, 
so many virtues of action and motion, unite, as 
in a central point. With firm step he advances 
over the earth's surface, and with erect body 
raises his head toward heaven. He looks for- 
ward to infinitude; he acts with facility, and 
swiftness inconceivable, and his motions are 
the most immediate and the most varied. By 
whom may their varieties be enumerated ? He 
can at once botli snfier and perform infinitely 
more than any other creature. He unites flexi- 
bility and fortitude, strength and dexterity, acti- 
vity and rest. Of all creatures he can the soonest 
yield, and the longest resist. None resemble 
him in the variety and harmony of his powers. 
His faculties, like his form, are peculiar to him- 
self 

How much nobler, more astonishing, and more 
attractive will this form become, when we dis- 
cover that it is itself the interpreter of all the 
high powers it possesses, active and passive! 
Only in those parts in which animal strength 
and properties reside does it resemble animals. 
But how much is it exalted above the brute in 
those parts in which are the powers of superior 
origin, the powers of mind, of motion ! 

The form and proportion of man, his superior 
height, capable of so many changes, and such 
variety of motion, prove to the unprejudiced 
observer his supereminent strength, and asto- 
nishing facility of action. The high excellence 
and physiological unity of human nature are 
visible at the first glance. The head, especially 
the face, and the formation of the firm parts, 
compared to the firm parts of other animals, 
convince the accurate observer, who is capable 
of investigating truth, of the greatness and su- 
periority of his intellectual qualities. The eye, 
the look, the cheeks, the month, the forehead, 
whether considered in a state of entire rest or 
during their innumerable varieties of motion, 
in fine, all that is understood by physiognomy, 
is the most expressive, the most convincing 
picture of interior sensation, desires, passions, 
will, and of all those properties which so much 
exalt moral above animal life. 

Although the physiological, intellectual, and 
moral life of man, with all their subordinate 
powers and their constituent parts, so eminently 
unite in one being; although these tl>ree kinds 
of life do not, like three distinct families, reside 
in separate parts, or stories of the body ; but co- 
exist in one point, and by their combination 
form one whole ; yet is it plain that each of 
these powers of life has its peculiar station, 
where it more especially unfolds itself, and acts. 

It is beyond contradiction evident that, though 
physiological or animal life displays itself 
through all the body, and especially through all 
the animal parts, yet does it act most conspicu- 
ously in the arm, from the shoulder to the ends 
of the fingers. 

It is equally clear that intellectual life, or the 
powers of the understanding and the mind, 



make themselves most apparent in the circum- 
ference and form of the solid parts of the head, 
especially the forehead; though they will dis- 
cover themselves to an attentive and accurate 
eye in every part and point of the human body, 
by the congeniality and harmony of the various 
parts, as will be frequently noticed in the course 
of this work. Is there any occasion to prove 
that the power of thinking resides neither in the 
foot, in the hand, nor in the back; but in the 
head, and its internal parts? 

The moral life of man, jiarticularly, reveals 
itself in the lines, marks, and transitions of the 
countenance. His moral powers and desires, 
his irritability, sympathy, and antipathy; his 
facility of attracting or repelling the objects that 
surround him ; these are all summed up in, and 
painted upon, his countenance when at rest. 
When any passion is called into action, such 
passion is depicted by the motion of the mus- 
cles, and tliese motions are accompanied by a 
strong palpitation of the heart. If the counte- 
nance be tranquil, it always denotes tranquillity 
in the region of the heart and breast. 

This threefold life of man, so intimately in- 
terwoven through his frame, is still capable of 
being studied in its diflferent appropriate parts; 
and did we live in a less depraved world we 
should find sufficient data for the science of 
physiognomy. 

The animal life, the lowest and most earthly, 
would discover itself from the rim of the belly 
to the organs of generation, which would become 
its central or focal point. The middle or moral 
life would be seated in the breast, and the heart 
would be its central point. The intellectual 
life, which of the three is supreme, would reside 
in the head, and have the eye for its centre. If 
we take the coimtenance as tlie representative 
and epitome of the three divisions, then will the 
forehead, to the eyebrows, be the mirror, or 
image, of the imderstanding ; the nose and 
cheeks the image of the moral and sensitive 
life; and the mouth and chin the image of the 
animal life; while the eye will be to tlie whole 
as its summary and centre. I may also aild 
that the closed mouth at the moment of most 
perfect traiiquillity is the central point of the 
radii of the conntei;ance. It cannot however 
too often be repeated that these three lives, by 
their intimate connection with each other, are 
all, and each, expressed in every part of the 
body. 

What we have hitherto said is so clear, so 
well known, so universal, that we should blush 
to insist upon such common-place truths, were 
they not, first, the foundation on which we must 
build all we have to propose; and, again, had 
not these truths (can it be believed by futurity?^ 
in this our age been so many thousand times 
mistaken and contested, With the most incon- 
ceivable affectation. 

The science of physiognomy, whether under- 
stood in the most enlarged or most confined 
sense, indubitably depends on these general and 



LAVATER. 



193 



incontrovertible principles; yet, incontrovertible 
as tliey are, they have not been without their 
opponents. Men pretend to doubt of the most 
strilcing, the most convincing, the most self-evi- 
dent truths; although, were these destroyed, 
neither truth nor knowledge would remain. 
They do not profess to doubt concerning the 
physiognomy of other natural objects, yet do 
they doubt the physiognomy of human nature; 
the first object, the most worthy of contempla- 
tion, and the most animated which the realms 
of nature contain. 

OF THE TRUTH OF PHTSTOGNOMT. 

All countenances, all forms, all created beings, 
are not only different from each other in their 
classes, races, and kinds, but are also individu- 
ally distinct. 

Each being differs from every other being of 
its species. However generally known, it is a 
truth the most important to our purpose, and 
recessary to repeat, that, "There is no rose per- 
fectly similar to another rose, no egg to an egg, 
no eel to an eel, no lion to a lion, no eagle to an 
eagle, no man to a man." 

Confining this proposition to man only, it is 
the first, the most profound, most secure, and 
unshalien foundation-stone of physiognomy that, 
however intimate the analogy and similarity of 
the innumerable forms of men, no two men can 
be found who, brought together, and accurately 
compareil, will not appear to be very remark- 
ably different. 

Nor is it less incontrovertible lliat it is equally 
impossible to find two niiinls, as two counte- 
nances, which perfectly resemble each other. 

This consideration alone will be suificient to 
make it received as a truth, not requiring farther 
demonstration, that there m^^^t be a certain na- 
tive analogy between the extenialvarieties of 
the countenance and form, nnd the internal va- 
rieties of the mind. Shall it be denied that this 
acknowledged internal variety among all men 
is the cause of the external variety of their forms 
and countenances? Shall it be affirmed that 
the mind does not influence the body, or that 
the body does not influence the mind ? 

Anger renders the muscles protuberant; and 
shall not therefore an angry mind and protube- 
rant muscles be considered as cause and effect? 
After repeated observation that an active and 
vivid eye and an active and acute wit are fre- 
quently found in the same person, shall it be 
supposed that there is no relation between the 
active eye and the active mind ? Is this the 
effect of accident? Of acci<lent! Ought it not 
rather to be considered as sympathy, an inter- 
ihangeable and instantaneous effect, when we 
perceive that, at the very moment the under- 
standing is most acute and penetrating and the 
wit the inost lively, the motion and fire of the 
eye undergo, at that moment, the most visible 
change ? 

Shall the open, friendly, and unsuspecting 
eye and the open, friendly,, and unsuspecting 



heart be united in a thousand instances, and 
shall we say the one is not the cause, the other 
the efl^ect? 

Shall nature discover wisdom and order in 
all things; shall corresponding causes and ef- 
fects be every wliere united ; shall this be the 
most clear, the most indubitable of truths; and 
in the first, the most noble of the works of na- 
ture, shall she act arbitrarily, without design, 
without law? The human countenance, that 
mirror of the Divinity, that noblest of the works 
of the Creator, — shall not motive and action, 
shall not the correspondence between the inte- 
rior and the exterior, the visible and the invisi- 
ble, the cause and the effect, be there apparent? 

Yet this is all denied by those who oj)pose 
the truth of the science of physiognomy. 

Truth, according to them, is ever at variance 
with itself Eternal order is degraded to a jug- 
gler, whose purpose it is to deceive. 

Calm reason revolts at the supposition that 
Newton or Leibnitz ever could have the coun- 
tenance and appearance of an idiot, incapable 
of a firm step, a meditating eye; of compre- 
hending the least difficult of abstract proposi- 
tions, or of expressing himself so as to be un- 
derstood ; that one of these in the brain of a 
Laplander conceived his Theodica; and that 
the other in the head of an Esquimaux, who 
wants the power to number farther than six, 
and affirms all beyond to be innuinerable, had 
dissected the rays of light, and weighed worlds. 

Calm reason revolts when it is asserted that the 
strong man may appear perfectly like the weak, 
the man in full health like another in the last 
stage of a consumption, or that the rash and 
irascible may resemble the cold and phlegmatic. 
It revolts to hear it affirmed that joy and grief, 
pleasure and pain, love and hatred, all exhibit 
themselves under the same traits; that is to 
say, under no traits whatever, on the exterior 
of man. Yet such are the assertions of those 
who maintain physiognomy to be a chimerical 
science. They overturn all that order and com- 
bination by which eternal wisdoin so highly 
astonishes and delights the understanding. It 
caimot be too emphatically repeated, that blind 
chance and arbitrary disorder constitute the 
philosophy of fools; and that they are the bane 
of natural knowledge, philosophy and religion. 
Entirely to banish such a system is the duty of 
the true inquirer, the sage, and the divine. 

All inen, (this is indisputable), absolutely all 
men, estiinate all things whatever by their 
physiognomy, their exterior, temporary superfi- 
cies. By viewing these on every occasion, they 
draw their conclusions concerning their internal 
properties. 

What inerchant, if he be unacquainted with 
the person of whom he purchases, does not 
estimate his wares by the physiognomy or ap- 
pearance of those wares? If he purchase of a 
distant corres[)0ndent, what other means does 
he use in judging whether they are or are not 
equal to his expectation? Is not his judgment 
17 



194 



LAVATER. 



determined by the colour, the fineness, the su- 
perficies, the exterior, the physiognonny ? Does 
he not judge money by its pliysiognomy 1 Why 
does he take one guinea and reject another? 
Wliy weigh a third in his liand ? Does he not 
determine according to its colour, or impression ; 
its outside, its physiognomy? If a stranger 
enter his shop, as a buyer or seller, will he not 
observe him? Will he not draw conclusions 
from his countenance? Will he not, almost 
before he is out of hearing, pronounce some 
opinion upon him, and say: 'This man has an 
honest look,' 'That man has a pleasing, or for- 
bidding, countenance?' What is it to the pur- 
pose whether his judgment be right or wrong? 
He juiiges. Though not wholly, he depends in 
part upon the exterior form, and thence draws 
inferences concerning the mind. 

How does the farmer, walking through his 
grounds, regulate his future expectations by the 
colour, the size, the growth, the exterior; that is 
to say, by the physiognomy of the bloom, the 
stalk, or the ear, of his corn ; the stem, and 
shoots of his vine-tree? 'This ear of corn is 
blighted,' 'That wood is full of sap; this will 
grow, that not,' affirms he, at the first or second 
glance. 'Though these vine-slioots look well, 
tliey will bear but few grapes.' And where- 
fore ? He remarks, in their appearance, a:s the 
physiognomist in the countenances of shallow 
men, the want of native energy. Does not he 
judge by the exterior? 

Does not the physician pay more attention to 
the physiognomy of the sick than to all the ac- 
counts that are brought him concerning his 
patient? Zimmermann, among the living, may 
be brought as u proof of the great perfection at 
which this kind of judgment has arrived; and 
among the dead, Kempf, wliose son has written 
a treatise on Temperament. 

The painter Yet of him I will say no- 
thing ; his art too evidently reinoves the childish 
and arrogant prejudices of those who pretend to 
disbelieve physiognomy. 

The traveller, the philanthropist, the misan- 
thrope, the lover, (and who not?) all act ac- 
cording to their feelings and decisions, true or 
false, confused or clear, concerning physiognomy. 
These feelings, these decisions, excite compas- 
sion, disgust, joy, love, hatred, suspicion, confi- 
dence, reserve, or benevolence. 

Do we not daily judge of the sky by its phy- 
siognomy? No food, not a glass of wine or 
beer, not a cup of coffee or tea, comes to table, 
which is not judged by its physiognomy, its ex- 
terior, and of which we do not thence deduce 
some conclusion respecling its interior, good or 
bad properties. 

Is not all nature pliysiognomy, superficies 
and contents; body, and spirit; exterior effect 
and internal power; invisible beginning and 
visible ending? 

What knowledge is there, of which man is 
capable, that is not founded on the exterior; 
llie relation that exists between visible and 



invisible, the perceptible and the impercepti 
ble? 

Physiognomy, whether understood in its most 
extensive or confined signification, is tlie origiu 
of all human decisions, efforts, actions, expecta- 
tions, fears, and hopes; of all pleasing and un 
pleasing sensations, whicli are occasioned by 
external objects. 

From the cradle to the grave, in all conditions 
and ages, throughout all nations, from Adam to 
the last existing man, from the worm we tread 
on to the most sublime of philosophers, (and 
why not to the angel, why not to the Mediator 
Christ?) pliysiognomy is the origin of all we do 
and suffer. 

Each insect is acquainted with its friend and 
its foe ; each child loves and fears, although it 
knows not why. Physiognomy is the cause ; 
nor is there a man to be found on earth who is 
not daily influenced by pliysiognomy; not a 
man who cannot figure to himself a countenance 
which shall to liim appear exceedingly lovely, 
or exceedingly hateful; not a man who does 
not more or less, the first time he is in company 
with a stranger, observe, estimate, compare, 
and judge him, according to appearances, al- 
tliough lie might never have heard of the word 
or thing called physiognomy; not a man who 
does not judge of all things that pass through 
his hands, by their physiognomy; that is, of 
their internal wordi by their external appear- 
ance. 

The art of dissimulation itself, which is ad- 
duced as so insuperable an objection to the truth 
of pliysiognomy, is founded on physiognomy. 
Why does the hypocrite assume the appearance 
of an honest man, but because that he is con- 
vinced, though not perhaps from any systematic 
refiectiiMi. that all eyes are acquainted with ihe 
characteristic marks of honesty. 

What judge, wise or unwise, whether he con- 
fess or deny the fact, does not sometimes in this 
sense decide from appearances ? Who can, is, 
or ought to be, absolutely indifferent to the 
exterior of persons brought before him to be 
judged !* What king would choose a minister 
without examining his exterior, secretly at least, 
and to a certain extent? An officer will not 
enlist a soldier without thus examining his ap- 
pearance, his height out of the question. What 
master or mistress of a family will choose a ser- 
vant without considering the exterior ; no matter 
whether their judgment be or be not just, or 
whether it be exercised unconsciously? 

I am wearied of citing instances so numerous, 
and so continually before our eyes, to prove that 
men, tacitly and unanimously, confess the influ- 
ence which physiognomy has over their sensa- 
tions and actions. I feel disgust at being obliged 
to write thus, in order to convince the learned 

* Fraiiciscus Valesiussays — Sed lejjribusetiamcivililnis, 
in quibiif iniqiiuiii sit ceii&ero esse aliqiiid futile aut va- 
riuiii. cautuin est ; iit si duo homtues inciderent in crirni- 
nis siispicioiiem, is priinuin torquealur qui sit aspeclu 
deforiiiior. 



LAVATER. 



195 



of truths with which every child is or may be 
acquainted. 

He that hath eyes to see, let him see ; but 
should the light, by being brought too close to 
his eyes, produce phtenzy, he may burn him- 
self by endeavouring to extinguish the torch of 
truth. I use such expressions unwillingly, but 
I dare do my duty, and my duty is boldly to 
declare that I believe myself certain of what I 
now and hereafter shall affirm ; and that I think 
myself capable of convincing all real lovers of 
truth, by principles which are in themselves in- 
controvertible. It is also necessary to confute 
the pretensions of certain literary despots, and 
to compel them to be more cautious in their 
decisions. It is therefore proved, not because 
1 say it, but because it is an eternal and mani- 
fest truth, and would have been equally truth, 
had it never been said, that, whether they are 
or are not sensible of it, all men are daily in- 
fluenced by physiognomy; that, as Sultzer has 
affirmed, every man, consciously or inconscious- 
ly, understands something of physiognomy ; nay, 
that there is not a living being that does not, 
at least after its manner, draw some inferences 
from the external to the internal ; that does 
not judge concerning that which is not, by that 
which is, apparent to the senses. 

This universal, though tacit confession, that 
the exterior, the visible, the superficies of ob- 
jects, indicates their nature, their properties, 
and that every outward sign is the symbol of 
some inherent quality, I hold to be equally 
certain and important to the science of physi- 
ognomy. 

I must once more repeat, when each apple, 
each apricot, has a physiognomy peculiar to 
itself, shall man, the lord of earth, have none? 
The most simple and inanimate object has its 
characteristic exterior, by which it is not only 
distinguished as a species, but individually; 
and shall the first, noblest, best harmonized, 
and most beauteous of beings be denied all 
characteristic. 

But whatever may be objected against the 
truth and certainty of the science of physiog- 
nomy, by the most illiterate, or the most learn- 
eil ; how much soever he who openly professes 
faith in this science, may be subject to ridicule, 
to philosophic pity and contempt; it still cannot 
be contested that there is no object, thus con- 
sidered, more important, more worthy of obser- 
vation, more interesting than man, nor any 
occupation superior to that of disclosing the 
beauties and perfections of human nature. 

buch were my opinions six or eight years 
ago. Will it in the next century be believed 
that it is still, at this time, necessary to repeat 
these things; or that numerous obscure witlings 
continue to treat with ridicule and contempt 
tbe general feelings of mankind, and observa- 
tions which not only may be, but are demon- 
strated ; and that they act thus without having 
refuted any one of the principles at which they 
'i ugh ; yet that tliey are, notwithstanding, con- 



tinually repeating the words, philosophy and. 
enlightened age 1 

OF THE CNIVEKSALITT OF PHTSIOGNOSIONICAL 

SENSATION. 

By physiognomonical sensation, I here un- 
derstand "those feelings which are produced 
at beholding certain countenances, and the con- 
jectures concerning the qualities of the mind, 
which are produced by the state of such coun- 
tenances, or of their portraits drawn or paint- 
ed." 

This sensation is very universal ; that is to 
say, as certainly as eyes are in any man or any 
animal, so certainly are they accompanied by 
physiognomonical sensations. Different sensa- 
tions are produced in each by the different 
forms that present themselves. 

Exactly similar sensations cannot be gene- 
rated by forms that are in themselves dif- 
ferent. 

Various as the impressions may l)e which the 
same object makes on various spectators, and 
opposite as the judgments which may be pro- 
nounced on one and the same form, yet there 
are certain extremes, certain forms, physiogno- 
mies, figures, and lineaments, concerning which 
all, who are not idiots, will agree in their opin- 
ions. So will men be various in their decisions 
concerning certain portraits, yet will be unani- 
mous concerning certain others; will say, "this 
is so like it absolutely breathes,'' or, "this is 
totally unlike.'' Of the nuinerous proofs which 
might be adduced of the universality of phy- 
siognomonical sensation, it is only necessary to 
select a few, to demonstrate the fact. 

1 shall not here repeat what I have already 
noticed, on the instantaneous judgment which 
all men give, when viewing exterior forms. I 
shall only observe that, let any person, but for 
two days, remark all that he hears or reads, 
among men, and he will everywhere hear and 
read, even from the very adversaries of phy- 
siognomy, physiognomonical judgments concern- 
ing men ; will continually hear expressions like 
these: "You might have read it in his eyes," 
"The look of the man is enough," "He has 
an honest countenance,' "His manner sets 
every person at his ease,'' "He has evil eyes," 
"You read honesty in his looks," " He has an 
utdiealthy countenance," "I will trust him for 
his honest face," "Should he deceive me, I 
will never trust man more," "That man has 
an open countenance," "I suspect that insi- 
dious smile," "He cannot look any person in 
the face." The very judgments that should 
seem to militate against the science are but 
exceptions which confirm the universality of 
physiognomonical sensation. "His appearance 
is against him," "This is what I could not 
have read in his countenance," " He is bettei 
or worse than his countenance bespeaks.' 

If we observe mankind, from the most finish- 
ed courtier, to the lowest of the vulgar, and 
listen to the remarks they make on each othei. 



196 



LAVATER. 



we shall be astonished to find how many of 
them are entirely physiognomonical. 

I have lately had such frequent occasion of 
observing this among people who do not know 
that I have published any such work as the 
present, people, who perhaps never heard the 
word physiognomy, that I am willing, at any 
time, to risk my veracity on the proof that all 
men, unconsciously, more or less, are guided by 
physiognomonical sensation. 

Another, no less convincing, though not suf- 
ficiently noticed, proof of the universality of 
physiognomonical sensation, that is to say, of 
the confused feeling of the agreement between 
the internal cliaracter and the external form, is 
the number of physiognomonical terms to be 
found in all languages, and among all nations; 
or, in other words, the number of moral terms, 
which, in reality, are all physiognomonical ; but 
this is a subject that deserves a separate trea- 
tise. How important would such a treatise be 
in extending the knowledge of languages, and 
determining the precise meaning of words! 
How new! How interesting! 

Here I might adduce physiognomonical pro- 
verbs ; but I have neither sufficient learning nor 
leisure to cite them from all languages, so as 
properly to elucidate the subject. To this might 
be added the numerous physiognomonical traits, 
characters, and descriptions, which are so fre- 
quent in the writings of the greatest poets, and 
which so much delight all readers of taste, 
sensibility, knowledge of human nature, and 
philanthropy. 

Physiognomonical sensation is not only pro- 
duced by the sight of man, but also by that 
of paintings, drawings, shades, and outlines. 
Scarcely is there a man in a thousand who, if 
such sketches were shown him, would not of 
himself form some judgment concerning them, 
or, at least, who would not readily attend to the 
judgment formed by others. 

Oir FREEDOM AND ITECESSITT. 

My opinion, on this profound and important 
question, is, that man is as free as the bird in 
the cage ; he has a determinate space for action 
and sensation, beyond which he cannot pass. 
As each man has a particular circumference of 
body, so has he likewise a certain sphere of 
action. One of the unpardonable sins of Hel- 
veiius, anainst reason and exi)erience, is, that 
he has assigned to education the sole power of 
forming, or deforming die mind. I doubt if any 
philosopher of the present century has imposed 
any doctrine upon the world so insulting to 
common sense. Can it be denied that certain 
mmds, certain fra mes, are by nature capable, or in- 
capable, ofcerta in sensations, talents, and actions'? 

To force a man to think and feel like me, is 
equal to forcing him to have my exact forehead 
and nose; or la impart unto the eagle the slow- 
ness of the snail, and to the snail the swiftness 
of the eagle : yet this is the philosophy of our 
••nodern wits. 



Each individual can but what he can, is but 
what he is. He may arrive at, but cannot ex- 
ceed, a certain degree of perfection, which 
scourging, even to death itself, cannot make 
him surpass. Each man must give his own 
standard. We must determine what his pow- 
ers are, and not imagine what the powers of 
another might effect in a similar situation. 

When, oh ! men and brethren, children of the 
common Father, when will you begin to judge 
each other justly? When will you cease to re- 
quire, to force, from the man of sensibility the 
abstraction of the cold and phlegmatic ; or from 
the cold and phlegmatic the enthusiasm of the 
man of sensibility? When cease to require 
nectarines from an apple-tree, or figs from the 
vine ? Man is man, nor can wishes make him an 
angel; and each man is an individual self, with 
as little ability to become another self as to be- 
come an angel. So far as my own sphere ex- 
tends, I am free ; within that circle I can act. I, 
to whom one talent only has been intrusted, 
cannot act like him who has two. My talent, 
however, may be well or ill employed. A cer- 
tain quantity of power is bestowed on me, 
which I may use, and by use increase, by 
want of use diminish, and by misuse totally 
lose. But I never can perform, with this quan- 
tity of power, what might be performed with a 
double portion, equally well applied. Industry 
may make near approaches to ingenuity, and 
ingenuity to genius, wanting exercise, or oppor- 
tunity of unfolding itself, or rather may seem 
to make these approaches; but never can indus- 
try supply total absence of genius or ingenuity. 
Each must remain what he is, nor can he extend 
or enlarge himself beyond a certain size; each 
man is a sovereign prince, but, whether small 
or great, only in his own principality. This he 
may cultivate so as to produce fruits equal to 
one twice as large, that shall be left half uncul- 
tivated. But, though he cannot extend his prin- 
cipality, yet, having cultivated it well, the lord 
of his neighbours may add that as a gift. Such 
being freeilom and necessity, it ought to render 
each man humble yet ardent, modest yet active. 
Hitherto and no farther. Truth, physiognoiny, 
and the voice of God, proclaim aloud to man, 
Be what thou art, and become what thou canst. 

The character and countenance of every man 
may suffer astonishing changes; yet only to a 
certain extent. Each has room sufficient: the 
least has a large and good field, which he may 
cultivate, according to the soil ; but he can only 
sow such seed as he has, nor can he cultivate 
any other field than that on which he is sta- 
tioned. In the mansion of God, there are, to 
his glory, vessels of wood, of silver, and of gold. 
All are serviceable, all profitable, all capable of 
divine uses, all the instruments of God : but the 
wood continues wood, the silver, silver, the gold, 
gold. Though the golden should remain unused, 
still they are gold. The wooden may be made 
more serviceable than the golden, but they ( on- 
tinue wood. No addition, no constraint, no 



LAVATER. 



197 



effort of the mind, can give to man another na- 
ture. Let each be what he is, so will he be 
sufficiently gooil, for man himself, and God. 
The violin cannot have the sound of the flute, 
nor the trumpet of the drum. But the violin, 
differently strunsr, differently fingered, and dif- 
ferently bowed, may produce an infinite variety 
of sounds, though not the sound of the flute. 
Equally incapable is the drum to produce the 
sound of the trumpet, although the drum be 
capable of infinite variety. 

I cannot write well with a bad pen, but with 
a good one I can write both well and ill. Being 
foolish I cannot speak wisely, but I may speak 
foolishly although wise. He who nothing pos- 
sesses, can nothing give; but, having, he may 
give, or he may refrain. Though, with a thou- 
sand florins, I cannot buy all I wish, yet am I 
at liberty to choose, among numberless things, 
any whose value does not exceed that sum. In 
like manner am I free, and not free. The sum 
of my powers, the degree of my activity or in- 
activity, depend on my internal and external 
organization ; on incidents, incitements, men, 
books, good or ill fortune, and the use I may 
make of the quantity of power I possess. " It is 
not of him that willeth, or of him that runneth, 
but of God that showeth mercy. Nor may the 
vessel say to the potter. Why hast thou made me 
thus'? But the rigliteous lord reapeth not where 
he hath not sowed, nor gathereth where he hath 
not strewed. Yet, with justice, he demandeth 
five other talents from him who received five, 
two from him who received two, and one from 
him who received one.'" 

OF THE UNITERSAL EXCKLLBNCE OF THE FORM 
OP MAN. 

The title of this fragment is expressive of the 
contents, or rather of the very soul, of the whole 
work; therefore, what I may here say, in a 
separate section, may be accounted as nothing; 
yet how vast a subject of meditation may it 
afford to man! 

Each creature is indispensable in the immen- 
sity of the creations of God ; but each creature 
does not know it is thus indispensable. Man 
alone, of all earth's creatures, rejoices in his 
indi?pensability. 

No man can render any other man dispensa- 
ble. The place of no man can be supplied by 
anotlier. 

This belief of the indispensability, and indi- 
viduality, of all men, and in our own metaphy- 
sical indispensability and individuality, is, again, 
one of the unacknowledged, the noble fruits of 
physiognomy; a fruit pregnant with seeds most 
precious, whence shall spring lenity and love! 
Oh ! may posterity behold them flourish ; may 
future ages repose under their shade! The 
worst, the most deformed, the most corrupt of 
nen, is still indispensable in this world of God, 
and is more or less capable of knowing his own 
intlividuality, and unsuppliable indispensability. 
Ihe wickedest, the most deformed of men, is 



still more noble than the most beauteous, most 
perfect animal. — Contemplate, oh man! what 
thy nature is, not what it might be, not what is 
wanting. Humanity, amid all its distortions, will 
ever remain wondrous humanity! 

Incessantly might I repeat doctrines like this! 
— Art thou better, more beauteous, nobler, than 
many others of thy fellow -creatures ? If so, 
rejoice, and ascribe it not to thyself, but to him 
who, from the same clay, formed one vessel for 
honour, another for dishonour; to him who, . 
without thy advice, without thy prayer, without 
any desert of thine, caused thee to be what thou 
art. 

Yea, to Him ! — " For what hast thou, oh man, 
that thou didst not receive'? Now if thou didst 
receive, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst 
not received ■?" " Can the eye say to the hand, 
I have no need of thee ■?' " He that op- 
presseth the poor, reproacheth his Maker." 
" God hath made of one blood all nations of 
men." 

Who feels, more deeply, more internally, all 
these divine truths than the physiognomist? 
The true physiognomist, who is not merely a 
man of literature, a reader, an author, but — a 
man. 

Yes, I own, the most humane physiognomist, 
he who so eagerly searches for whatever is good, 
beautiful, and noble in nature, who delights in 
the Ideal, who duly exercises, nourishes, refine? 
his taste, with humanity more improved, more 
perfect, more holy, even he is in frequent dan- 
ger, at least is frequently tempted to turn from 
the common herd of depraved men ; from the 
deformed, the foolish, the apes, the hypocrites, 
the vulgar of mankind; in danger of forgetting 
that the misshapen forms, these apes, these hy- 
pocrites, also are men ; and that, notwithstand- 
ing all his imagined or his real excellence, all 
his noble feelings, the purity of his views, (and 
who has cause to boast of these'?) all the firm- 
ness, the soundness, of his reason, the feelings 
of his heart, the powers with which he is erf 
dowed, although he may appear to have ap- 
proached the sublime ideal of Grecian art, still 
he is, very probably, from his own moral defects, 
in the eyes of superior beings, in the eyes of his 
much more righteous brother, as distorted as the 
most ridiculous, most depraved, moral or physi- 
cal monster appears to be in his eyes. 

Liable as we are to forget this, to be reminded 
thereof is necessary, both to the writer and the 
readerof this work. Forget not that even the wisest 
of men are men. Forget not how much positive 
good may be found, even in the worst; and that 
they are as necessary, as good in their place, as 
thou art. Are they not equally indispensable, 
equally unsuppliable? They possess not, either 
in mind or body, the smallest thing exactly as 
thou dost. Each is wholly and in every part 
as individual as thou art. 

Consider each as if he were single :n the 
universe. Then wilt thou discover powers 
and excellencies in him which, abstractedly oi" 
17* 



198 



LAVATER. 



comparison, deserve all attention and admi- 
ration. 

Compare him, afterward, with others; his 
similarity, his dissimilarity, to so many of his 
fellow-creatures. How must this awaken thy 
amazement! How wilt thou value the indivi- 
duality, the indispensability of his being! How 
wilt thou wonder at the harmony of his parts, 
each contributing to form one whole, at their 
relation, the relation of his million-fold indivi- 
duality, to such a multitude of other individuals! 
Yes! We wonder and adore the so simple yet 
so infinitely varied expression of almifjhty 
power inconceivable, so especially and so glo- 
riously revealed in the nature of man. 

No man ceases to be a man, how low soever 
be may sink beneath the dignity of human na- 
ture. Not being beast, he still is capable of 
amendment, of approaching perfection. The 
worst of faces still is a human face. Humanity 
ever continues the honour and ornament of man. 

It is as impossible for a brute animal to be- 
come man, although he may, in many actions, 
approach, or almost surpass him, as for man to 
become a brute, although many men indulge 
themselves in actions which we cannot view in 
brutes without abhorrence. 

But the very capacity of voluntarily debasing 
himself in appearance, even below brutality, is 
the honour and privilege of man. This very 
capacity of imitating all things by an act of his 
will, and the power of his understanding, — this 
very capacity man only has, beasts have not. 
The countenances of beasts are not susceptible 
of any remarkable deterioration, nor are they 
capable of any remarkable amelioration, or 
beautifying. The worst of the countenances of 
men may be still more debased, but they may, 
also, to a certain degree, be improved and en- 
nobled. 

The degree of perfection or degradation, of 
which man is capable, cannot be described. 

For tliis reason, the worst countenance has a 
well-founded claim to the notice, esteem, and 
hope of all good men. 

Again ; in every human countenance, how- 
ever debased, humanity still is visible, that is, 
the image of the Deity. 

I have seen the worst of men, in their worst 
of moments, yet could not all their vice, blas- 
phemy, and oppression of guilt, extinguish the 
light of good that shone in their countenances; 
the spirit of humanity, the ineffaceable traits of 
internal, eternal perfectibility. — The sinner we 
would exterminate, the man we must embrace. 

Oh physiognomy! What a pledge art thou 
of the everlasting clemency of God toward man ! 

Therefore, inquire into nature, inquire what 
actually is. — 'I'herefore, O man, be man, in all thy 
researches ; form not to thyself ideal beings, for 
thy standard of comparison. 

Wherever power is, there is subject of admi- 
ration; and human, or, if so you would rather, 
divine power, is in all men. Man is a part of 
'he family of men ; thou art man, and every 



other man is a branch of the same tree, a mem- 
ber of the same body, is what thou art, and is 
more deserving regard tlian if he were perfectly 
similar, had exactly the same goodness, tlie 
same degree of worth thou hast; for he would 
then no longer be the single, indispensable, un- 
suppliable individual which he now is. — Oh 
man ! Rejoice with whatever rejoices in its ex- 
istence, and contemn no being whom God doth 
not contemn. 

OF THE CONGENIALITT OF THE HtJMAIf FOnM. 

In organization nature continually acts from 
within outwards, from the centre to the cir- 
cumference. The same vital powers that make 
the heart beat give the finger motion; that 
which roofs the scull arches the finger-nail. Art 
is at variance with itself; not so nature. Her 
creation is progressive. From the head to the 
back, from the slioulder to the arm, from the arm 
to the hand, from the hand to the finger, from 
the root to the stem, the stem to the brancli, the 
branch to the twig, the twig to the blossom and 
fruit, each depends on the other, and all on the 
root; each is similar in nature and form. No 
apple of one branch can, with all its properties, 
be the apple of another ; not to say another tree. 
There is a determinate effect of a determinate 
power. Through all nature each determinate 
power is productive only of such and such deter- 
minate effects. The finger of one body is not 
adapted to the hand of another body. Each part 
of an organized body is an image of the whole, 
has the character of the whole. The blood in 
the extremity of the finger has the character of 
the blood in the heart. The same congeniality 
is found in the nerves, in the bones. One spirit 
lives in all. Each meinber of the body is in 
proportion to that whole of which it is a part. 
As from the length of the smallest member, the 
smallest joint of the finger, the proportion of the 
whole, the length and breadtli of the body may 
be found, so also may the form of the wliole 
from the form of each single part. When the 
head is long,all is long, or round when the head 
is round, and square when it is square. One 
form, one mind, one root, appertain to all. 
Therefore is each organized body so much a 
whole that, without discord, destruction, or de- 
formity, nothing can be added or dimmished. 
Every thing in man is progressive, every tiling 
congenial; form, stature, complexion, hair, skin, 
veins, nerves, bones, voice, walk, manner, style, 
passion, love, hatred. One and the same spirit 
is manifest in all. He has a determinate sphere 
in which his powers and sensations are allowed, 
within which they may be freely exercised, but 
beyond which he cannot pass. Each coimte- 
nance is, indeed, subject to momentary change, 
though not perceptible, even in its solid parts ; 
but these changes are all proportionate; each 
is measured, each proper and peculiar to the 
countenance in which it takes place. The ca- 
pability of change is limited. Even that^viiich 
is affected, assumed, imitated, heterogeneous, 



LAVATER. 



199 



still lias the properties of the individual, origi- 
nating in tlie nature of the whole, and is so de- 
finite that it is only possible in this, but in no 
other, being. 

1 almost blush to repeat this in the present 
age. Posterity! what wilt thou think to see 
me obliged so often to demonstrate to pretended 
sages that nature makes no emendations? She 
labours from one to all. Hers is not disjointed 
organization ; not mosaic work. The more of 
the mosaic there is in the works of artists, ora- 
tors, or poets, the less are they natural; the less 
do they resemble the copious streams of the 
fountain, the stem extending itself to the re- 
motest branch. 

The more there is of progression, the more is 
there of truth, power, and nature ; the more ex- 
tensive, general, durable, and noble is the effect. 
The designs of nature are the designs of a mo- 
ment. One form, one spirit, appears through 
the whole. Thus nature forms her least plant, 
and thus her most exalted man. I shall have 
effected nothing by my physiognomonical la- 
bours if I am not able to destroy the opinion, 
so tasteless, so unworthy of the age, so opposite 
to all sound philosophy, that nature patches up 
the features of various countenances, in order to 
make one perfect countenance; and I shall 
think them well rewarded if the congeniality, 
uniformity, and agreement of human organiza- 
tion be so demonstrated that he who shall deny 
it will be declared to deny the light of the sun 
at noon-day. 

The human body is a plant; each part has 
the character of the stem. Suffer me to repeat 
this continually, since this most evident of all 
things is continually controverted, among all 
ranks of men, in words, deeds, books, and works 
of art. 

Therefore it is that I find the greatest incon- 
gruities in the heads of the greatest masters. I 
know no painter of whom I can say he has 
thoroughly studied the harmony of the human 
outline, not even Poussin ; no, not even Raphael 
himself Let any one class the forms of their 
countenances, and compare them with the forms 
of nature; let him, for instance, draw the out- 
lines of their foreheads, and endeavour to find 
similar outlines in nature, and he will find in- 
congruities which could not have been expected 
in such great masters. 

Excepting the too great length and extent, 
particularly of his human figures, Chodowiecki, 
perhaps, had the most exact feeling of congeni- 
ality, in caricature ; that is to say, of the relative 
propriety of the deformed, the humorous, or 
other characteristical members and features ; for 
as there is conformity and congeniality in the 
beautiful, so is there also in the deformed. 
Every cripple has the distortion peculiar to 
himself, the effects of which are extended to his 
whole body. In like manner the evil actions 
of the evil, and the good actions of the good, 
have a conformity of character, at least they are 
all tinged with this conformity of character. 



Little as this seems to be remarked by poets 
and painters, still is it the foundation of their 
art, for wherever emendation is visible, there 
admiration is at an end. Why has no painter 
yet been pleased to place the blue eye beside 
the brown one? Yet, absurd as this would be, 
no less absurd are the incongruities continually 
encountered by the physiognomonical eye; — the 
nose of Venus on the head of a Madonna. I have 
been assured by a man of fashion, that at a mas- 
querade he, with only the aid of an artificial nose, 
entirely concealed himself from the knowledge 
of all his acquaintance. So much does nature 
reject what does not appertain to herself 

To render this indisputable, let a number of 
sha<les be taken and classed according to the 
foreheads. We shall show, in its place, that all 
real and possible human foreheads may be 
classed under certain signs, and that their classes 
are not innumerable. Let him next class the 
noses, then the chins ; then let him compare the 
signs of the noses and foreheads, and he will 
find certain noses are never found with certain 
foreheads; and, on the contrary, other certain 
foreheads are always accompanied by a certain 
kind of noses, and that the same oliservation is 
true with respect to every other feature of the 
face, unless the movable features should have 
something acquired which is not the work of 
the first formation and productive power of na- 
ture, but of art, of accident, of constraint. Ex- 
periment will render this indisputable. As a 
preliminary amusement for the inquiring reader, 
I will add what follows. 

" Among a hundred profiles with circular fore- 
heads, 1 have never yet met with one Roman 
nose. In a hundred other square foreheads I 
have scarcely found one in which there were 
not cavities and prominences. I never yet saw 
a perpendicular forehead, with strongly arched 
features, in the lower part of the countenance, 
the double chin excepted. 

I meet no strong-bowed eyebrows combined 
with bony, perpendicular countenances. 

Wherever the forehead is projecting, so, in 
general, are the under lips, children excepted. 

I have never seen gently arched yet much 
retreating foreheads combined with a short 
snub nose, which in profile is sharp and 
sunken. 

A visible nearness of the nose to the eye is 
always attended by a visible wideness between 
the nose and mouth. 

A long covering of the teeth, or, in other 
words, a long space betv\'een the nose and mouth, 
always indicates srnall upper lips. Length of 
form and face is generally attended by well- 
drawn, fleshy lips. I have many further obser- 
vations in reserve on this subject, which are 
withheld only till further confirmation and pre- 
cision are obtained. I shall produce but one 
more example, which will convince all, who 
possess acute physiognomonical sensation, how 
great is the harmony of all nature's forms, aid 
liOMf much she hates the incongruous. 



200 



LAVATER. 



Take two, three, or four shades of men, re- 
maiUalde for understanding, join the features so 
artificially that no defect shall appear, as far as 
relates to the act of joining; that is, take the 
forehead of one, add the nose of a second, the 
mouth of a third, the chin of a fourth, and the 
result of this combination of the signs of wisdom 
shall be folly. Folly is perhaps nothing more 
than tlie annexation of some heterogeneous ad- 
dition. — 'But let these four wise countenances 
be supposed congruous?' — Let them so be sup- 
posed, or as nearly so as possible, still their 
combinalion will produce the signs of folly. 

Those, tlierefore, who maintain that conclu- 
sions cannot be drawn from a part, from a single 
section of the profile, to the whole, would be 
perfectly right if unarbitrary nature patched up 
countenances like arbitrary art ; but so she does 
not. Indeed when a man, being born with un- 
derstanding, becomes a fool, there an expression 
of heterogeneousness is the consequence. 'Either 
the lower part of the countenance extends itself, 
or the eyes acquire a direction not conformable 
to the forehead, the mouth cannot remain closed, 
or the features of the countenance in some other 
manner, lose their consistency. All becomes 
discord; and folly, in such a countenance, is 
very manifest. If the forehead be seen alone, 
it can only be said: "So nmch can or could, this 
countenance, by nature, unimpeded by acci- 
dent.' But if tlie whole be seen, the past and 
present general character may be delerniined. 

Let him who would study physiognomy, study 
the relation of the constituent part^ of the coun- 
tenance ; not having studied these he has studied 
nothing. 

He, and he alone, is an accurate physiogno- 
mist, has the true spirit of physiognomy, who 
possesses sense, feeling, and sympathetic per- 
ception of the congeniality and harmony of na- 
ture ; and who hath a similar sense and feeling 
for all emendations and additions of art and 
constraint. He is no physiognomist who doubts 
of the propriety, simplicity, and harmony of na- 
ture; or who has not this physiognoniical essen- 
tial ; who supposes nature selects members to 
form a whole, as a compositor in a printing- 
house takes letters to make up a word ; who can 
suppose the works of nature are the patchwork 
of a harlequin jacket. Not so is the most insigni- 
ficant of insects compounded, much less the most 
perfect of organized beings, man. He breathes 
not the breath of wisdom who doubts of this 
progression, continuity, and simplicity of the 
structures of nature. He wants a general feel- 
ing for the works of nature, consequently of art, 
the imitator of nature. I shall be pardoned this 
warinth. It is necessary. The consequences 
are infinite, and extend to all things. He has 
the master-key of truth who has this sensation 
of 'he congeniality of nature, and by necessary 
indii-.tion of the human form. 

All imperfection in works of art, productions 
-'f the mind, moral actions, errors in judgment; 
all scepticism, infidelity, and ridicule of reli- 



gion, naturally originate in the want of this 
knowledge and perception. He soars above all 
doubt of the Divinity an<l Christ who hath them, 
and who is conscious of this congeniality. He 
also, who at first sight thoroughly perceives the 
congeniality of the human form, and feels that 
from the want of this congeniality arises the 
difference observed between the works of na- 
ture and of art, is superior to all doubt con- 
cerning the truth and divinity of the human 
countenance. 

Those who have this sense, this feeling, call 
it what you please, will attribute that only, and 
nothing more, to each countenance which it is 
capable of receiving. They will consider each 
at-cording to its kind, and will as little seek to 
add a heterogeneous character as a heteroge- 
neous nose to the face. Such will only unfold 
what nature is desirous of unfolding, give what 
nature is capable of receiving, and take away 
that with which nature would only be encum- 
bered. They will perceive any discordant trait 
of character, when it makes its appearance in 
the child, pupil, friend, or wife, and will en- 
deavour to restore the original congeniality, the 
equilibrium of character and impulse, by acting 
u])on the still remaining harmony, by co-operat- 
ing with the yet unimpaired essential powers 
They will consider each sin, each vice, as de- 
structive of this harmony; will feel how much 
each departure from truth in the human form, 
at least to eyes more penetrating than human 
eyes are, must distort, be manifest, and become 
displeasing to the Creator by rendering it unlike 
his image. Who, therefore, can judge better of 
the works and actions of man, who less offend, 
or be offended, who more clearly develope 
cause and effect, than the physiognomist, pos- 
sessed of a full portion of this knowledge and 
perception 1 

RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN PARENTS AND CHIL- 
BREN. 

The resemblance between parents and chil- 
dren is very cotnmonly remarkable. 

family physiognoiny is as undeniable as na- 
tional. To douljt this is to doubt what is self- 
evident; to wish to interpret it is to wish to 
explore the inexplicable secret of existence. 
Striking and frequent as the resemblance be- 
tween parents and children is, yet have the 
relations between the characters and counten- 
ances of families never been investigated. No 
one has, to my knowledge, made any regular 
observations on this subject. I must also con- 
fess that I have myself made but few, with 
that circumstantial attention which is necessary. 
All I have to remark is what follows. 

When the father is somewhat stupid, and 
the mother strikingly the reverse, then will 
most of the children be endued with extraordi- 
nary understanding. 

When the father is good, truly good, the chil- 
dren will in general be well disposed; at least 
most of them will be benevolent. 



LAVATER. 



201 



The soil appears most to inherit moral gooj- 
ness from the good father, and intelligence from 
the intelligent mother; the daughter to partake 
of the character of the mother. 

If w? wish to find the most certain marks of 
resemblance between parents and children, they 
should be observed within an hour or two after 
birth. We may then perceive whom the child 
most resembles in its formation. The most 
essential resemblance is usually afterwards lost, 
and does not, perhaps, appear for many years; 
or not till after death. 

When children, as they increase in years, 
visibly increase in the resemblance of form 
and features to their parents, we cannot doubt 
that there is an increasing resemblance of cha- 
racter. Howmuchsoever the characters of chil- 
dren may appear unlike those of the parents 
they resemble, yet will this dissimilarity be 
found to originate in external circumstances, 
and the variety of these must be great indeed, 
if the difference of character be not, at length, 
overpowered by the resemblance of form. 

From the strongly delineated father, I be- 
lieve, the firmness and the kind (I do not say 
the form, but the kind) of bones and muscles 
is derived ; and from the strongly delineated 
mother the kind of nerves and form of the coun- 
tenance ; if the imagination and love of the 
mother have not fixed themselves too deeply in 
the countenance of the man. 

Certain forms of countenance in children 
appear for a time undecided whether they shall 
take the resemblance of the father or of the 
mother; in which case I will grant that exter- 
nal circumstances, preponderating love for the 
father or mother, or a greater degree of inter- 
course with either, may influence the form. 

We sometimes see children who long retain 
a remarkable resemblance to the father, but, at 
l.'-ngth, change and become more like the mo- 
thei. 

I undertake not to expound the least of the 
difficulties that occur on this subject, but the 
most modest philosophy may be permitted to 
compare uncommon cases with those which are 
known, even though they too should be inex- 
plicable ; and this I believe is all that philosophy 
can and ought to do. 

We know that all longing, or mother-marks, 
and whatever may be considered as of the 
same nature, which is much, do not proceed 
from the father, but from the imagination of the 
mother. We also know that children most re- 
semble the father only when the mother has a 
very lively imagination, and love for, or fear of, 
the husband ; therefore, as has been before ob- 
served, it appears that the matter and quantum 
of the power and of the life, proceed from the 
father; and from the ima^jiriation of the mother 
sensibility, the kind of nerves, the form, and 
the outward appearance. 

If, therefore, in a certain decisive moment, 
tlie imagination of the mother should suddenly 
pas.s from the image of her husband to her own 
2a 



image, it might, perhaps, occasion a resemblance 
of the child, first to the father, and, afterward, 
to the mother. 

There are certain forms and features of coun 
teuance which are long propagated, and others 
which as suddenly disappear. The beautiful 
and the deformed (I do not say forms of coun- 
tenance, but what is generally supposed to be 
beauty and deformity) are not the most easily 
propagated ; neither are the middling and in- 
significant; but the great and the minute are 
easily inherited, and of long duration. 

Parents with small noses may have children 
with the largest and strongest defined ; but the 
father or mother seldom, on the contrary, have 
a very strong, that is to say, large-boned nose, 
which is not communicated, at least to one of 
their children, and which does not remain in 
the family, especially when it is in the female 
line. It may seem to have been lost for many 
years, but, soon or late, will again make its ap- 
pearance, and its resemblance to the original 
will be particularly visible a day or two after 
death. 

If the eyes of the mother have any extraor- 
dinary vivacity, there is almost a certainty that 
these eyes will become hereditary; for the 
imagination of the mother is delighted with 
nothing so much as with the beauty of her own 
eyes. Physiognomonical sensation has been, 
hitherto, much more generally directed to the 
eyes than to the nose and form of the face ; 
but, if women should once be induced to ex- 
amine the nose, and form of the face, as as- 
siduously as they have done their eyes, it is to 
be expected that the former will be no less 
strikingly hereditary than the latter. 

Short and well-arched foreheads are easy of 
inheritance, but not of long duration ; and here 
the proverb is applicable, Quod citojit, cito perit 
(Soon got, soon gone.) 

It is equally certain and inexplicable, that 
some remarkable physiognomies, of the most 
fruitful persons, have been wholly lost to their 
posterity; and it is as certain and inexplicable 
that others are never lost. 

Nor is it less remarkable that certain strong 
countenances, of the father or mother, disappear 
in the children and revive fully in the grand- 
children. 

As a proof of the power of the imagination 
of the mother, we sometimes see that a woman 
shall have children by her second husband 
that shall resemble the first, at least in the 
general appearance. The Italians, however, 
are manifestly too extravagant when they sup- 
pose children that strongly resemble their father 
are base born. They say that the imagination of 
the mother, during the commission of a crime so 
shameful, is wholly occupied with the possibility 
of surprise by, and of course with the image of, 
her husband. But, were this fear so to act, the 
form of the children must not only have the 
very image oi the father, but also his appearance 
of rage and revenge ; without which, the adi.lter 



e02 



LAVATER. 



Dus wife could not imagine the being surprised 
by, or image of, her husband. It is this ap- 
pearance, this rage, that she fears, and not the 
man. 

Natural children generally resemble one of 
their parents more than the legitimate. 

Tlie more there is of individual love, of pure, 
faithful, mild affection; the more this love is 
reciiJrocal, and unconstrained, betvifeen the 
father and mother, which reciprocal love and 
affection implies a certain deijree of imagi- 
nation, and the capacity of receiving impres- 
sions, the more will the countenances of the 
children appear to be composed of the features 
of the parents. 

The sanguine of all the temperaments is the 
most easily inherited and with it, volatility; 
which, when once introduced, will require 
great exertion and suffering for its extermina- 
tion. 

The natural timidity of the mother may 
easily communicate the melancholy tempera- 
ment of the father. Be it umlerstood that this 
is easy, if, in the decisive moment, the motlier 
be suddenly seized by some predominant fear; 
and that it is less communicable when the fear 
is less hasty, and more reflective. Thus we 
find those mothers, who, during the whole time 
of their pregnancy, are most in dread of pro- 
ducing monstrous, or marked children, because 
they remember to have seen objects that ex- 
cited abhorrence, generally have the best form- 
ed, and freest from marks; for the fear, though 
real, was the fear of reflection, and not the sud- 
den etfect of an object exciting abhorrence, 
rising instantaneously to sight. 

When both parents have given a deep root 
o tlie choleric temperament in a family, it may 
probably be some centuries before it be again 
moderated. Phlegm is not so easily inherited, 
even though both father and mother should be 
phlegmatic, for there are certain moments of 
life when the phlegmatic acts with its whole 
powers, although it acts thus but rarely, and 
these moments may, and must, have their ef- 
fects; but nothing appears more easy of in- 
neritance than activity and industry, when these 
nave their origin in organization, and the neces- 
sity of producing alteration. It will be long 
belbre an industrious couple, to whom not only 
a livelihood, but business is, in itself, necessary, 
shall not have a single descendant with the like 
quality of industry, as such mothers are gene- 
rally prolific. 

OBSEIIVATIONS ON THE DUNG AND TBE DEAD. 

1 havo seen one man of fifty, another of 
seventy years of age, who during life appeared 
not to hiive the least resemblance to their sons, 
and v/licse countenances seemed to be of a 
quite djl'.erent class; yet, the second day after 
death, the profile of the one had a striking re- 
PBir-b ince to the profile of his eldest, and that 
•)( thp other, to the profile of his third son; 
Bt/o-.-'J- indeed, and as a painter would say, 



harder. On the third day, a part of the resem- 
blance disappeared. 

Of the many dead persons I have seen, 1 
have uniformly observed that sixteen, eighteen, 
or twenty-four hours, after death (according to 
the disease), they have had a more beautiful 
form, better defined, more proportionate, har- 
monized, hoiTiogeneous, more noble, m^ore ex- 
alted, than they ever had during life. 

May there not be, thought I, in all men an 
original physiognomy, sidjject to be disturbed by 
the ebb and flow of accident and passion, and 
is not this restored by the calm of death, as 
troubled waters, being again left at rest, be- 
come clear ■? 

Among the dying, I have observed some who 
have been the reverse of noble or great during 
life, and who, some hours before their death, or 
perhaps some moments (one was in a delirium), 
have shown an inexpressible ennobling of the 
countenance. Everybody saw a new man; 
colouring, drawing, and grace, all was new, all 
bright, as the morning; heavenly; beyond ex- 
pression, noble, and exalted ; the most inatten- 
tive must see, the most insensible feel, the image 
of God. I saw it break forth and shine through 
the ruins of corruption, was obliged to turn 
aside in silence and adore. Yes, glorious God! 
still art thou there, in the weakest, most fallible 
men ! 

OF THE INFLtJENCE OF COCNTElfANCE ON 
COUNTENANCE. 

As the gestures of our friends and intimates 
often become our own, so, in like manner, does 
their appearance. Whatever.we love we wo -■ 
assimilate to ourselves; and whatever, in 
circle of affection, does not change us ii 
itself, that we change, as far as may be, into 
ourselves. 

All things act upon us, and we act upon all 
things; but nothing has so much influence as 
what we love; and among all objects of affec- 
tion, nothing acts so forcibly as the countenance 
of man. Its conformity to our countenance 
makes it most worthy our affection. How could 
it act upon, how attract our attention, had it not 
some marks, discoverable or undiscoverable, 
similar to, at least of the same kind with, the 
form an<l features of our own countenance? 

Without, however, wishing farther to pene- 
trate what is impenetrable, or to define what is 
inscrutable, the fact is indubitable that counte- 
nances attract countenances, and also that coim- 
tenances repel countenances; that similarity of 
features between two sympathetic and affec- 
tionate men increases with the development, 
and mutual communication, of their peculiar, 
individual, sensations. The reflection, if I may 
so say, of the person beloved, remains upon the 
countenance of the affectionate. 

The resemblance frequently exists only in 9 
single point, — in the character of mind ai. 
countenance. 



LAVATER. 



203 



A resemblance in the system of the bones 
presupposes a resemblance of the nerves and 
muscles. 

Dissimilar education may affect the latter so 
much that the point of attraction may be invisi- 
ble to unphysiognomonical eyes. — Suffer the two 
resembling forms to approach, and they will 
reciprocally attract and repel each other ; re- 
move every intervening obstacle, and nature 
will soon prevail. They will recognize each 
other, and rejoice in tlie flesh of their flesh, 
and the bone of their bone; with hasty steps 
will proceed to assinn'late. Countenances, also, 
which are very different froin each other, may 
communicate, attract, and acquire resemblance: 
nay, their likeness may become more striking 
than that of the former, if they happen to be 
more flexible, more capable, and to have greater 
sensibility. 

This resemblance of features, in consequence 
of mutual affection, is ever the result of internal 
nature and organization, therefore of the cha- 
racter of the persons. It ever has its foundation 
ill a preceding, perhaps imperceptible resem- 
blance, which might never have been animated, 
or suspected, had it not been set in motion by 
the presence of the sympathetic being. 

It would be of infinite importance to give the 
characters of those coimtenances which most 
easily receive and communicate resemblance. 
It cannot but be known that there are counte- 
nances which attract all, others that repel all, 
and a third kind which are indifferent. The 
all-repelling render the ignoble countenances, 
over which they have continued influence, more 
ignoble. The indifferent allows no change. The 
all-attracting either receive, give, or reciprocally 
give and receive. The first change a little, the 
second more, the third most. " These are the 
souls,' says Hemsterhuys the younger, "which 
happily, or unhappily, add the most exquisite 
discernment to that excessive internal elasticity 
which occasions them to wish and feel immo- 
derately; that is to say, the souls which are so 
moditied, or situated, that their attractive force 
meets the fewest obstacles in its progress." 

It would be of the utmost importance to study 
this influence of countenance, this intercourse 
of mind. I have found the progress of resem- 
blance most remarkable when two persons, the 
one richly communicative, the other apt to re- 
ceive, have lived a considerable time together, 
without foreign intervention; when he who gave 
had given all, or he who received could receive 
no more, physiognomonical resemblance, if I so 
dare say, had attained its punclum saturutionis. 
It was incapable of farther increase. 

A word here to thee, youth, irritable and easy 
to be won. Oh! pause, consider, throw not thy- 
self too hastily into the arms of a friend un- 
tried. A gleam of sympathy and resemblance 
may easily deceive thee. If the man who is thy 
second self have not yet appeared, be not rash; 
thou shall find him at the appointed hour. Be- 
ing found, he will attract thee to himself, will 



give and receive whatever is communicable. 
The ardour of his eyes will nurture thine, and 
the gentleness of his voice will temper thy too^ 
piercing tones. His love will shine in thy coun- 
tenance, and his image will appear in thee. 
Thou wilt become what he is, and yet remain 
what thou art. Affection will make qualities in 
him visible to thee which never could be seen 
by an uninterested eye. This capability of re- 
marking, of feeling what there is of divine in 
him, is a power which will make thy counte- 
nance assume his resemblance. 

ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMAGINATION ON 
THE COUNTENANCE. 

A word only, on a subject concerning which 
volumes might be written, for it is a subject I 
must not leave wholly in silence. The little, 
the nothing, I have to say upon it, can only act 
as an inducement to deeper meditation on a 
theme so profound. 

Imagination acts upon our own countenance, 
rendering it in some measure resembling the 
beloved or hated image, which is living, pre- 
sent, and fleeting before us, and is within the 
circle of our immediate activity. If a man, 
deeply in love, and supposing himself alone, 
were ruminating on his beloved mistress, to 
whom his imagination might lend charms, 
which, if present, he would be unable to dis- 
cover, — were such a man observed by a person 
of penetration, it is probable that traits of the 
mistress might be seen in the countenance of 
this meditating lover. So might, in the cruel 
features of revenge, the features of the enemy 
be read, whom imagination represents as pre- 
sent. And thus is the countenance a picture of 
the characteristic features of all persons ex- 
ceedingly loved or hated. It is possible that an 
eye less penetrating than that of an angel may 
read the image of the Creator in the countenance 
of a truly pious person. He who languishes after 
Christ, the more lively, the more distinctly, the 
more sublimely, he represents to himself the 
very presence and image of Christ, the greater 
resemblance will his own countenance take of 
this image. The image of imagination often 
acts more effectually than the real presence; 
and whoever has seen him of whom we speak, 
the great HIM, though it were but an instanta- 
neous glimpse. Oh! how incessantly will the 
imagination reproduce his image in the coun- 
tenance ! 

Our imagination also acts upon other counte- 
nances. The imagination of the mother acts 
upon the child. Hence men have long attempted 
to influence the imagination for the production 
of beautiful children. In my opinion, however, 
it is not so much the beauty of surrounding 
forms as the interest taken concerning forms, in 
certain moments; and here, again, it is not so 
much the imagination that acts as the spirit, that 
being only the organ of the spirit. Thus it is 
true that it is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh 
and the image of the flesh, merely considered 



204 



LAVATER. 



as such, profileth nothing. A look of love, from 
the sanctuary of tlie soul, has, certainly, greater 
■forming powers than hours of deliberate con- 
templation of the most beautiful images. This 
forming look, if so I may call it, can as little be 
premeditatedly given as any other naturally 
beautiful form can be imparted by a studious 
contemplation in the looking-glass. All that 
creates and is profoundly active in the inner 
man, must be internal, and be communicated 
from above; as I believe it suffers itself not to 
be occasioned, at least not by forethought, cir- 
cumspection, or wisdom in the agent to produce 
such effects. Beautit'ul forms, or abortions, are 
neither of them the work of art or study, but of 
intervening causes, of the quick-guiding provi- 
dence, the predetermining God. 

Instead of the senses, endeavour to act upon 
affection. If thou canst but incite love, it will 
of itself seek and find the powers of creation. 
But this very love must itself be innate before 
it can be awakened. Perhaps, however, the 
moment of this awakening is not in our power: 
and, therefore, to those who would, by plan and 
method, effect that which is in itself so extraor- 
dinary, and imagine they have had I know not 
what wise and physiological circumspection 
when they first awaken love, I might exclaim 
in the words of the enraptured singer : " I charge 
you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes 
and the hinds of tlie field, that ye stir not up 
nor awake my love till he please." — Here, be- 
hold thy forming Genius. — " Behold lie cometh, 
leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the 
hills, like a young hart." (Song of Sol. chap. ii. 
7,8,9.) 

Moments unforeseen, rapid as the lightning, 
in my opinion, form and deform. Creation, of 
whatever kind, is momentaneous: the develop- 
ment, nutriment, change, improving, injuring, is 
the work of time, art, industry, and education. 
Creative power suffers not itself to be studied. 
Creation cannot be meditated. Masks may be 
moulded, but living essence, within and without 
resembling itself, the image of God, must be 
created, born. "«oi of the unll of the flesh, nor of 
the will of man, but of God." 

MALE AND FEMALE. 

In general (for I neither can nor will state 
anything but what is most known) how much 
more pure, tender, delicate, irritable, affection- 
ate, flexible, and patient, is woman than man ! 

The primary matter of which she is con- 
stituted appears to be more flexible, irritable, 
and elastic than that of man. 

Women are formed to maternal mildness, and 
affection ; all their organs are tender, yielding, 
easily wounded, sensible, and receptible. 

Among a thousand females there is scarcely 
one without the genuine feminine signs; the 
flexible, the round, and the irritable. 

They are the counterpart of man, taken out 
of man, to be subject to man; to comfort him 
'ike angels, and to lighten his cares. " She shall 



be saved in child-bearing, if they continue in 
faith, and charity, and holiness, with sobriety." 
(1 Tim*, ii. 15.) 

This tenderness, this sensibility, this light 
texture of their fibres and organs, this volatilitj 
of feeling renders ;hem so easy to guide ano 
to tempt; so ready to submit to the enter 
prise and power of the man; but more power- 
ful through the aid of their charms than man, 
with all his strength. Tlie man was not first 
tempted, but the woman, afterward the man 
by the woman. 

But, not only easily to be tempted, she is ca- 
pable of being formed to the purest, noblest 
most seraphic virtue; to everything which can 
deserve praise or affection. 

Highly sensible of purity, beauty, and sym 
metry, she does not always take time to reHec 
on internal life, internal death, internal corrup 
tion. " The woman saw that the tree was good 
for food, and that it was pleasant to the eye 
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, and 
she took of the fruit thereof" (Gen. iii. 6.) 

The female thinks not profoundly; profound 
thought is the power of the man. 

Women feel more. Sensibility is the power 
of woman. 

They often rule more effectually, more sove- 
reignly, than man. They rule with tender looks, 
tears, and sighs ; but not with passion and 
threats; for if, or when, they so rule, they are 
no longer women, but abortions. 

They are capable of the sweetest sensibility, 
the most profound emotion, the utmost humility, 
and the excess of enthusiasm. 

In their countenance are the signs of sanctity 
and inviolability, which every feeling man ho- 
nours, and the effects of which are often mira- 
culous. 

Therefore, by the irritability of their nerves, 
their incapacity for deep inquiry and firm deci- 
sion, they may easily, from their extreme sensi- 
bility, become the most irreclaimable, the most 
rapturous enthusiasts. 

Their love, strong and rooted as it is, is very 
changeable; their hatred almost incurable, and 
only to be effaced by continued and artful flat- 
tery. Men are most profound ; women are 
more sublime. 

Men most embrace the whole ; women re- 
mark individually, and take more delight in 
selecting the minutiae which form the whole. 
Man hears the bursting thunder, views the de- 
structive bolt with serene aspect, and stands 
erect amidst the fearful majesty of the stream- 
ing clouds. 

Woman trembles at the lightning, and the 
voice of distant thunder; and shrinks into her- 
self, or sinks into the arms of man. 

Man receives a ray of light single, woman 
delights to view it through a prism, in all its 
dazzling colours. She contemplates the rain- 
bow as the promise of peace; he extends his 
inquiring eye over the whole horizon. 

Woman laughs, man smiles; woman weeps 



LAVATER. 



205 



man remains silent. Woman is in anguish 
wljen man weeps, and in despair when man is 
m anguish ; yet has she often more faith than 
man. 

Man without religion is a diseased creature, 
who would persuade himself he is well and 
needs not a physician; but woman without re- 
ligion is raging and monstrous. 

A woman with a beard is not so disgusting 
as a woman who acts the free-thinker ; her sex is 
formed for piety and religion; to women Christ 
first appeared ; but he was obliged to prevent 
them from too ardently and too hastily em- 
bracing him. — Touch me not. They are prompt 
to receive and seize novelty, and become its 
enthusiasts. 

The whole world is forgotten in the emotion 
caused by the presence and proximity of him 
they love. 

They sink into the most incurable melan- 
choly, as they also rise to the most enraptured 
heights. 

The feelings of the man are more imagina- 
tion ; those of the female more heart. 

Wlieu communicative, they are more commu- 
nicative than man ; when secret, more secret. 

In general they are more patient, long-suffer- 
ing, credulous, benevolent, and modest. 

Woman is not a foundation on which to build. 
She is the gold, silver, precious stones, wood, 
hay, stubble (1 Cor. iii. 12); the materials for 
building on the male foundation. She is the 
leaven, or, more expressively, the oil to the vine- 
gar of man ; the second part of the book of man. 

Mail, singly is but half man; at least but 
talf human, a king without a kingdom. Wo- 



man, who feels properly what she is, whether 
still or in motion, rests upon the man ; nor is 
man what he may and ought to be but in con- 
junction with woman. Therefore, " It is not 
good that man should be alone, but that he 
should leave father and mother and cleave to 
his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." 

A WORD ON THE PHTSIOGNOMICAI HELATIOIf OF 
THE SEXES. 

Man is the most Arm — woman the most flex- 
ible. 

Man is the straightest — woman the most 
bending. 

Man stands steadfast — woman gently trips. 

Man surveys and observes — woman glances 
and feels. 

Man is serious — woman is gay. 

Man is the tallest and broadest — woman less 
and taper. 

Man is rough and hard — woman smooth avid 
soft. 

Man is brown — woman is fair. 

Man is wrinkly — woman less so. 

The hair of n<an is more strong and short — 
of woman longer and more pliant. 

The eyebrows of man are compressed — of 
woman less frowning. 

Man has most convex lines — woman most 
concave. 

Man has most straight lines — woman most 
curved. 

The countenance of man, taken in profile, is 
more seldom perpendicular than that of the 
woman. 

Man is most angular — woman most round, 



18 



FRIEDRICH HEINRICH JACOBI. 



Born 1743. Died 1819. 



A DEVOUT soul, a penetrating- intellect, — poet 
and philosopher in one. Jacobi lias been called, by 
some, the " German Plato," in honou r of the h igli 
reJig-ious tone which characterizes his writings. 

Born at Dusseldorf, son of a merchant, he 
was early devoted to the same calling by his 
father, who sent him to Frankfort to be trained 
for the counting-rooin and the exchange. Here 
his pious spirit and studious habits drew upon 
him the ridicule of Ins companions, and fore- 
told the future man. From Frankfort he went 
to Geneva, where he addicted himself to lite- 
rary pursuits, and particularly to the French 
language and literature, while prosecuting the 
mercantile training which his father had marked 
out for him. After a residence of three years 
in this place, he returned to Dusseldorf and en- 
tered his father's establishment, whose business 
he conducted faithfully, though reluctantly, for 
several years. It was at this period that he mar- 
ried Betty von Clermont, a lady of Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle, who brought him wealth, together with 
great personal and mental attractions. A pre- 
ponderating taste for letters, and an appointment 
under Government, which he received through 
his friend and patron Lount von Goltstein, in- 
duced him to abandon his commercial engage- 
ments; and in 1779 he received a call, as Privy 
Councillor, to Miinchen. But his exposure of the 
abuses of the Bavarian system of customs was 
attended with consequences which rendered 
tliat post uncomfortable, and he retired to Pem- 
peifort, an estate which he had purchased in 
the neighbourhood of Dijsseldorf He here 
applied himself with exclusive devotion to litera- 
ture, and some of his best productions were 
written during this period. The death of his 
beautiful and accomplished wife, of whom 
Goethe speaks so enthusiastically in his me- 
moirs, threw a gloom over this otherwise so 
happy interspace of private life. He still con- 
tinued his establishment at Pempelfort, with the 
aid of the two maiden sisters so wittily cele- 
brated by Frau von Arnim, until the progress 
of the French revolution, whose consequences 
jegan to be felt in that region, impelled him to 
move to the province of Holstein, the native 



country of his father. He resided for some 
time at Eutin, in this district, and in 1801 
visited Paris. In 1804 he was invited to the 
newly-formed Academy of Sciences at Munich, 
of which he was afterwards made president. 
He was the rather induced to accept this invi- 
tation on account of the loss of a considerable 
part of his property by the misfortunes of his 
brother-in-law. At the age of seventy he re- 
signed this office, the salary of which was con- 
tinued to him during the remainder of his life. 
He died, March 10th, ]«19. 

Jacobi is ranked, and justly, among the phi- 
losophers of modern Germany, although his 
philosophy, far from shaping itself into a sys- 
tem, denies, — and that denial may be regarded 
as one of its leading characteristics, — on philo- 
sophical grounds, the possibility of a system, 
and maintains, that any system of philosophy 
carried to its legitimate results must lead to 
fanaticism. He vindicated the "affective" part 
of man's nature, which the Kantian exaltation 
of pure reason had seemed to disparage, at 
least to neglect, and gave to feeling* its due 
place and authority as a medium and interpreter 
of truth. Kant had shown the impossibility of 
absolute knowledge. Jacobi went farther, and 
maintained that the knowledge of the impossi- 
bility of absolute knowledge is also not absolute, 
as Kant had seemed to represent it ; — that we 
have but an imperfect understanding of our 
own ignorance. He differed from contempo- 
rary philosophers, in being a devout believer in 
revelation, — in the Christian revelation. The 
gospel was to him the test and criterion of all 
truth. For the rest, he was an eclectic, and 
welcomed light from whatsoever quarter it 
came. In phi'osophical insight he is surpassed 
by none, and though his fixed idea of the 
impossibility of a systematic philosophy may 
have somewhat vitiated his view of existing 
philosophies, his criticisms on some of them 
are among the best that have been essayed. 



* Closely connected with this merit, is the distinction 
bHiwoen reason and the understanding, now so widely 
accepted, which Jacohi was the first to point out, or, at 
least, to make -rominent. 



J A C O b I . 



£07 



As a writer of German, in the opinion of the 
author of this essay, he handles the language 
more skilfully than any of his contemporaries, 
Goethe only excepted. Many are more elo- 
quent, but none (of the old school) possess his 
ease and grace. Some of the later writers, 
for example Heine, surpass him in this parti- 
cular; but German rhetoric has undergone a 
great change for the better during the last 
thirty years. Of German philosophers, he is 
the least obscure, and the one whose writings, 
if translated, would prove most acceptable to 
the English mind. 

His principal works are, "Woldemar" and 
"Alwill's Correspondence," two philosophical 
novels, "Letters on Spinoza," "Of Divine 
things and tlie revelation of them," " Letter to 
Fichte," " David Hume on faith, or Idealism and 
Reiilisin." 

On the whole, as Wieland has been denomi- 
nated the Frenchman among German writers, 
so, and with greater justice, Jacobi may be 
termed English-Gercnan. In his strong prac- 
tical tendency, and especially in his cautious, 
unscientific, but severely critical, not profound, 
but acute and ecclftsiastical - mercantile way 
of judging philosophical questions, he manifests 
an affinity with the English mmd which is not 
to be found, to the same extent, in any of his 
countrymen. 

This is Mrs. Austin's view of him. "As a 
writer of fiction, he is distinguished for vigor- 
ous painting, admirable delineation of nature 
and the human heart, warmth and depth of 
feeling, and a lively, bold, yet correct, turn of 
expression. As a philosopher, he is admired 
for his rare depth of thought, (!) for the fervor 
of his religions ieelings, and the originality and 
beauty of his style. At the same time, there 
are few authors concerning whom opinions vary 
more thiin concerning Jacobi. It seems as if 
his works of imagination injured him with the 
philosophers, and his philosophy with the poets. 

" Jacobi's polemical merits were great. He 
pointed out the chasms, the unconnectedness, 
and the mischievous results of the prevalent 
opinions with critical acuteness, and with all 
the eloquence of a just aversion. With his 
peculiar modes of thinking, it was natural that 
he should not become the disciple of any other 
philo.sopher, and that he should come into con- 
flict alternately with the dogmatic Mendels- 

>hn, the critical Kant, the idealistical Fichte, 



and the pantheistical Schelling,* against the 
latter of whom, indeed, he expressed himself 
with too much bitterness. Jacobi's place among 
the pure. searchers after truth must, however, 
remain for ever uncontested; and his character 
is rich in all that can attract the wise and 
good."t 

Bouterwek, one of the most capable and ju- 
dicious critics of Germany, characterizes Ja- 
cobi as follows : — 

" This writer does not belong to the perfectly 
correct stylists, whose greatest merit, however, 
often consists merely in elegant phrases and 
turns of expression.' But, like Herder and 
Johannes Miiller, he towers above all other 
German prosaists of his age in the powerful 
and original manner in which he expresses his 
thoughts. His style is the true image of his 
mind. ****** 

" The supreme want of his heart was religion, 
but a religion which should consist with reason. 
By a severe criticism of the various metaphysi- 
cal systems he had satisfied himself that no 
religious truth is susceptible of metaphysical 
demonstration ; but also that Reason, by means 
of which man becomes capable of the idea of 
truth, is a higher principle in (iir mind than 
the mere understnnding which Ibrms general 
conceptions and combines them in judgments 
from which we draw conclusions. Reason, ac- 
cording to his view, included that same element 
n^ feeling, of which he could not divest himself 
in his search after pure truth. Nevertheless, 
there never perhaps was an understanding more 
clear and incorruptible than his. * * * * 

" Jacobi's style is not laconic but pregnant. 
Every principal word has a deeply considered 
and sharply determined signification. Notwith- 
standin? its easy and graceful turns, it exhibits 
no trace of flightiness. Not unfrequently it 
possesses a very agreeable rotundity. In his 
syntax he allows himself some liberties which 
are not common, but which have already been 
imitated by other writers, and which promote 
distinctness and force of expression. That 
Jacobi, ever intent on the most fitting expres- 
sion, should have discovered in the German 
language some turns peculiar to it and hitherto 
little used, is the more remarkable, since, like 
Johannes Miiller, he had received, in his youth, 
a part of his education in Geneva, and had 

* See the "dinversations- Lexicon." Art. Jacobi. Ec" 
t Mrs. Austin's "German Prose Writers." 



208 



JACOBI. 



become master of the French language as no 
philosophical writer in Germany, beside him- 
self, is known to have been, since Leibnitz."* 

What Goethe thought and hoped of Jacobi 
when both were young, may be seen from the 
following account which he gives of their meet- 
ing: 

"Although the poetical mode of presentation 
occupied me chiefly and was properly congenial 
with rny nature, yet reflections on subjects of 
every kind were not strange to me, and Jacobi's 
original and constitutional direction toward the 
inscrutable, was, in the highest degree, wel- 
come and genial. Here, there was no contro- 
versy — neither a Christian one, as with Lavater, 
nor a didactic one, as with Basedow. The 
thoughts which Jacobi communicated to me 
sprung immediately from his feelings; and how 
peculiarly was 1 penetrated when, with un- 
conditioned confidence, he hid not from me 
the deepest demands of his soul ! From so 
wondrous a combination of want, passion and 
ideas, there could arise, for me also, only fore- 
feelings of that which perhaps would be clearer 
to me at some future time. Happily I too had 
—if not cultivated — yet worked my nature on 
ibis side, and had received into myself the be- 
ing and the way-of thinking of an extraordinary 
man, imperfectly indeed, and as it were sur- 
reptitiously ; but I was already experiencing 
therefrom the most important consequences. 
This mind which wrought so decidedly upon 
me, and which was t'o have so great an influ- 
ence upon my whole way of thinking, was 
Spinoza. Namely, after I had looked about in 
all the world in vain for some means of form- 
ing my strange nature, I chanced at last on 
that man's "Ethics." Of what I may have 
read for myself out of that work, or of what I 
may have read into it, I can give no account. 
Enougli, I found here a sedative for my passions ; 
a large and free view of the sensual and moral 
world seemed to open i self before me. But 
what especially chained ne to him, was the 
boundless disinterestedness which shone forth 
from every proposition. That wonderful word : 
" Whoso loveth God aright, must not demand 
that God should love him in return," with all 
the premises on which it rests, and all the con- 
sequences that flow from it, filled eutirely my 
meditation. To be disinterested in all, and 

♦ Itoiiterwek's " Oeachichte der Poesie und Br.redsam- 
ktit," quoted by Wolff. 



most disinterested in love and friendship, was 
my highest joy, my maxim, my exercise; so 
that that petulant later saying : " If I love thee, 
what's that to thee," is spoken from my very 
heart. For the rest, here also let it not be 
overlooked, that the most intimate connections 
spring from opposition. The all-composing 
quietism of Spinoza contrasted with my all- 
upstirring endeavor ; his mathematical method 
was the antagonist to my poetical way of feel- 
ing and presenting; and precisely that ruled 
mode of treatment, which was thought not 
suitable to moral subjects, made me his pas- 
sionate disciple, his most decided adorer. Mind 
and heart, understanding and sentiment, sought 
each other with necessary, elective affinity; 
and by this means a union of the most dissimi- 
lar natures was brought about. 

"All this was still in the first stage of action 
and reaction, fermenting and seething. Fred. 
Jacobi, the first one wljom I permitted to look 
into this chaos, he, whose nature was also 
laboring in the deepest, heartily accepted my 
confidence, returned it, and sought to guide me 
into his way of thinking. He too felt an un- 
speakable spiritual want; ho loo would not 
have it silenced by foreign aid, but satisfied by 
development and light from within. What he 
imparted to me of the state of his mind I could 
not comprehend, the rather because I could 
form no conception of my own. But he, who 
had advanced so far before me in philosophical 
thinking and even in the study of Spinoza, en- 
deavored to guide and enlighten my dark 
striving. Such a pure, spiritual affinity, was 
new to me, and awakened a passionate longing 
for further communication. At nigiit, after we 
had already parted and withdrawn into our 
sleeping-apartments, I would seek him again. 
The moonshine trembled on the broad Rhine; 
and we, standing at the window, revelled in 
the fulness of reciprocal giving and receiving 
which swells forth so richly ia that glorious 
period of development. * * * * 

** * ***** 

"Then, when I returned to my friend Jacobi, 
I enjoyed the rapturous feeling of a union 
through the innermost mind. We were both 
animated by the liveliest hope of a common 
activity. I vehemently urged him to set forth 
vigorously, in some form or other, all that was 
moving and working within him. It was the 
means by which I had extricated myself from 



JACOBI. 



209 



BO many perplexities, and I hoped that it would 
prove effectual with him also. He delayed not 
to seize it with spirit; and how much that is 
good, beautiful and heart-rejoicing has he not 
produced ! 
" And so we parted, at last, with the blessed 



feeling of eternal union, without any fore-feel- 
ing that our striving would take opposite direc- 
tions, as, in the course of life, was but too 
manifest."* 

* " Jius meinem Leben." Part third. Book fourteenth. 



FROM THE "FLYING LEAVES." 

Mt aim is not to help the reader while away 
the time, but rather to aid those to whom, as to 
me. the time is already too fleeting. 

I can live in harmony with every one who 
lives in harmony with himself. 

What dost thou call a beautiful soul ? Thou 
callest a beautiful soul one that is quick to per- 
ceive the good, that gives it due prominence and 
holds it immovably fast. 

It is absurd for a man to say that he hates 
and despises men, but loves and honours Hu- 
manity. A general without a particular, a 
Humanity worthy of honour and love without 
men who are worthy of honour and love, is a 
fiction of the brain, a thing that has no exist- 
ence. 

It is the custom of virtue to note the failings 
of distinguished men not otherwise than with a 
certain timidity and shame. It is the custom 
of vice to cover impudence with tlie appellation 
of love of truth. 

To lay aside all prejudices is to lay aside all 
principles. He who is destitute of principles 
is governed, theoretically and practically, by 
whims. 

Man, according to Moses, was created last; all 
the varieties of irrational animals were created 
before him. This order is still repeated in each 
individual man. He follows first the animal, the 
coarser propensities,— coarse, animal pleasure; 
but he. is created for immortality, and can find 
the way to immortality. But he can also become 
more beastly than a beast, and use the means 
of immortality in such a way as to become 
more mortal, — as to draw upon himself suffer- 
ings and diseases from which the brute is free. 
He can " with the armour of light extend the 
kingdom of darkness and of barbarism." Herder, 
in his '■^Achesle Urkunde," remarks that Adam, 
tifter the Fall, clothed himself in the life of ani- 
mals. Man is guided by propensities, and all 
his propensities belong to his nature. But the 
propensity which makes him man, wliich dis- 
tingiiisiies liirn, is the true life-propensity proper 
to his species, — the propensity to a higher life. 
2b 



Even in the mere faculty of perception, which 
may be regarded as opposed to the faculty of 
sensation, this propensity appears. For the 
faculty of perception, the power of projecting 
objects out of himself, of raising himself above 
them in order to contemplate them, is objective, 
and is the foundation of the regal dignity of 
man. It strikes the first spark of a love which 
differs so widely from what we call lust that it 
is capable of resisting and overcoming that lust. 
The earnest observer finds everywhere, from 
first to last, the same economy. But the inner- 
most essence of the purely human propensity, — 
as the proper seat of liberty, as the mystery of 
substance, — is inscrutable for us. 

There is no one thing in the world for wliich 
we can conceive an interest and a love that 
shall endure forever. Therefore fidelity is re- 
quired of us, and a firm intent which the soul 
must be able to create for itself. He who learns 
this acquires freedom; acquires something of 
that great property, the property of having life 
in himself, which is the true philosopher's stone. 

The secret of the moral sense and feeling is 
the secret of everlasting life, in contradistinction 
to our present existence, wliich is fleeting how- 
ever we may strive against it, and leads to 
death. In moral feeling there is a presentiment 
of eternity. I know nothing sublimer and pro- 
founder than the saying of the New Testament, 
"Our life is hid in Christ (the God-man) with 
God." Unquestionably, our life, if there is any 
true life in us, is hidden deep within us. Never- 
theless it commands, apodictically,* its' own 
preservation ; commands that we bring it forth 
to the light. Faith and experience, therefore, 
are the only way by which we can arrive at 
the knowledge of the truth. True, it is a mys- 
tic, and to brutalism altogether intolerable, way. 
We must be able to inflict pain upon ourselves 
if we would attain to virtue and honour. Cou- 
rage, resolution, is, above all things, necessary 
to man. 

What is it that we admire in a Bayard, a 
Montrose, a Ruyter, a Douglas, in the friends of 
Cimon, who offered themselves up at 'i'anagra? 
We admire this in them, that they did not doat 
on the body but lived exclusively the life of the 



* jJporijt/iscA, equivalent to absolutely ; from the Greek 
aiJobiiKvvfi, to demonstrate ; also, to appoint, to require 
by law. Tr. 

18* 



210 



JACOBI. 



soul. They were not what accident would 
make of thern, but what tliey themselves had 
resolved to be. He to whom the law, which he 
is to follow, does not stand forth as a God, has 
only a dead letter which cannot possibly quicken 
him. 

Every aptitude to an end is a virtue. The 
inquiry alter the highest virtue is an inquiry 
alter the hifjhest end. The rank of the virtues 
must therefore be determined according to the 
rank of the ends. To discover the system of 
ends it is necessary to ascertain what is the des- 
tination of man, his highest and ultimate aim. 

The wise man is known by the choice of the 

ends which he proposes to himself; the prudent 
man is known by the choice of the means by 
winch he attains his ends, whether they be wise 
or imwise. But how are the ends themselves 
to be known ? Is the choice of the wisest to 
decide? Then we cannot say, as we have just 
said, that the wise man is known by liis ends. 
Semper idem velte atque idem nolle. But what 
is this one, and the same wliich is to be always 
willed ? It is the glory of God. 

It is agreeable to the dignity of man to hold 
his passions in subjection, to govern them. 
But the feeling of dignity does not consist in 
the governing as such, but in that .whereby we 
govern, in the consciousness of a higher destina- 
tion. Man knows a higher good; this it is that 
overcomes, not his will. 

Every activity proposes to itself a passivity, 
every labour enjoyment. But every enjoyment 
presupposes a want; when that is satisfied, the 
enjoyment ends. All pleasure is necessarily 
transient. 

We enjoy ourself, however, only in our work, 
in our doing, and our best enjoyment is our best 
doing. 

Man imputes to himself the ability to be con- 
stant by his own proper force, and places his 
honour in that ability. A man of his word, and 
a man of honor are synonymous terms. He 
who can embrace a purpose and persist in it, 
who can act from a resolve, unsupported by 
presetit inclination, nay, even in opposition to 
present inclination, emotion, or passion, of liim 
we say, " he has character," " he is a man." We 
despise the man who is always only what 
things, accidents, circumstances, make of him ; 
the fickle, the inconstant, the wavering. We 
honour him who can resist objects and the im- 
pressions which they make upon him, who 
knows how to maintain his self in the face of 
them, who lets himself be instructed but not 
changed by them. 

To believe in humanity, to trust a friend un- 
conditionally, we call great and noble. Want 
cf faith, doubt, suspicion, have something little, 



ignoble; they originate in fear. A noble and 
courageous mind then believes and confides. It 
believes and confides not because it is a good 
calculator; its faith, its confidence, is power of 
feeling, not a cold exercise of the understanding. 
On the contrary, this power is opposed to the 
understanding inasmuch as it raises itself above 
it. 

When man abides in the creature, he sinks 
behind and before into nothing. 

When feeling and sentiment vanish, words 
and ceremonies remain and make themselves 
important. 

Where morals are, there reason reigns over 
sense. And, vice versa, where reason begins 
to obtain the ascendency over sense, there morals 
arise. 

The first step in the corruption of morals is 
no longer to regard public opinion ; the last step 
is the absence of public ojiinion. Every one 
does, then, what pleases him ; to every one it 
seems right to follow his own lusts. Morals 
have ceased from the land. 

Have not all virtues sprung up before they 
had either name or precept? The book of life 
must be written before an index can be affixed 
to it. Our moral philosophies are such indexes 
made after the book; and they are generally 
made by men who understand nothing of the 
book. Others, who also understand nothing of 
it, think that tlie index is the basis of the book, 
and the art of referring to it the true art of life. 
But they iaiways refer to it for others, not lor 
themselves. 

Life is not a particular form of body, but the 
body is a particular form of life. The body 
relates to the soul as the word to the thought. 

The essence of reason consists in self-percep- 
tion. It returns into self. That which it per- 
ceives, so far as it is conditioned by sense, it 
calls nature. That which it perceives, so far 
as it is not conditioned by sense, it calls the 
Divine Being. 

True enlightenment is that which teaches 
man that he is a law to himself. True culture 
is that which accustoms him to obey this law 
without regard to reward and punishment. 

In an age in which the good and the true are 
considered as two different and often conflict- 
ing things, every thing must conflict. 

All laws, considered in the origin of their 
power, are despotic. Sic volo sicjubeo. Laws 
of the will are not laws which the will receives, 
but laws which the will gives. There is no 
thing above the will; in it is original life. How 
should a law be able to produce a will 1 Where 



JACORI. 



211 



this seems to be the case, a law-giving will is 
already presupposed, wliich, in that particular 
instance, appears as executive power. 

" Peace is the masterpiece of reason," says 
Johann Miiller. This is true, not only in re- 
gard to civil polity, but in every regard. 

It is not truth, justice, liberty, which men 
seek; they seek only themselves. And O! tliat 
they knew how to seek themselves aright! 

What have not men tried and applied in 
order to guaranty to each other reciprocally, 
their identity, — the being and enduring of their 
I. All civil order has tliis for its first and last 
object, tliat the will of to-day may be valid also 
to-morrow. Hence, religion has been held so 
sacred among all nations. They fixed by means 
of it the changeableness of their nature. 

He who cannot help himself seeks protection 
from others in return for service, subjection, all 
kinds of acknowledgment. Thus arose magis- 
trates, judges, leaders. Right was souglit first 
with the stronger; lie helped to find it. The 
first natural potentates were fathers, afterwards 
patriarchs, — t!ie patricians in Rome, later, free- 
holders. He who could help himself was more 
highly esteemed tliau he who was forced to 
seek help from others. Hence, it has come to 
pass tliat down to the present day, men boast 
more of strength than of justice, for justice 
makes equal. 

So soon as man begins to believe in others no 
more than he believes in himself, all Gouverne- 
ment lie coiifiance is at an end. 

The aim of civil polities, so far as they are 
grounded in reason, is to give to pure, practical 
reason a boily. Systems of ethics alone cannot 
do that. Reason must be expressed outwardly, 
embodied in external institutions, which serve, 
as far as possible, to supply the place of peculiar 
power, — its self-existence 

Man esteems human feelings higher than the 
express laws by which it is intended to govern 
those feelings. He makes the love of parents, 
of children, the love of friends, fidelity, com- 
passion, the basis of all duties; not only tole- 
rating exceptions from the law on their account, 
but even reproving the strength of mind which 
exalts itself above every feeling by means of 
ideas. 

As a countenance is made beautiful by the 
soul's shining through it, so the world is beauti- 
ful by the shining through it of a God. 

As my own self is present to me in an in- 
comjirehensible manner, so God is present to 
me likewise, in an incomprehensible man- 
ner. 



Instinct harmonizes the interior of animal^ 
Religion the interior of man. 

Through the dark of world-events there 
sometimes dart lightnings which tear asunder 
the clouds and discover heaven, the dwelling 
of God. In the heart of man, in his spirit, 
these lightnings are kindled and shoot upward. 

Man as a finite being must everywhere make 
nature — finiteuess — his foundation. He would 
not free himself from nature, but free his nature, 
or at least endue it with freedom. 

Certain as it is that we live in time as our 
element, and cannot, for a moment, imagine 
ourselves out of time, without likewise ima- 
gining the cessation of our being; we can as 
little conceive ourselves as children of time 
and our existence as given jn time alone. On 
the contrary, we have a most intense conscious- 
ness of something beyond time. In ourselves 
we call it self, out of ourselves, God ; but that 
which is in time we call nature or the perish- 
able. Every perishable is given in an imperish- 
able, and presupposes it, or it could not be. 
We live thereby that we continually interrupt 
eternity and make a beginning and an end. 

Nothing terrifies man so much, nothing brings 
such gloom over his spirit, as when, to his ap- 
prehension, God vanishes out of Nature, as 
when God hides his face from him, as when 
design, wisdom, goodness, do not appear to rule 
in Nature, but only bUnd necessity or senseless 
chance. 

As man instinctively interprets the features, 
gestures, and accents of his fellow-men, and 
thus attains to language, even so he interprets 
Nature instinctively also. As men originally 
communicate, and understand one another by 
expressions of their interior which have been 
implanted by nature, not invented by them- 
selves, so God communicates with the human 
race through his creation. Out of the natural 
language between man and man there arises 
an artificial one of arbitrary signs; and man 
can so abuse this art, as by means of it to de- 
ceive himself with regard to the original design. 
So it is with religion which degenerates, in his 
hands, into empty ceremonies, and at last into 
irreligion. 

Without religion, whither will ye flee for 
safety, in a world full of death, full of pains, 
full of warring passions? Envy with its com- 
panions, slander and malice, assail you in every 
situation, so soon as ye begin to take comfort in 
it, so soon as ye begin, in any way, to distin- 
guish yourselves in it. Wiierever ye flee, in- 
justice and wickedness are the stronger. Neither 
are ye true to yourselves; no inclination, no 
purpose, no living and strengthening thought 
can ye hold fast at will. Ye summon in vain 



212 



JACOBI. 



all the powers and faculties of the understand- 
ing. The understanding can only elaborate, its 
deliberative will can only unite here and sepa- 
rate there what already is. What comfort, 
therefore, unless the spirit can lift itself up to 
something unchangeable, to something eternal? 
unless it can embrace a faith which shall over- 
come the world? Perfect blessedness is no- 
where, and nowhere would there be consola- 
tion even, if religion were not. Everywhere 
man must help himself with something. One 
grasps at honour, another at pleasure, and de- 
stroys his inner life. Religion only can purify 
and deliver it. 

Man is unceasingly employed in raising him- 
self from the stuff to the form, from the actual 
to the possible, from the world to God. 

It is impossible to be a hero in anything un- 
less one is first a hero in faith. 

The characteristic sign of genius is to forget 
one's self by living in an idea. Life in an idea 
must entirely swallow up the proper, natural 
life. 

As long as man forgets more slowly than he 
learns, he advances. He ceases to advance, and 
retrogrades, when he forgets sooner and more 
than he can learn. 

With the approach of old age I experienced, 
as never before, that the living spirit in man is 
every thing, his knowledge nothing. 

In love we exert ourselves to be all that we 
can be, in the presence of the beloved object. 
Through that we become acquainted with the 
feeling of shame for ourselves in the highest 
degree. In ordinary intimacies, the reverse is 
found ; they help us to be less ashamed of our- 
selves; they put us at our ease; we relax in 
our intercourse with the friend, and precisely 
in his presence are the least that we can be. 

Unwillingly I assail, unwillingly I refute, not 
only because I know from experience how little 
truth is benefited thereby, but because the na- 
ture of human knowledge itself convit;ces me 
of the same thing. Before I can expose an er- 
ror, I must be able to demonstrate the truth 
wliich contradicts that error. Error in itself 
is always invisible; its nature is absence of 
light. 

That which is written in the taste of the times 
needs no justification. Agreement supplies the 
place of proofs ; whereas the most proJbund op- 
position awakens only anger. 

Only those thoughts which the most profound 
earnestness has produced and perfectetl, take a 
cheerful form. They make a man joyful. This 
is the secret of the tjocratic irony. And hence 



it is that the taste for genuine Socratic 
so rare. 



irony is 



A man of taste is one who feels the beautiful 
immediately ; who derives the feeling of the 
beautiful immediately from the beautiful. Any 
one who possesses a considerable degree of sa- 
gacity and understanding may judge very cor- 
rectly, up to a certain point, in accordance with 
a received inodel ; he may decide for others 
whether a given work of art is beautiful or not; 
he may determine the why and the degree of 
its beauty. But because he can do this, lie is 
not therefore a man of taste, and not unfre- 
quently he is guilty of gross error. The beau- 
tiful has this in common with all original (na- 
ture) that it is recognised without a mark. It 
is, and manifests itself; it may be indicated but 
not demonstrated. 

We exhaust ourselves in the generation of our 
intellectual offspring. We weaken the power 
of representation in ourselves by representing 
for others; so that, in a strict sense, we give 
forth truth. What we communicate, (make 
common) of that we lose the proper possession. 
***** We forget while 
teaching others, and, witri our disciples, we be- 
come our own disciples by being obliged to 
stoop to them. It may come to pass, that one 
shall believe only tliat which one can succeed 
in imparting to others. All this, however, is 
true only of those labours in which truths are eli- 
cited from the innermost soul. In all other 
cases the " douendo discimus" holds good. 

It happens to us with ideas* as with money. 
The general sign is metamorphosed, in our im- 
agination, into the thing itself; we prefer it to 
that, the seemingly universal medium to each 
particular end."j" 

Avarice is a root of all evil. 

We make ourselves giddy and sink down into 
the centre of nothing, i. e. of positive falsehood, 
when we undertake to restore from the under- 
standing that which has perished as a feeling 
from the heart. 

Our mundane system is said to be composed 
of the ruins of a sun. The dissecting, divelling 
understanding, when it attempts to create, de- 
vises only ruins. Man must annihilate a portion 
of every knowledge in order to grasp it, for he 

* ' Begriffen.' Conceptions, perhaps, is a more lite- 
ral rendering; coiicipio, cuincapin, tli.it which is taken 
together in one act of the mind. Begreifen is to grasp to 
take in, but begriff, as now nsed, lirs bi'tween conception 
and idea: more objeciive than the former, more subjec- 
tive than the latter, in its original acceptation. Tr. 

f Coleridge says, somewhere, that our conceptions may 
he so adequate as to preclude the desire of realizing them. 
This I take to he the sense of the above; this is that in- 
tellectual avarice which contents itself with the means, 
the representative of values, without attempting to re- 
alize them in action. Tr. 



JACOBI. 



213 



can arasp only witli his conception ; he possesses 
tlie tiling only so far as he knows how to bring 
it under a word. 

Every mediate designation must have been 
preceded by an immediate, every artificial by a 
natural. The more mediated our designation 
becomes, the more artificial our language, the 
more confused and dim our conceptions of the 
truth. 

All philosophising is only a more extended 
fathoming of the invention of language. 

There is often such a silence in me, so pro- 
found a meditation, that I cannot express how 
distracted seem to me all men whom I see be- 
fore me. No one listens. 

In nature, and, in general, in the actual, the 
true, everything is positive. In the understand- 
ing and its possibility, everything is negative. 
For, in the understanding, everything stands un- 
der conceptions, and the most comprehensive 
are generally the most empty. At whatsoever 
the understanding aims, the white which it seeks 
to hit is nihility, or the A]\-minus diversity, indi- 
viduality, personality. 

Because man falls into self-contradiction, there- 
fore he philosophises. In innumerable ways 
he loses the connection of his truths, i. e. they 
come into collision with each other, they mutu- 
ally cancel each other. Here comes in the right 
of the stronger. Which is the more, the most 
po.-itive? that is the controversy. To one man 
this seems most positive, to another that. Nay, 
in the same individual this may be most posi- 
tive to-day, to-morrow that. When this happens 
frequently, the whole understanding of the man 
becomes confused; it finds nowhere a steady 
hold. 

It is a strange pretence, that we seek truth 
di^interestedly. Man seeks it disinterestedly 
jubt as we may say of the brute that it seeks its 
food disinterestedly, solely in obedience to an 
instinct. Man seeks truth because untruth kills 
him, and because he seeks a foundation for his 
best fo-elings and wishes; he longs lor the foun- 
tain of the good, the beautiful, of truth and life. 

What do we mean when we say that truth 
should be sought for its own sake, and that we 
should sacrifice everything to that ■? Is it a com- 
mand of instinct, or do I see something for which 
I strive 1 'i'he aim of philosophy, it is said, is 
to understand ourselves. So it appears in re- 
flect.on ; but its origin is, that contradiction has 
arisen within us, that we see double, that a truth 
was taken fiorri us which we are desirous of 
pnsses-ing again. We are looking round after 
the trntli tliat has flown. There is, originally, 
no mere inconsiderate curiosity; but there is an 
original interest. We find ourselves in the truth, 



and only by degrees do we become aware that 
we did not possess it entire. 

Of those who boast that they seek truth for 
its own sake, the greater part are seeking only 
a system, and when they have found one, no 
matter what one, they are satisfied. 

Reason is the consciousness of the spirit. Ha 
who loses reason loses himself, his self-con- 
sciousness, his proper being and persistence, his 
person. Personality is inseparable from reason, 
reason from personality. * * * * 

Reason also is necessarilyconnected with liberty, 
and the consciousness of personality is the cotiscious- 
ness of liberty. 

He who philosophises for himself meets, at 
every step, with difficulties, of which he who 
philosophises for a school experiences nothing. 

In my younger days it stood thus with me in 
regard to philosophy. Tseemed to myself to be 
heir to immeasurable riches, and only some un- 
important lawsuits and some unmeaning for- 
malities seemed to hinder me from taking full 
possession of my inheritance. The suits, while 
pending, grew to be important. At last, it ap- 
peared that I had inherited nothing but lawsuits, 
and that the whole bequest was in insolvent 
hands. 

Some men have, so to speak, only examples 
in their head, others have laws likewise. Vi- 
gorous reasoning is shown in finding laws for 
examples and examples for laws. The eye of 
the understanding contracts itself, as it were, in 
forming conceptions, and expands in applying 
them. The merely book-learned have, for t(^e 
most part, very narrow minds, and so too have 
the merely mechanically practical. 

Philosophy is an internal life. A philosophi- 
cal life is a collected life. By means of true 
philosophy the soul becomes still, and, at last, 
devout. 

Philosophising is striving to sail up the stream 
of being and of knowing, to its source. 

In regard to the ultimate objects of human 
contemplation, the most common conceptions 
are the truest. After pondering till we are 
weary, we are forced to return to them at last, 
and to allow the truth of the saying, that to 
children and to men of simple understandings 
are revealed the things which are hidden from 
the wise. 

I have been young and now I am old, and 1 
bear my testimony that I have never found tho- 
rough, pervading, enduring morality with any 
but such as feared God, — not n the modern 
sense, but in the old child-like way. And only 
with such too, have I found a rejoicing in life, — 



214 



JACOBI. 



H hearty, victorious cheerfulness of so distia- 
gnished a kind, that no other is to be compared 
with it. 

I too believe on account of miracles ; namely, 
on account of the miracle of liberty, which is a 
continuous miracle, and has much analogy with 
the miracle on which Christendom is founded, — 
the reception of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. 

To be free and to be a spirit are one and the 
same. Where spirit is, there is invention, cre- 
ative power, originality, self-existence. 

Every great example takes hold of us with 
the authority of a miracle, and says to us: If ye 
had but faith, ye should also be able to do the 
lliings which I do. 

Love, admiration, reverence, are the founda- 
tion of all morality. We feel ourselves as cause, 
as person, and so personify everything, — streams. 
Winds, storms, trees, — whatever stirs and bene- 
fits or harms us. Whatever we know or judge 
of I'he internal powers of things, we know and 
judge by sympathy, by presentiment. Every 
man has his own individual universe. The 
more he is able to transport himself into other 
things, to live the life of those things, to unite 
his life with theirs, the greater his being becomes. 

The best thing in being man, after all, is that 
the good which we have enjoyed does not perish 
from us, — that it establishes itself within and 
around us, propagates itself, multiplies; and that 
thus we acquire ever more power for greater 
enjoyment. 

To embrace an object in such a way as to see 
nothing beyond it, — there is no other way to be 
a hero. 

I iiave all reverence for principles which 
grow out of sentiments, l)ut as to sentiments 
which grow out of principles, you shall scarcely 
build a house of cards thereon. 

The first and necessary contlition of morality 
-^the power of acting in obedience to laws — is 
easi y confounded with morality itself, which 
consists in a longing after something higher. 

To perforin noble and beautiful acts is natural 
to man ; it is easy for him, he finds immediate 
iriip-.dses to such acts in himself. On the other 
hand, virtue, which, in the proper sense, is 
founded on self denial, is everywhere difficult. 
To virtue he must accustom hiinself with great 
labour, and laboriously sutfer the habit to he 
formed in him. Nevertheless Nature has im- 
planted magna' imity in him, thereby indicating 
a power of self-control in his mind, which acts 
previous to all deliberation. 

Most men can get accustomed to diligence 
and obedience; and the whole budget of ideas 
and sentiments by which it is proposed to con- 



trol or regulate the animal propensities, amounts 
to nothing in comparison with acquired skill in 
work and the love of work which grows out of it. 

It is never too late with us, so long as we are 
still aware of our faults and bear them impa- 
tiently, — so long as noble propensities, greedy 
of conquest, stir within us. 

How happy you are, said 1 to L., in possess- 
ing so much freedom of will I While I said this, 
it struck me with new force that we place that 
which we call freedom of will, not so much in 
the power of choice, as in the power of execut- 
ing our volitions. 

The strongest passion in man is ambition. 
That which satisfies a true ambition promotes 
the love of God, and leads us nearer to the 
knowledge of Him. 

It is sometimes necessary to let five be even.* 
I have all my life practised this doctrine, more 
than I ought, from natural facility of temper. 
But then I have never been able to prevail on 
myself, while letting five be even, to maintain 
solemnly that there is no such thing as even, or 
that five is the law of the even. 

The Athenians, on the day after the assassi- 
nation of Archias, sent to the Thebans, whom 
Pelopidas had set free, five thousand men, as 
auxiliaries against the Lacedtemonians. We 
often find this among the Greeks, that they re- 
garded no danger in actions which honour and 
propriety demanded of them. Wisdom and 
prudence, with them, were very different things. 
With all the faults and vices of these people, 
there lived in them something of genuine free- 
dom, which impelled them, strengthened thein, 
and gave to their courage a sublime character, 
entirely wanting to the courage of the moderns. 
It stood very clear before their eyes that man 
has a better soul and that this better soul should 
hold the lower in subjection. 

The greater a man's ability to act for distant 
ends, the stronger his mind. 

Man cannot reform himself in detail, nor, in 
general, can he keep his promises to himself, for 
he himself is the sport of passions, and only the 
law above him is constant. That he can ac- 
knowledge this law, subject himself to its dis- 
cipline, in fine, appropriate to himself the love 
of it and make it a part of his character, — 
therein consists his dignity. And the character 
of the righteous man is no other than this. It 
is folly to build upon a man who has only dis- 
position (though it were the very best) without 
principles whereby to guide this disposition and 
to govern himself. 

* A proverbial Rxpression signifying that one must not 
be too strict in a given case, — must let a thing pass. Tr. 



JACOBI. 



215 



We always live prospectively, never retro- 
spectively, and there is no abiding moment. 
Therefore let us seek internal peace, before all 
things, and sacrifice everything to that. Every 
lot is tolerable ; only dissatisfaction with our- 
selves is not tolerable; and there is a degree 
of remorse from which there is no deliverance. 

We may surrender ourselves without danger 
to impressions made by Nature, also to impres- 
sions made by men. Call it enthusiasm, call it 
fanaticism, provided our feeling is only the re- 
sult of an actual relation, there is no harm to be 
feared. But as soon as we attempt to perpetuate 
the feeling beyond its natural duration, as soon 
as we take pains to imitate it, and lastly, when 
we even go so far as to endeavour to awaken 
the feelings of others in ourselves, we are in 
the way of self-delusion and hypocrisy. 

Mankind are forever employed in giving their 
unreason a different shape, and each time they 
persuade themselves that they have converted 
it into reason. They fall out of one superstition 
into anotlier, and with every new start, they 
think they have gained in the knowledge of 
truth. It is error itself which continually drives 
them before it, while they think they are flying 
from it of their own accord. But it is contrary 
to the nature of error to drive men to the truth. 
The truth is altogether internal, and he who 
possesses it is in danger of losing it when he 
attempts to make it external, when he regards 
that which he has made external as tlie truth 
itself For truth is not this or that opinion, but 
an insig'it which is elevated above every 
peculiar opinion. 

Although man daily detects himself in mis- 
taking the symptoms of an event for its cause, 
he continually commits the same error anew, 
and will rather help himself with the most 
absurd explanations, than be contented with a 
thorough account of the matter. For example, 
nothing lies more plain before his eyes than 
that no individual can originate from mere com- 
position, and yet the materialist will rather sup- 
pose that this may take place in some incom- 
prehensible way, than assume the incompre- 
hensible directly and at once. His soul assures 
him with all its power and with a distinctness 
which exceeds all other distinctness, that the 
will is before the deed, life before food, but he 
reasons out the reverse. 

When we call the system of the heavens a 
mechanism, we no longer wonder at that me- 
chanism, but we wonder at a Newton, a Kep- 
ler, who with their intellect could explore it, 
and unfold it to us. But if we enter into the 
understanding of these great men, we no longer 
wonder even at that; the mechanism of its re- 
fle<-tive action becomes intelligible to us, and 
that which we can thoroughly understand, that 
which follows from necessity, we cannot won- 



der at. At the utmost, we contemplate it with 
astonishment, as we contemplate a lofty moun- 
tain, or the boundless ocean. We can truly 
wonder, only at that which is a wonder (a 
miracle), or which seems to us such. The 
wonder-working from love is God : the wonder- 
working from malice is Satan. The brute can 
be astonished with terror or with joy, man 
alone can wonder. 

The truly good can be preserved only by 
means of itself, and all efforts to preserve it by 
means of anything formal or external to itself, 
— with whatsoever kind of sugar or salt, — are 
vain. 

Human reason is the symptom of the highest 
life that we know. But it has not its life in 
itself, it must receive it at every moment. Li(e 
is not in it, but it is in life. What life is, — its 
source and nature, — is for us the deepest mys- 
tery. 

Man's light is in the impulse of elevation to 
something higher. Not because I raise myself 
above something, but because I raise myself to 
something, do I approve myself. 

I know no deeper philosophy than that oi' 
Paul in the seventh chapter of his epistle to the 
Romans. In the merely natural man dwells 
sin. Regeneration is the basis of Christianity. 
He who banishes the doctrine of Grace from 
the bible, abolishes the whole bible. 

"In the beginning was the Word ;" means, 
the will was before the deed, the end before 
the means, the design before the act, the soiii 
before the body, the form before the forndess, 
life before death. 

It is ever beneath the dignity of man to give 
laws, merely as the stronger, and to rejoice in 
the pressure which he exercises like a sense- 
less block, by mere bulk, as if it were a living 
force. 

The actual right of the stronger consists only 
in his being able to possess himself of the will 
of the less strong. It is with this just as it is 
with the ruling thoughts and sentiments in our 
soul. 

True, the strongest is always king, not the 
strongest to subject the will of all to himself so 
that they shall do his will though contrary to 
their own, but the strongest to execute their 
will, to act in conformity with it. 

Men will always act according to tlunr pas- 
sions. Therefore the best government is that 
which ir>si)ires the nobler passions and destroys 
the meaner. 

The written, actual laws have grown out of 



215 



JACOBI. 



customs, wliicli customs have no other origin 
than the natural inclinations and propensities 
of men wlio have united themselves in a cer- 
tain body. Thus justice arose. If we were to 
take away from the law all that has grown up 
freely and naturally, there would be little good 
and mnch evil left. That which still holds 
society together and makes life tolerable is the 
work of liberty and Nature. 

Despotism is easier than liberty, as vice is 
easier than virtue. 

■ Justice is the freedom of those who are equal. 
Injustice is the freedom of those who are un- 
equal. 

It is impossible to diminish poverty by the 
multiplication of goods ; for manage as we may, 
misery and sutfering will always cleave to the 
border of superfluity. 

Manage a mad-house as you will, you never 
can make a rational community of it. • * • 
It seems to me as -if I should go mad myself 
when I hear those who only lust after the fruits 
of slavery raving about freedom. 

As history is generally written, it is far from 
giving us a more accurate knowledge of man. 
On the contrary, it only makes him more unin- 
telligible. And yet the true aim of the historian 
shouUl be, so to represent the different modes 
of being which are natural to man, that we shall 
recogiiise them as natural. 

Tlie inventions and experiences of so many 
ages and nations have only, as it were, fastened 
themselves upon us. We have adopted them 
hastily, on account of certain prominent advan- 
tages, without investigating them in their origin 
and their consequences. 

We cannot return to the old forms, and ought 
not to endeavour to do so, but we can return to 
the sentiments coimected with those forms; and 
they lie very near us. 

Nothing tends more to bring confusion and 
death into arts and morals, than when men 
blindly transfer the experience of one age to 

another. 

It is a consequence of civilization, that man 
can produce without invention, know without 
insight, ^o far, civilization makes man meclia- 
..ical. It is to be observed, however, that while 
It kills him a parte post, it may perhaps quicken 
hiin in the same degree, o parte ante. 

" Mon ame active a besoin d'aliment." (Mem. 
•I'Hipp. Clairon.) How ridicidous the requisi- 
tion of those boastful philosophers, that man 
should despise all enjoyment! This being, so 
through and through necessitous, is to be blessed 



in himself alone, in his action, in his striving 
after nothing! Everything in us is to be con- 
trary to nature, contempt of nature ! 

That which man seeks, which everywhere 
guides him, — yea! enlightens him even, is joy. 
Let him, it is said, seek joy in himself; that is 
constant, for his self can never desert him. 
False ! The 1 of to-day is not the I of yester- 
day. The two are often so different that the 
one knows not how to find itself in the other. 
His empty form is pure nothing, and the per- 
manent (that in him which is not form) is 
wholly unknown to him. He seeks himself 
everywhere in Nature, and finds himself not. 
That which he took for himself is only the re- 
flection of something else. That something 
vanished ; it was perishable, and he sank back 
into his own nothingness. 

Man is a struggling creature. He feels in 
time, which never stands still, which has no 
proper moment. What is the present? An 
appearance compounded of the past and the 
future. And yet wise men have reproved man 
for forgetting the present, for dreaming away 
his life with hopes, and fondly sacrificing to 
them all actual enjoyment. Tell me, ye sages! 
whoso strives for show-good, — is he not deluded 
as well when he seizes it as when he only |)Mr- 
sues it? Wiiere is he among your disciples 
who has ever found peace and blesseilness in 
what you call the present? A thing of the 
future is man, and strive he must without 
ceasing. But in the path of the true good, toge- 
ther with the joys of hope, he finds also the 
repose of enjoyment. Created for eternity, but 
created out of finite nature. Seize the l^roteus 
which, — terrified by its changing forms, — thou 
hast so often let slip from thy hands; seize it 
and let it not go; lor under every one of its 
forms lies the true, the prophetic, the divine. 

Better make use of an asses' bridge than never 
be able to stir from the spot. Everything good 
has come to us in this way, and wo unto us 
should the bridge no longer hold ! 

In one thing men of all ages are alike; they 
have believed obstinately in themselves. 

When we lose our faith in persons, we lose 
still more our faith in generalities. 

The most universal rule that I know for the 
writer and also for the artist, is that his expres- 
sion be always beneath the thing which he re- 
presents. I hold this to be the true secret of 
mind and of power. 

True attention is the product of love. 

Without repose of soul, nothing great is pro- 
duced. When little passions are tugging at a 
man he can produce only little things, and that 



JACOBI. 



21"; 



only at intervals. Even where strong passion 
brings great tilings to pass, there is a kind of 
repose in the soul. Everything is concentrated 
upon that one, and the soul reposes on that 
(central) point. 

Nothing is more ruinous for a man than when 
he is mighty enough in any part, to right him- 
self without right. 

Is it supposed that liberty consists in the 
faculty of choosing opposite things? Only on 
that ground, and so far forth as we are able to 
do that, we are not free. Because the evening 
robs us of feelings, resolutions, views which we 
had in the morning; because we cannot hold 
fast our own wishes, our character, our person; 
because rain and sunshine, health and sickness, 
change us through and through ; therefore we 
complain of bondage. If man were always of 
the same mind, his reason would keep its even 
course, and it would never occur to him that he 
was not free. 

By every sensible impression we are divorced 
from ourselves, and never are we divorced from 
ourselves by free activity. 

Where does Nature end? There where free- 
dom begins. It is precisely this end that I seek. 
I follow after miracles as others follow after the 
science which abolishes miracles. He who 
makes an end of miracles is not my friend. 

The true and the good resemble gold. Gold 
seldom appears obvious and solid, but it per- 
vades invisibly the bodies that contain it. 

The French rulers have too high an opinion 
of nian's powers, and too low an opinion of his 
destination, which makes a strange, repulsive 
contrast. 

No tradition assigns a beginning to justice, 
but only to injustice. Before the silver, the 
brazen, the iron age, there was a golden ; man 
was at peace with hiinself. All governments 
are, to a certain extent, a treaty with the De- 
vil. 

We may have a perfect insight as to how it 
has come to pass, that in the same field where, 
a thousand years ago, justice was sown, nothing 
now springs from the same seed but tares, 
without being able, by means of this insight, to 
help the evil. What is to be done iu this ne- 
cessity? Burke's answer to this question is — 
" What necessity commands.' 

It is an indispensable condition of a morality 
that is to be efficient, to believe in a higher 
order of things, of which the counnoii and visi- 
ble is an lieterogeneous part, that must assimi- 
late itself to the higher. Both together must 
constitute but one kingdom, but one creation. 
2c 



Are not understanding and reason organs of 
one and the same being? Assuredly. By means 
of the one the created, — Nature or the creature, 
— is unfolded to man ; by means of the other, 
the Creator. In the consciousness of man that 
he is creature, but God's creature, undersianil- 
ing and reason are connected together in him. 
Hmnanity is destroyed by the separation of the 
one from the other. Without religion, man be- 
comes a beast; without humanity, a visionary. 

A want which can attain to its satisfaction, 
that is, to a feeling of the good, is no evil, but a 
stimulus which quickens. As the wants of a 
being, so is the being itself, and the worth of 
its life. 

To philosophize is to recollect ourselves on 
all sides. We defend ourselves against the 
contradiction which threatens to destroy the 
unity of our consciousness, (our personality), 
which threatens to kill us. He who woidd re- 
collect himself outside of sense, outside of all 
feeling, of all conception, by mere thinking as 
such, becomes mad. 

Yesterday I despatched my answer to Kant, 
wherein I expressed my conviction that even 
the knowledge of our ignorance is patch-work. 
Three days I had plagued myself with this let- 
ter. I was tired, out of humour. My sisters 
came and begged me to read them something. 
They were not well, and I could not refuse their 
request. I asked, what? A portion of StoU- 
berg's Sophocles? Without inward vocation or 
predilection I began to read the first piece in the 
second volume, the Ajax. And yet i scarce re- 
member, in all my life, to have been so taken, 
so carried away Ijy any reading, so wondrously 
filled with thoughts and feelings. 

You know how strange and disagreeable the 
subject of this piece. Ajax sitting upon the 
slaughtered cattle presents a half-sickening, half- 
repellent spectacle. Minerva, who first appears, 
godde^s of wisdom as she is, says many insipid 
things; and yet what an impression she imme- 
diately makes in her second dialogue with Ulys- 
ses, after Ajax has appeared in his madness! 
The insipid babbler becomes a celestial being 
the moment she says: 

"Odysseus, seest thou now how great the power 
Is of tlie Gods ] Was e'er a wiser man 
I'liari he 1 ur furnished more for noble deeds?" 

And Ulysses answers : 

*' More than at him, I look upon myself 
And see that we. we mnrtds, all who live 
Are visionary forms and shadows." 

And then the Chorus and Tekmessa, and 
Ajax himself! 

When, in connection with this sublime poem, 
we hapjien to think of the decent, probable, re- 
gular, dramas of the French, why are we seized 
with such disgust at those products of art wnich 
lay claim to faultlessnesson the score of reason' 
Why does their art so fall to the ground before 
19 



218 



JACOBI. 



the art of the Greeks? It falls to the ground 
Decause the Greek is a true poet, because he is 
a Seer. " Thou art the mouth of Truth," we say 
to the Greek. "Thou givest to us again that 
which halh appeared to thyself.'' The other has 
only uncertain traditions, and gives us, out of 
them, only what seems to him probable. 

Fulness of human sense! Yes! thou art ex- 
alted far above thine inflated substitute, abstrac- 
tion ! Alas for the pure cognition which is only 
skin and skeleton, without bowels, without soul ! 
"Who knoweth the things of a man save the 
spirit of man which is in him ?" Fountain of 
all certainty! thou art and I am! And I begin 
to doubt that I am, when I listen to yon, ye law- 
givers of reason! ye creators of a pure philoso- 
phy! 

It belongs to the nature of man not to be able 
to imagine an end, that is, not to be able to ima- 
gine a genuine whole. Because he cannot ima- 
gine an end, he deludes himself with the notion 
that he can imagine the infinite, as something 
positive. 

The respect for science, as such, is entirely 
the same with that which men have for pro- 
perty, and for that which secures to them its 
possession. Science incorporates the true, gives 
it a visible, serviceable body which eats and 
drinks, and renders services in return. Then, 
the living and philosophical in the sciences gra- 
dually dies out ; the spirit which acquired them 
has vanished; the gatherer is followed by a 
spendthrift. 

The natural striving of man to arrive at a 
perfect understanding of himself has much ana- 
logy with the wish to be as happy, according to 
the vulgar expression, "as a king;" that is, to 
be in possession of all the means of satisfying 
one's appetites and passions. The thoughtless 
dream of a condition in which there is nothing 
but joy and delight. But man can thrive only 
in want, in labour, and in dangers. And as to 
his mind, if that is to prosper, it must be con- 
scjOus of a constant progress from one degree 
of clearness to another. 

From the sensuous, however we may refine 
it we caimot derive that which must be appre- 
hended immediately by the spirit. When the 
process of abstraction from the sensuous is com- 
plete there remains = 0, and not the absolute, 
fan-, and good, and true. Ihereforewe know 
nothing of an absolute fair and good and true, 
and nothing of God unless we possess a higher 
faculty Jbr the perception of truth than the senses 
and the thiidiing power. 

All my convictions rest on the single one of 
die liberty of man. This idea is peculiar to 
me, and distinguishes my philosophy (if men 
choose to honour a system of faith with that 
name,) from all that have preceded it. 



It is much more dangerous, and a much 
greater evil to abrogate conscience with law 
and letter, than the reverse. 

If we must be the victims either of feelings 
and inclinations, or of words and death, I would 
much sooner make up my mind to the former. 

An elevation above sensual appetites and in- 
clinations, witliout a whither, (a definite direc- 
tion,) is an empty elevation; and a blind law 
is no better than a blind impulse. It is with 
morality as it is with the self-love of man; 
witiiout given impulses, incliriations, and pas- 
sions, they can neither of them become appa- 
rent, or have an application. 

"Is there a progress of humanity in the good 
and in light?' If by good and light we under- 
stand what the sublimest philosophers of anti- 
quity, Pythagoras and Plato, understood by these 
terms, then it is my decided opinion that there 
is no such progress of humanity. I even main- 
tain that these men would not have deserved 
the name of divine, and that they must have 
had a very imperfect knowledge of their busi- 
ness, if they supposed that by means of civil 
institutions, of modes of education, by means 
of scholastic exercise and practice, they could 
establish a kind of learning by rote of the in- 
ternal;* that they could gently and gradually, by 
means of deep-planned mechanism, make wis- 
dom and virtue, and their daughter, liberty, the 
habit of a nation, nay, of the world ; so that 
men should thenceforth not only be able to pre- 
fer, but should actually and universally prefer 
that happiness whiidi is a property of the per- 
son, a quality of the miml, to that which depends 
on external things, and is a mere state of sen- 
sual enjoyment. Folly, vice, servitude, and, 
with the last, every evil, may be introduced; 
not virtue and liberty. Health is not contagious 
like the plague and the yellow fever. Neither 
can it be elaborated by art, still less created; 
for it is original and comes from the mother's 
womb, firmer or weaker, more perfect or less 
perfect. 

If reason possessed power, says a profound 
writer, as she possesses authority, justice and 
peace would everywhere rule. But now, with 
her dwells only right; elsewhere, with sensual 
appetite, desire, passion, strength. 

On account of this disproportion, mankind 
have divided themselves into two parties. 'J'he 
one — the earliest in its origin — cast about for 
means to bring force on the side of right. They 
invented wisely and also experimented success- 
fully, but never with permanent results. All 
their undertakings proved failures, more or less, 
in the end, and dispersion ensued. But unde- 
stroyed and indestructible, — however frequently 

* Auswendig lernen des iiiwendigen: literally, an ex 
ternal learning of the internal. 



JACOBI. 



219 



and strangely they have been scattered and may 
be again in time to come, — they steadfastly per- 
severe and will persevere in their intent. No 
one, not even from their own midst, knows their 
present strengtli or weakness. 

Tlie otljer party, likewise dissatisfied with 
this twofoUl dominion in inan, and desirous of 
putting an end to the schism. — after mature 
consideration of the hindrances which had 
caused the shipwreck of all the undertakings of 
the former, — hit upon the thought of an entirely 
opposite method. In.^teail of endeavouring to 
bring over force to the side of the right, they 
sought to bring over right to the side of force. 
They sought not to make the rational strong, 
but to make the strong ratiotjal. They accused 
the former system of hostility to Nature, of aim- 
ing at op|)ression and tyrannous despotism. On 
the other hand, they boasted tliat their own was 
in harmony with Nature, and, at the same time, 
did not conflict with Reason ; that it only de- 
sired a good understanding between the two. 
Their plan was this. The whole gigantic pro- 
geny of sense, the lusts and ^^assions shoidd 
quietly come together, and consult among them- 
selves what was best. The best was union. 
But, it was agreed, they would never be able to 
realize this union until they had put an end to 
the controversy with Reason, who dwelt toge- 
tlier with them in their common country, the 
human mirid. Experience had shou n that she 
was never to be quite overpowered and entirely 
cast out. This, in fact, was no misfortune, since 
the senses could so easily make peace with 
Reason and then employ her to their own ad- 
vantage, nay, tnake her entirely their own. The 
way to do this, was the establishment of a com- 
munity, the |)lan of which might, without liesi- 
taiion, be left to Reason to draw up. For, it 
was argued. Reason desires justice only for the 
sake of tlie common good, in other words, she 
desires only that each one should have his own ; 
the individual she does not regard nor care for. 
Neither does she regard herself; — that is the 
property or vice only of that which is an indi- 
vidual, a person, a self. Reason has nothing of 
this sort, nor indeed, of genuine reality. There- 
fore, it was agreed, they could boldly rely on 
the impartiality of Reason, and not only confide 
to her, unconilitionally, the organization of the 
commonweal to be established in connection 
with her, but even allot to her tlie dignity of the 
chief magistracy therein ; — an office like the royiil 
one in Sparta. Afi Epiiorate* might be esta- 
blished in connection therewith, and committed 
to the jurisdiction of the understanding. 1 he 
people had elected Reason and placed her over 
them, sim[)!y and solely that she should main- 
tain order and liarmony in their midst; she be- 
longed to the commonweal, not the common- 
weal to her; the collective will was the true 

* The office nf thp Ephori. Ei^opoi— a department nf the 
Sunrlari GuviTnriient. The word sigiiitics properly, in- 
spectors, from cm and opaio. Tr. 



sovereign from whom Reason derived her royal 
title and tlie authority connected with it, merely 
as a fief. Should she ever forget this, assume 
independent powers, and attempt to exalt her 
nominal authority above the true, then the 
Ephorate must immediately come to the rescue 
and resist such attempt. They could place the 
utmost reliance on the watchfulness of the un- 
derstanding, in this matter, because the under- 
standing is thoroughly and altogether a man of 
the people. 

The two systems which are here presented 
may be compared, — as formerly the systems of 
Idealism and Realisin were compared, — with 
the two opposite astronomical systems of Pto- 
lemy and Copernicus. Only the order of time, 
in this case, must be reversed ; the latter must 
be considered as the elder, the former as the 
younger. 

What history is not richer — does not contain 
far more than they by whom it is enacted, the 
present witnesses, see, experience and know ? 
What mortal understandeth his way? 

"Tons les gouts sont pour moi respectable," 
says Voltaire in a frivolous poem. I can adopt 
that saying of his, as a philosopher, and only 
require that every one should confess his taste 
clearly and distinctly. There are but two phi- 
losophies essentially distinct from each other. 
I will call them Platonism and Spinozism. Be- 
tween these two spirits we may choose ; that is, 
we may be taken with the one or the other, so 
that we shall attach ourselves to that alone, and 
be forced to regard that alone as the spirit of 
truth. It is the whole disposition of the man 
that must decide here. It is impossible to divide 
the heart between tlie two, still more impossible 
to unite them. Where there is the appearance 
of the latter, there language deceives, there is 
double-tongued ness. 

Every man has some kind of religion ; that is, 
a supreme truth by which he measures all his 
judgments, — a supreme will by wiiich he mea- 
sures all his endeavours; — these every one has 
who is at one with himself, who is everywhere 
decidedly the same. But the worth of such a 
religion, and the honour due to it, and to him 
who has become one with it, cannot be deter- 
mined by its amount. Its quality alone decides 
and gives to one conviction, to one love or 
friendship, a higher value than to another. 

At bottom every religion is anti-christian 
which makes the form the thing, the letter the 
substance. Such a materialistic religion, in or- 
der to be at all consistent, ought to maintain a 
material infallibility. * • * * * 

There are but two religions, Christianity and 
paganism, tlie worship of God and idolatry. 
A third between these two is not possible 
Where idolatry ends, there Christianitv begins, 



220 



JACOBI. 



ami where idolatry begins, there Christianity 
ends. Tims the apparent contradiction is done 
away between the two propositions; — "Whoso 
is not against ine is for me;" and " wlioso is 
not for ine is against me." 

As all men are, by nature, liars, so all men 
are also, by nature, idolaters, — drawn to the 
visible and averse from the invisihie. Hamann 
called the body the first-born, because God first 
made a clod of earth, and then breathed into it 
a hreatli of life. The formation of tlie earth- 
clod and the spirit are both of God, but only the 
spirit is from God ; and only on account of the 
spirit is man said to be made after the likeness 
of God. 

Since man cannot do without the letter, — 
inia<;es and parables, — no more than he can 
di.-pense with time, which is incidental to the 
finiie, althoutjh both shall cease, I honour the 
letter, so long as there is a breath of life in it, 
for that breath's sake. 



LEARNED SOCIETIES—THEIR SPIRIT 
AND AIM. 

A DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED AT THE PUDLIC RE-OPENING OF THE 
ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT MUENCHEN. 1H07. 

"E pur si move." — Gahlei. 

The most ancient of those academies which 
have become celebrated in Europe have grown 
out of voluntary associations of learned men, 
mutually attracted to each other by an equal 
desire lor knowledge. The growth of science, 
the promotion of it by reciprocal aid, by col- 
lective diligence, by friendly emulation, was the 
design of their union. 

So pure and vigorous a beginning could not 
but be attended with success. It surpassed 
every expectation; it became famous; it threw 
an astounding lustre far into the distance. 

This lustre stimulated and awakened the de- 
sire of imitation. It was attempted to produce 
the like, to elaborate by artificial means what is 
least capable of beings so elaborated, the spirit 
of inquiry, particularly of invention, without 
that holy flame which kindles the soul and 
causes it to strive with ardour, to struggle un- 
ceasijigly for the knowledge of the truth, for 
virtue, lor science and wisdom, as for ultimate 
and supreme ends which will not suffer them- 
selves to be subordinated to any other. The 
love of imitation had other aims which were 
higher in its estimation, to which science and 
wisdom were to be subservient, and for whose 
sake alone they were to exist. This was to 
change wisdom into folly, to rob science of its 
proi)er life, to sever it from its ovin in order to 
,«iake it proiluce from a foreign root such fruits 
as were desired. 

The necessary consequence ensued. Never- 
theless, imitation succeeded here and there in 



producing a sufficient illusion. Occasionally 
even, something praiseworthy was brought to 
pass; but no genuine tree of knowledge and of 
life. The results produced were plants resem- 
bling the chemical silver tree or tree of Diana; 
wonderful enough and often right pleasant to 
behold; only that interior life and the power 
of propagation were wanting. 

The Bavarian Academy of Sciences, although 
one of the later born, in fact, the youngest of all, 
may boast an equality with those ancient ones 
as it regards the purity of its origin. It was 
founded in silence by two rtoble men, von Lin- 
brun and Lori. These men conceived the pur- 
pose of establishing in Miinchen a learned so- 
ciety which shoidd ilraw to itself the best heads, 
not only in Bavaria, but in all South Gerinany. 
They had been iinpelled to this enterprise by 
serious considerations of the disproportion in 
the state of the sciences, the arts and intellec- 
tual culture generally, between North and South 
Germany, and of the consequences flowing from 
the difference which was manil'ested here. 
They had observed how strikingly the progress 
of the one and the stationary character of the 
other were depicted in the whole social condi- 
tion of the nations inhabiting the one and the 
other region ; and how they were every day 
becoming more visible and more sensible. The 
nature of this difference may be found describeil 
with fidelity and truth by Loreng Westenrieder 
in tlie first part of the history of the Bavarian 
Academy of Sciences, pp. 3 — 9. * * » • 

The abovementioned excellent men, Linbrun 
and Lori, confided the noble wish, which made 
their own breast too narrow for them, to a few 
friends who gave their assent and united them- 
selves with them. The first meeting was held in 
the house of Herr von Linbrun, Oct. 12ih, 1708. 

The undertaking of these k^ men, banded 
together for the noblest purposes, was concealed 
at first with the greatest care. Nor did they 
venture to appear openly until, proceeding with 
the utmost caution, they had associated with 
themselves men of distinguished reputation or 
of great authority, in their own country and 
elsewhere. They knew what hindrances would 
even now interfere with the fulfilment of their 
wish to convert their enterprise into a public 
institution, and they overcame them by pru- 
dence. They carefully abstained from giving 
utterance to their higher aims, and only directed 
attention to those advantages of such an institu- 
tion, by which even vidgar souls may be im- 
pressed and won. " They abstained " — it is ver- 
bally recorded in the history of the Bavarian 
Academy of Sciences — "from the mention of 
those things against which difficulties and ob- 
jections might be raised, and spoke only of the 
use and the reputation of the thing." 

Such a servile form has the best, the highest 
and the most venerable ever and everywhere 
been forced to assume, in order to gain admis 
sioii and to pass for something in civi! society 
Ignorance, says Fontenelle, in Iiis immoriai 



JACOBI. 



221 



history of the Parisian Academy of Sciences, 
affects to regard as useless tliat of wliich it has 
no knowledge. It revenges itself in this way. 
It says: 'Have we not our own moon to illu- 
mine our own nights? Of what use is it to 
know that the planet Jupiter has four? To 
what purpose so many observations, so many 
laborious calculations to determine their course 
with precision ? We sliall see none the clearer 
for them; and Nature, who placed these little 
stars so far from our eyes, appears not to have 
made them for us.'* And yet those four moons 
of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye, have been 
of far greater use to us than our own moon which 
shines so brightly. Only since our acquaintance 
with them have Geographyand Navigation been 
enabled to make important advances; incom- 
parably better maps and charts have been pro- 
duced ; and, by means of the latter especially, the 
lives of innumerable seamen have been saved. 

This example of the satellites of Jupiter is 
only one out of many which might be adduced, 
of the use of astronomical labours, and in jus- 
tification of the great outlays of every kind 
which this science demands. But the mass of 
the high and low know nothing of the satellites 
of Jupiter; at the utmost, they have a dim 
and confused knowledge of them. Still less do 
they know of the connection of these satellites 
with Navigation. In fact, they have scarce 
heard the report of the perfection to which that 
science has arrived, within a short time. 

Foiitenelle then adds a great number of ex- 
amples in illustration of *he advantages which 
the diligence of a few men, devoted to the 
sciences, has conferred upon all classes of 
human society. Men enjoy these really count- 
less advantages without considering their origin, 
without considering the way by which they 
have reached us. No one considers how much 
there was to be invented here; and few per- 
haps are competent even to imagine the powers 
of mind which must have been brought into 
action, in each one of these inventions, in order 
to origirjate or to complete them. But it ought 
to be remembered, that the innumerable pro- 
cesses which we now universally per/brin with 
unthinking facility, coidd not be performed in 
this way, unless thought, — unless the most stre- 
nuous etforts of reflection, — had preceded them. 
This antecedent living agency now manifests 
itself, embodied in serviceable manipulations, 
ill mere acquired mechanical facilities, in life- 
less instruments and machines. With these 
latter the spirit created for itself — produced 
with free activity out of senseless matter, — un- 
feeling, dinnb and deaf menials, the most per- 
fect, because they are entirely destitute of voli- 
tion, and never fail nor err. Thus, every work- 
shop of mechanics and artificers announces to 

• More rtriiarkable still, is another similar example. A 
Pari.--ian lady of rank un<ler8tooil perfectly the use of the 
moon, '• because it illumines our nights." But why the 
»un shotilil appear in the heavens, in broad daylight, she 
t'Mild no' rompreheiid» 



him that gives heed, a mind that has become 
invisible, which here wrought and bequeathed, 
and departed after it had fulfilled its task: an- 
nounces it witiiout words ; silently represents 
that infinitely self-multiplying power of inven- 
tion, which must throw every one, who is capa- 
ble of apprehending what is admirable, into 
thoughtful astonishment. 

Nevertheless, however exalted beyond con- 
tradiction the truth just propounded, however 
unquestionable the manifold use which the hu- 
man race has derived for the ordinary pur- 
poses of life from the progress of science, it is 
equally certain and undeniable, on the other 
hand, that science in its origin and progress 
had, immediately in view, not that use, but 
solely and singly itself and its own extension. 
The impulse which seeks knowledge and in- 
sight has this in common with the impulse which 
seeks enjoyment, happiness, the sustenance of 
life: that it seeks its object simply for the object's 
sake, as ultimate end, not as means to other 
ends. It springs directly from the spirit of man; 
it is one of its peculiar powers and virtues, 
similar to that other sacred power of our spirit 
which produces those human qualities which 
we call virtuous qualities, and — in consideration 
of their immediate origin — virtues, such as cou- 
rage, magnanimity, justice, general benevolence. 

With respect to life and happiness, .no one 
doubts that these are desired for their own 
sakes, and he who should propose the question, 
what are they good for, would only provoke 
our laughter. Of science, on the other hand, 
and of virtue, it is almost universally assumed, 
that they have a reason, a use, an end, beyond 
themselves, by which they first become desira- 
ble. They are supposed to have been arbitra- 
rily invented to serve an arbitrary purpose. 
That virtue and knowledge belong to the being 
of man, that they unfold themselves necessa- 
rily out of that being, and with it, like language, 
without which men are not and never were; 
that where virtue, knowledge, and their begin- 
ning, the significant word, the intelligible speech, 
should be wanting, there all humanity would be 
also wanting, and the mere animal present it- 
self instead; this the vulgar souls, who know 
only wants of the body, and none of the spirit, 
will never comprehend. These men, all earth, 
unconscious of any immediate instinct, except 
that which man has in common with the brute, 
the instinct of desire, of pleasure, of sensual 
enjoyment, have ever the objects of that instinct 
alone and unchangeably in view, as last and 
highest ends. Only that appears to them real, 
approved, and good, in respect to man, which is 
found substantiated in the sounder animal, and 
may be demonstrated from that, as the only re- 
vealer of unadulterated, pure truth. Wliatso 
ever is more than that, is, to them, of evil. Still, 
they tolerate science, and even acknowledge 
that it deserves the support and encouragement 
of the State, provided it conforms itself to the 
State, and does not aspire beyond the state of 
19 » 



222 



JACOBl. 



lionda^e for which it was born. Any other 
science, that which would be an end nnto itself, 
and assumes to be free-born, they will not ac- 
knowledge. They despise the fool, hate her, 
and persecute her for her prides sake. No effort 
of tlie mind, no pursuit, shall be cherished, pro- 
moted, and rewarded, which cannot demonstrate 
its immediate utility in relation to ordinary life. 
Every science, and every tine art, must carry on, 
or at least assist in carrying on, some honest 
liandicraft, and derive all its worth and all its 
dignity from its aptitude for this handicraft, or 
for some manual use. Each must declare wliat 
guild or what trade it belongs to, and be able 
also to demonstrate that belonging. They main- 
tain tliat every science or art which cannot 
comi^ly with this requisi ion ought to be banished 
from the country as a breadless art. Not to be- 
long to the productive class, which is otherwise 
considered as a mark of nobility, is thought to 
render science ignoble, and to fix upon her the 
reproach of idleness. 

These principles and demands of the com- 
mon mind must appear ridiculous, and, in the 
highest degree, absurd to tliose who are at 
all acquainted with the history of liinnan in- 
ventions, even supposing they were not other- 
wise disinclined to the common way of thinking 
on this subject. The history of inventions proves 
that the most important and the most useful of 
them have been a secondary and unexpected 
result of those etlbrts of mind from which this 
precise gain could nowise have been anticipated. 
"When, in the seventeenth century, the greatest 
geometricians employed themselves in investi- 
gating the nature of a new curve, which they 
called the cycloid, they had no other interest in 
that investigation than that of mere speculation 
and the ambition of discovering theorems, each 
more difficult than the former. None of these 
men had the most distant idea that they were 
exerting themselves for the general good. But 
afteiward, when the nature of the cycloid had 
been thoroughly ascertained, it was found that, 
by means of this knowledge, the greatest possi- 
ble perfection could be given to the pendulum, 
and the utmost precision introduced into the 
measurement of time.'* 

It would be superfluous to accumulate in- 
stances of this sort, since it lies in the nature of 
the thing, that the practical application must 
needs be subsequent to the scientific discovery. 
Every useful invention has compounded itself, 
as It were, out of several discoveries, observa- 
tions, propositions, which had no probable rela- 
tion to each otlier, which, in point of time, 
M-ere often far distant from each other, and 
whicti belonged to men of the most different 
characters, views, and pursuits. "The conflu- 
ence of several truths," remarks tlie sagacious 
Fontenelle, "even of the most abstract, almost 
always produces a useful application, which 
jould not have been anticipated, because the 



* Prif. de V'.unt. dc Tacademie Royale de sciences. 



feombination was necessary to produce it. The 
ancients were acquainted with the magnet, but 
they had observed only its power of attracting 
iron. It needed but one experience more, and 
they would have discovered its polar tenden- 
cies, and the inestimable prize of the compass 
would have been theirs. Had they devoted a 
little more time and attention to a curiosity ap- 
parently useless and unprofitable, the hidden 
utility would have revealed itself to them. No 
human imagination was competent to presup- 
pose the invention of the telescope and the mi- 
croscope, with v/hich a new eye was given to 
man for two worlds at once, the sublime world 
of the immeasurably great, and the still more 
wonderful one, it may be, of the immeasurably 
little. It was necessary that mathematics should 
enrich itself through a series of centuries with 
ever greater discoveries, before a Johannes Kep- 
ler could appear with his dioptrics, and bring 
the invention of the astronomical sight-instru- 
ment to light." 

The result of all these considerations is, that 
governments, in the forinal institution of learned 
societies, may indeed have respect to the benefits 
which such societies will confer on the common 
weal, and may make those benefits their aim, but 
never, on that account, should thus make utility 
a condition of science, and demand that this shall 
be its oidy object. A government which sliould 
do this would betray a want of insight into the 
nature of science, and would require the im- 
possible. Still more incompatible with the na- 
ture of science would be the attempt to make 
it, any where, national or even provincial. There 
may be economical societies of this kind, which 
should, in each case, derive their names from 
the material want which led to their institution ; 
fruit-growing, wood-saving, coal or turf-finding, 
bog-draining societies. But academies of sciences, 
which are merely national, or provincial, or 
economical, there cannot be. 

It is by no means intended, however, in wha' 
has now been said, that scientific men, who feel 
a special impulse to employ themselves with 
objects of immediate utility, and to apply their 
scientific acquirements to those objects, like Du- 
hamel du Monceau, Daubenton, and others, men 
who have rendered equal services to science 
and to their country, that such men should be 
excluded from an acadeiny of sciences, or that, 
as members of such an academy, they should 
not hand in essays on national and provincial 
objects, and lay them before the society for ex- 
amination. How many invaluable disquisitions 
of this kind are found in the annals of the 
French and other academies of sciences! But 
such productions should ever bear on their face 
the stamp of science; they should spring frot». 
the spirit of science, and be filled with it. 

Even Colbert, when he founded the academy 
of sciences at Paris, more than a hundred year) 
ago, planted himself on that higher stand iiomt, 
from which the immediate dignity of science is 
recognised in its whole "xtent, together with its 



JACOEI. 



'293 



indirect worth, I mean its utility, and :t would 
be disreputable now to choose a lower one. 
" Tlie penetrating mind of Colbert,'' says a judi- 
cious modern historian, "did not fail to perceive 
the close connection wliich exists between the 
sciences and the arts, and between the fine arts 
and the mechanical. He felt tlie necessity of 
perfectini; the theories of matliemalics, of astro- 
nomy, and of physics, in order to effect a mani- 
fold ap|)lication of tlieir principles. He had 
perceived that the progress of the mechanical 
arts presupposes the development of good taste, 
and that taste requires models and patterns for 
comparison. The academies of painting, of 
sculpture, of architecture, and of music, sprung 
up and yielded a flattering compensation to the 
masters of art, encouragement to the pupils, to 
all the citizens of the State instruction and ex- 
amples. The beautiful had its temple, its ser- 
vice, its priests, as Truth had hers. Colbert's 
adnnuistration was wise. He had no occasion 
to fear the progress and diffusion of right views. 
Far from shumiing men of learning and intel- 
lect, he attracted, he gathered them around him; 
he freed them from the cares of subsistence. 
Even foreigners experienced his favour, and 
many were first made known to their own 
country by the distinction so unexpectedly ac- 
corded to them by France."* 

Although France, at the time when the 
academy exclusively devoted to mathematical 
and physical science was established, could 
exhibit a. considerable number of important 
men who were qualified to come forward as 
members of this society and to give it authority, 
yet Colbert spared no expense in drawing to 
Paris learned men of otlier countries who might 
give to the new Institute still greater strength 
and splendour. Roiner-was summoned from 
Denmark, Cassini from Italy, Huyghens from 
Holland. Attracted by huge emoluments they 
exchanged their native country for France. 
Other distinguished men in all parts of Europe 
were induced to take part in the new Institute, 
at least as foreign members. Others still, at 
home and abroad, who could not enter as fel- 
low-labourers in any of the departments of the 
Academy of Sciences at Paris, but who other- 
wise |)0ssessed acknowledged merit and had 
made themselves a name as men of learning, 
received pensions, distinctions, gifts, without 
any requisition being made of them in return. 
Everywhere appearetl the lofty ambition of the 
minister and of his king, — who in many respects 
was really and truly great-minded, — to manifest 
a wise disinterestedness and to make it promi- 
nent. They wished to encourage and reward, 
and in doing this, they attained also all those 
ither ends, the pursuit of which, by any other 
method, will always be a vain undertaking. 

A wise Government, and one of large views, 
establishes academies to effect what can only 

* Tabl<;aii ries revolutions du t-ysten»e politique de 
I'Europe dppuis la fln du XV. Siecle par Fredtric Aiicil- 
loii.— T. iv. p. 115, 204. 



be effected by means of such institution."!, — a 
collective force which shall accomplish and 
produce what disconnected individual powers 
although of the greatest possible efficacy ill 
themselves, would never be able to accomplish 
and produce. To this end it collects together a 
number of learned and judicious men thorough- 
ly versed in their respective arts; unites them 
in an association, and provides this association 
with all the aids, stores, and instrumems, 
which are necessary for their different piu-suits. 
Through the union of the members of such a 
society in one place, the most rapid and mani- 
fold connnunication is rendered possible among 
them ; and to make this communication more cer- 
tain, regular meetings are appointed. Sciences, 
which thought themselves strangers to each 
other, now learn their near and nearer relations ; 
onesidedness disappears; reciprocal action, mu- 
tual influence,and a scientific common-spirit arise. 

Where the seat of a learned society of this 
description is at the same time the seat of go- 
vernment and the metropolis of the land, the 
advantages are still greater. Scientific intuition 
and the insight of experience impart themselves 
mutually, they interpenetrate each other; light 
gains new life, life new light; every sphere of 
vision is enlarged, every faculty is enhanced. 

Even men of the world in the distinctive 
sense of that phrase, I mean those who claim 
to be exclusively such, who pride themselves 
thereon, as the highest boast, — even they are 
singly seized, changed and ennobled by instruc- 
tion. They feel that they must relax some- 
thing of the law of pure ignorance and solemn 
idleness, the strict and assiduous observance of 
which converts them into the most extraordi- 
nary kind of pedants; since the prerogative- 
maxim, "the more worthless the more worthy" dies 
of its own meaning, the moment it is distinctly 
pronounced. Be it that this maxim refuses to 
be so expressed and understood, let it seek 
palliation and pretexts, it only renders itself 
more hateful by its pains; it only accelerates 
its own downfal ; in which downfal its whole 
aristocratic connection are inevitably involved. 

To this connection belong especially the fol- 
lowing assertions : 

The assertion, that a living, far-reaching in- 
tuition, an intuition which affects the grea.t, the 
universal, is incompatible with thorough know- 
ledge and perfectly accurate conceptions, — al- 
together incompatible with true and genuine 
learning and science; on the contrary, that it is 
compatible only with very general and loose 
sketches of the understanding drawn from ap- 
pearances alone ; 

The assertion, that you must guard against 
principles, because principles lead to systems, 
and all systems are false; 

The assertion, that only the old method (rou- 
tine) which arrogates to itsejf the honoured 
title of experience, guides in the right jiath, and 
that in order not to stray from that path, it is 
necessary to follow that guide -n all cases 



224 



JACOBI. 



blindly, and tnat you must never use your own 

eyes for the sake of finding it; 

Tlie twin assertion, that you must distrust 
reason whic:h only hatches mistaken theories, 
and always hold by the positive ; by this posi- 
tive we are to understand either a tradition 
which has become senseless and absurd by the 
change of times, or new and purely arbitrary 
arrangements ;* 

Finally, the assertion, which expresses the 
whole at once, that theoretical shallowness is the 
condition of practical excellence. 

Not so (lid the truly great men of the world, 
of ancient, middle and modern times, contend. 
While earning the gratitude and admiration 
of posterity even more than of their contempo- 
raries, they remembered well the source from 
which those powers that enabled them to be- 
come so mighty, so prominent, and so glorious, 
had flowed; and not only did they continue to 
draw from it, but they sought to render it more 
accessible, and especially more copious, so that, 
by channels and pipes, it might be conducted in 
all directions, for the use of the multitude. They 
all loved the sciences, sought the intercourse of 
the learned, and, with their counsel and aid, ac- 
complished the most important and difficult un- 
dertakings. Several of these statesmen and men 
of the world were scientific men in the more 
proper and strict acceptation, — men of learning 
in the most comprehensive sense of the word. 

History names to us, as belonging to this latter 
class, among the ancient Greeks, a Charaondas, 
Archytas, Zaieucus; a Dion, Epaminondas, Pe- 
ricles and Xenophon ; a Phocion and Demetrius 
of Phalera, together with many others. The 
Macedonian Alexander himself may be reckoned 
in this enumeration ; after him, the first Ptole- 
mies and their competitors, the kings of Per- 
gamus. 

Among the Romans — (I omit the first kings, 
a Numa, Servius Tullius, Tarquinius Priscus; 
as, in speaking of the Greeks, I omitted their 
eldest philosophers, who were all rulers, kings, 
princes and statesmen) — history names to us, 
as active friends and promoters of science, in 
the time of the Republic, a Scipio, LB3lius, Lu- 
cnllns, Asinins Pollio (founder of the first public 
library at Rome), Cato, Brutus, Cicero, Julius 
Casar. 

The last in this catalogue, unquestionably the 
greatest statesman and military hero of them 
all, was also the most thorough scholar, the 
deepest and most conjprehensive thinker of 
them all ; although he himself gave Cicero the 
preference, in this respect, of whom he said that 
he had won for himself a crown of laurel which 
ivas more honourable than all triumphs; since 
■• was greater glory to have extended the limits 

* The warning of TertuMian, that tradition nailed Ood 
limself to the cross, has been elsewhere quoted by the 
author of this essay. This Father of the Church, on the 
same occasion, makes the important remark: Duniinus 
noster, Jesus Christus veritatem se non consueludinem 
rx)gnoiniiiavit. 



of Roman learning than to have extended the 
limits of the Roman territory. The emendation 
of the calendar, which he undertook with the 
Alexandrian astronomer, Sosigenes, his deter- 
mination and division of the year, which, with 
some corrections since added, obtains to this day 
and continues to bear the name of its author,^ 
these are sufficiently notorious. An ever-active 
military life, full of dangers and exploits, did 
not prevent him from writing philosophical, 
grammatical, and political works, besides his 
incomparable history of the Gallic war. It was 
because he could comprehend and penetrate 
with philosophic eye the connection of the ages, 
that he knew how to rule his own. He who 
wants the former, — the power of vision and the 
practice requisite for such insight, — will assur- 
edly never succeed in the latter. His age will 
overcome him and make him a laugliiiig-stock, 
with all his plans and labours. Not seeing 
what is, he will imagine himself to see with 
the greatest clearness what is not; everywhere 
he will see, as well in his fears as in his hopes 
and trusts. Such a one may have read all the 
books of history from the beginning of the world, 
and know them by heart; the great book of the 
world is still a closed book to him. He has 
never learned what occasioned the appearance 
of each particular crisis — the present among the 
rest — at that particular time when it appeared. 
This intuition which comprehends, at the same 
time, with a clear distinction, that which works 
by necessity and that which works with freedom, 
is the philosophic spirit itself, which, as some- 
thing divine, alone possesses genuine power. 
That which exists merely as a consequence of 
the times, works on necessarily and blindly ; its 
action is wholly earthly, and mere bondage. 
That which works witli freedom interrupts the 
times, changes them for centuries to come, en- 
lightens, ennobles, sets free. 

Obviously to the dullest sense, the history of 
Rome under the emperors illustrates the close 
connection between the welfare of science and 
the welfare of the State. Along the whole series 
of the CcEsars, we find the one and the other 
always on the same level, now> higher, now 
lower. Who does not know the history of the 
first four successors of Augustus'? Exactly in 
proportion as any one of these rulers showed 
himself more unworthy of the throne, more in- 
human, foolish, mad than another, were the 
sciences at Rome neglected, persecuted, banished 
the kingdom. Under the reign of Vespasian, 
beneficent as it was glorious, and under his suc- 
cessor Titus, art and science revived ; they were 
promoted, rewarded. Quinctilian and the elder 
Pliny illustrated this period. Then followed 
the cruel Domitian. This man hoped to be able, 
together with the sciences and arts, to abolish 
from the foundation whatever ennobles and ex- 
alts the human soul. Not without reason, had 
he succeeded! Men of lofty purpose were no 
more to be ; nothing venerable, says Tacitus, wal 
permitted anywhere to spring up and show it 



JACOBI. 



225 



self. But in vain did he oppress and banish all 
tlie friends of the good and the true. His threats 
and liis ravings were insufficient to prevent a 
miiltitiule of noble youths from wandering to 
Bithynia to behold the example and to hear the 
wistlom of Epictetus. Exile and the sword had 
still spared many, out of the midst of whom, 
after the fall of the tyrant, a Nerva and a Trajan 
came forth to heal the wounds of Humanity 
once more. 

After Domitian, five excellent rulers in turn 
ascended the throne. Then began, with Com- 
modus. a new series of monsters, who trode in 
the steps of the Tiberii and the Neros, who pur- 
• posely imitated, and in the variety of their vices 
and enormities, exceeded them ; and still adopt- 
ed the name of Antonine. — At length there ap- 
peared once more a man who was worthy to 
bear this great naiT)e ; and he refused to assuirie 
it. This was the youth Alexamler Severus. I 
should perish, said he, beneath the weight of a 
name which was borne by Pius and Marcus. 
Of the thirteen years' reign of this youth it has 
been justly said, that it might serve hoary heads 
for a model. With this great and good prince, 
the sun rose for the last time on the sciences 
and virtues and all good order. He died, and 
day returned not again to Rome. With the 
death of Philosophy (how could it be otherwise?) 
her daughter Jurisprudence also perished. Rea- 
son itself seemed to be extinguished. All was 
darkness and chaos. Barbarism triumphed in 
a twofold form, and, with l)lended savageness 
and degeneracy, produced a state of things never 
before experienced by man. 

But that which works only destructively has 
its limit where its action must cease, and give 
place to a new and opposite principle. — a cre- 
ative, a forming and reforining power. The 
destructive is not from the beginning, but the 
creative. This alone is eternal ; its forces wax 
not old. 

And so, ill this case also, after a long night a 
new dawn began to break. He who introduced 
it was the same great individual with whom 
the German empire begins. 

In his prosperous expedition against the Lon- 
gobardi in Italy, Charlemagne became acquaint- 
ed with the great spirit of antiquity, through its 
ruins: and his heart kindled for the revival of 
tlie sciences and arts throughout the whole ex- 
tent of his dominions. He called Alcuin and 
other learned men and lovers of science, to his 
court. These established there a peculiar asso- 
ciation, of which Charlemagne himself was a 
member, and gave it the name of Academy. 
Thus originated the first European learned So- 
ciety. Alcuin appears, for a long time, to have 
been its head. Among its members were num- 
bered, besides the emperor himself, and his fa- 
mous chancellor, Eginhard, — the archbishop of 
Mayence, Riculph ; farther, Theodulph, Angil- 
bert and others. The numerous progeny of this 
institute shed their lustre over the whole of the 
ninth century. 

2d 



That Charlemagne did not gather learned 
men around him merely because, with his fiery 
zeal for knowledge, their conversation must 
needs be dear to him ; but that the education 
of the whole people, the ennobling of the na- 
tional character, lay near his heart, is proved 
by the comprehensive provisions for public in- 
struction which he made, anil of which he is 
properly the founder. " With him,'' says Hege- 
wisch very justly, "began the first transition of 
the Germans from merely sensuous activity to 
activity of mind." 

If his plan were to succeed, it must begin with 
those who immediately surrounded the throne. 
On that account. Charlemagne founded the Aca- 
demy at his court, and, by the powerful influ- 
ence of his example, set in motion every mind 
that Nature had endowed with any degree of 
talent. No longer might the great look with 
contempt upon every species of intellectual em- 
ployment, even to reading and writing; unless 
they were willing to see those whom they de- 
spised for their want of birth, exalted above 
them and enjoying exclusive favour. By this 
means, Charlemagne, in a few years, procured 
for himself able assistants and zealous partici- 
pators in his lofty schemes. 

He then went a step farther and ordered 
schools to te established in connection with 
every convent and every cathedral; and, what 
was most important, they were so arranged as 
to be useful not only in the education of those 
who devoted themselves to the clerical office, 
but also in the education of the laity, especially 
those of rank. For the benefit of the common 
people, and of those country-priests who were 
not sufficiently instructed, he caused passages 
to be collected from the Fathers, translated into 
the German, and read by the priests to the peo- 
ple on Sundays and public festivals of the 
Church. 

From no one of the edicts of this truly great 
man, who wished not only to command but to 
rule, does his straight-forward and profound 
sense, his penetrating intellect, shine forth more 
conspicuously than from that just mentioned. 
He understood the direction which enlighten- 
ment must take, in order that it may be true 
and entirely sound. 

Unfortunately, this great Reformer was, at 
the same time, a conqueror, and thought it ne- 
cessary to convert obstinate pagans with the 
sword. Thus it came to pass, that he laboured 
against himself, and that what he planted did 
not attain sufficient strength. The schools which 
he established continued indeed; they even 
multiplied widi the spread of Christendom and 
the wants of a more numerous clergy which 
that spread occasioned. But now, in the supply 
of these wants, everything else was forgotten. 
The schools educated only priests, and imparted 
to them only, in a very imperfect manner, what 
was absolutely essential to their calling. The 
most profound and pernicious ignorance pre- 
vailed. Hierarchy and feudal anarchy reached 



226 



.TACOBI. 



the summit of their power. State and Church 
tan wild ; that epoch began which properly 
bears the name of the michlie ages. 

Towards the middle of this period, at the be- 
ginning of the thirteenth century, those four- 
limbed bodies for teaching and learning were 
formed, whose offspring to this day bear the 
barbarous name of Universities. With tliese, — 
with the unlimited power of scliolasticism, which 
then culminated, — with the Dominicans and 
Franciscans, — the eclipse of Reason became 
central. Knowledge of the languages and an- 
cient literature fell into utter contempt. Tliey 
who occupied themselves with these in any 
degree were derided as dullards. Neverthe- 
less, all this while, and through the whole ine- 
dieval period, instruction, by way of preparation, 
in the seven liberal arts, as they were called, 
continued; and to this institution — to the pre- 
paratory schools — it is chiefly, owing, that an- 
cient literature did not pass into entire oblivion, 
and that tlie possibility remained of a return to 
the beautiful, the great and the true which had 
vanished with the fore-world. 

It is very remarkable that though important 
progress was made in some departments of 
science during the middle ages — as in geometry 
and arithmetic with Gerbert, in natural science 
with Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon; — and 
even though other branches of human know- 
ledge unfolded themselves as new instincts, and 
introduced learned occupations even among the 
laity, — as jurisprudence and medicine which 
arose at the same time, toward the end of the 
eleventh century, — the former at Bologna, the 
latter at Salerno : — that notwithstanding these 
onward movements and the mighty impulse given 
to the thinking faculty by scholastic studies, the 
culture of reason, in its proper sense, did not arise 
or come to view. It arose first with the revival 
of ancient literature, and made mighty piogress 
when, in Italy, through the instrumentality of 
Cosmo de Medicis, that Platonic Academy, cele- 
brated not only in the atmalsof the learned, but 
in the history of the world, was formed, and, 
alinost contemporary with it, a similar learned 
society in Germany, under the patronage of 
John of Dalburg, which called itself the Rhe- 
nish, and which proved even more fruitful than 
that of Florence. 

Heeren remarks of the Florentine Institute, 
that "in an age when tlie institutions for the 
promotion of the sciences were all, as yet, under 
the control of the convents or of certain corpora- 
tions, Cosmo, in his Platonic Academy, exhi- 
bited the first model of a free union for scientific 
culture, of which the many subsequent institu- 
tions of this kind were imitations, bearing the 
name (academies) without, for the most part, 
inheriting their spirit.''* 

Of the Rhenish Institute, Hegewisoh says, 

after remarking that nothing of the kind had 

ever been seen in Germany before, except once 

at the court of Charlemagne : " so far as we are 

* GescU. des Studiums der classischen Lit. B. 11. par. 20. 



acquainted with this association, it was estab- 
lished precisely on that footing which seems 
most suitable for literary societies. The only 
bond which united the members, was mutual 
frien<isliip originating in a coinmon desire of 
being useful, and founded on reciprocal esteem. 
Among the members of this society were the 
Freiherr von Dalburg, afterward Bishop of 
Worms, the friend of Conrad Celtes, of Rudolph 
Agricola, of Johann Reuchlin, and of every 
man who, by virtue of distinguished talents, 
merited a place by the side of these; Wilibald 
Birkhairner. who, as a statesman, a soldier, and 
an elegant writer, was an extraordinary pheno- 
menon in Germany at that time ; together with 
many others distinguished partly by their rank 
and station, and partly by their learning and 
talents.''* 

What made the preceding centuries so dark 
and ever darker is sufficiently notorious, after 
the labours of so many excellent men devoted 
to the illustration of this subject. Ignorance and 
barbarism grew in proportion as hierarchy and 
feudalism reared their summits over against 
each other, and wrought together, without con- 
cert, in the destruction of all true civil power. 

This form of government could not reform it- 
self, (as, in fact, no one has yet done ; evil, in 
and of itself, can only grow worse continually;) 
it had to go down, and a new one to arise in its 
stead. This took place after a series of events, 
— crusades, and extended navigation, with all 
which they brought in their train, — had enlarged 
the sphere of vision of the nations, and given 
them the courage and the capacity to assert the 
feeling, common to all men, of self-propertyf 
against spiritual and personal tyranny. There 
arose a numerous class who, by virtue of their 
education, by their mode of living, their investi- 
gations and experiences, had attained to very 
different views of the world and man, and to 
quite other criteria of the know-worthy and the 
true, than those which the schools and the lec- 
ture-rooms of the time could furnish. 4 This 
class, or rather the taste for the good and the 
true, which had sprung from an understanding 
of the really useful, of that which benefits man- 
kind in general, gained the ascendancy. The 
native oppressors and devastators of Ausonia 
disappeared, and citizen-princes arose in their 
place. The age of the Medicis began, and, at 
Florence, that Academy mentioned above, which 
numbered among its most active members and 
promoters, a Duke Frederic of Urbino, and the 
celebrated King Mathias Corvinus of Hungary. 
The inspiration of Italy passed over to Ger- 
many, but with this diiference, that whereas 
there, citizen-scholars became princes, here, on 
the other hand, princes, and the companions of 
princes, became scholars, or, at least, friends, 

* Allgemeine Uebersicht der deutsch. Kulturgeschichte. 
S. 189. ISll. 192. 

t Selbst angehorigkeit—ihe belonging to one's self. 

X Geschichte der Kunste und Wissenschaften, v. Buhle. 
Abt. vi. B. 2. Absch. I. 



JACOBI. 



227 



lovers, and promoters of science. Who has not 
heard, in this connection, the names of Frederic 
the Wise of Saxony, of Philip of the Palatinate, 
of the Dukes Eberhard and Ulrich of Witten- 
berg, of Johannes von Dalburg, of Count Mo- 
ritz von Spiegelberg, of Rudolph von Lange, 
and their pupils, Hermann von Nuenar and 
Hermann von dam Busche, above all, of Ulrich 
von Hutten ■? 

Contemporary with these excellent men were 
the three patriarchs of German humanities,* 
Rudolph Agricola. Johann Reuclilin, and Conrad 
Celtes. The series of excellent writers who 
appeared in our country in the sixteenth cen- 
tury are to be regarded as the descendants of 
these. Yet they were not schoolmen, but only 
transient teachers, for a longer or shorter period, 
in universities, and belonged rather, especially 
the two former, to the great world and the life 
of affairs. To them chiefly it is to be ascribed, 
that classic literature, and with it philosophy 
and history, gained currency among the higher 
classes also, and were introduced at courts. On 
the other hand, they, for their part, received a 
kind of culture which is gained only by inter- 
course with the actual world, by participation 
in its atfairs, and by intimate acquaintance with 
the principal conductors of those affairs; l)y 
mutual influence, action and reaction. Neither 
science nor government can thrive without some 
reciprocal action of this sort. For how can ig- 
norance rule wisely, or even execute successfully 
its unwise plans'? How can it preserve its au- 
tlwrity, without which there is no true and en- 
during power in governments? And, on the 
other hand, how could science and wisdom 
make their dignity and their authority immedi- 
ately felt? make it that which proves itself, 
universally, the stronger? Neither is compati- 
ble with the nature of man. Therefore let 
strength cleave to wisdom and wisdom to 
strength. 

No one will question that the vast change 
which took place with the nations of Europe in 
the filteenth and sixteenth centuries, and which 
lias now been sketched with few strokes, was 
a change which ennobled humanity throughout 
this quarter of the globe, a real and general im- 
provement of the human condition. It may be 
asked, however, with respect to the farther pro- 
gress which has been making, for more than 
three centuries, in the same direction, or at least 
apparently in the same direction, whether this 
jirogress, the reality of which cannot be disputed, 
has been a progress toward a better and ever 
better? Consequently, whether humanity, in 
this age, may boast itself and rejoice to have 
drawn much nearer to the great end of the 
race, inward and outward jjeace, by universal 
and sure knowledge of the know-worthy, by 
universal and firm possession of the have- 

* Der drutsrhcn fiumanisten, i. e. of Ihope who. In 
Germany, cultivated tlie "liumunitics," as tlicy arc called. 



worthy, than our fathers were three hundred 
years ago ? 

This question, in order to be satisfactorily an- 
swered, must be put on higher grounds and in 
a form which concerns human nature in gen( ral. 
The problem would then read thus : Has the 
human race an attainable goal here on eaith? 
And, if there is such a goal, is the whole lace 
approaching it gradually, by different, and even 
apparently opposite paths? Or may single na- 
tions, at least, be moving toward it, by a con- 
tinued approximation, until somewhere, at last, 
it is reached? 

All the animal races have a goal which they 
may attain to. The tendency of each one is ful- 
filled, entirely satisfied ; it completes its course, 
lives out its life. Not so man. He is a yonder- 
sided being. His senses and his understanding 
he has in common with the brute. Reason be- 
longs to him alone. By means of that, he is 
made capable of a God and of virtue, of the 
beautiful, the good, the sublime. His instinct is 
religion. 

The faculties which man possesses in com- 
mon with the lower animals, he can use, culti- 
vate, and apply in an infinitely greater variety 
of ways than they; and, with his more cunning 
understanding, which, as mere understanding, 
he owes, after all, only to a richer and more ar- 
tificial organization, he may advance to such an 
extent that, compared with his speechless bro- 
thers, even on this stage, he shall be capable of 
seeming an essentially different being from 
them, living and free, endued with a creative 
spirit, a self-existing being. 

But let us not forget to notice that the pro- 
gress which man makes with the mere under- 
standing, which necessarily relates to objects of 
sense alone, is, to say the least, indifferent in re- 
spect to reason, i. e. the cultivation of genuine 
humanity, of that which, exclusively and alone, 
makes man man. That is to say, the progress 
may be, and, in the beginning, always is, of such 
a nature as to prepare the way for the influence 
of true humanity, as to accompany and to pro- 
mote it. But it may also acquire such a charac- 
ter,*and has hitherto, in the most diverse ways, 
always acquired it, as to produce a strikingly 
opposite eilect; as to destroy humanity, to sup- 
press reason, and crowd everything divine out 
of the human breast. 

The fact is but too evident, that a people may 
be admirably skilled in the arts, possess a mauy- 
sided culture, and even exhibit, outwardly, the 
most refined morals, and yet, at the same lime, 
be inwardly, in the highest degree, corrupt, 
deeply immoral, God-forgetting, on the whole, 
destitute of all virtue. 

Impressed with this truth, which the past and 
the present alike uuiversallyconfirm,that a culture 
relating to the sensual life alone, far from aiding 
humanity by its progress, oppresses and <'onupts 
it in its innermost being, and, in spite of all oiii 
refinement and affluence, makes us, in trutl., 
only worse and more miserable animal? — Jecfjly 



ass 



JACOBI. 



impressed with this truth, Rousseau wished, in 
order to get rid of our understanding which in- 
vents sciences, arts, and laws, to our undoing, 
tliat we might, renouncing our reason also, (in 
his zeal he forgot this part of our nature,) return 
to the forest, become four-footed and innocent 
once more, if tliis were only practicable now. 

This fiery orator, and all who, since hitn, 
have handled the same subject, themselves saw 
by the light of the understanding only; and 
so the solution of this Icnot must needs be an 
impossibility for them. If reason, they main- 
tained, is incapable of producing a 'lieaven-on- 
eartli,' she is deserving of no particular regard, 
at least, is not worth all the fuss which has 
hitherto been made about her. Others, who 
wished to preserve the authority of that wliich 
they denominated reason, contended that the 
heaven-on-earth would come, and that so soon 
as — no other should be talked of The unphi- 
losophical mocked at this, and, without waiting 
for that which reason might accomplisli at some 
future period, they made their heaven-on-earth, 
as well as they could, on the spot. The pliilo- 
sophers, in silence, did the saine. 

Tlie true M'Ord of this enigma, or its solution, 
is a yes and a no at the same time, — both equal 
in force, both equal in right, an<l of such a cha- 
racter, that the negation does not cancel the 
affirmation, nor the affirmation the negation, but 
both maintain themselves over against each 
other, and are mutually balanced. 

When the faculty of desire has given the 
ends, the miderstanding assists to find the means 
necessary to the attainment of those ends. It 
distinguishes, combines, arranges, weighs, and 
considers. It calms the mind to prudence. 
But it is incapable of generating ends — original 
ends — out of itself These all spring frotn sen- 
sual or supersensual, corporeal or spiritual 
wants. In and with those, works the under- 
standing, in and with these. Reason. 

It is a truth old as the human species, that 
sense and reason are in continual conflict with 
each odier, that now one and now the other is 
in the ascendancy. Herein is manifested the 
discord of man with himself, caused by two 
propensities essentially ditferent in their de- 
mands, and often diametrically opposite in their 
operation. One of these propensities produces 
the practical understanding, the other practical 
Reason. 

There can be no dispute as to which of these 
propensities deserves, absolutely and always, 
the preference and the supremacy. No one 
denies that the highest authority belongs to 
Reason, and that unconditional obedience is due 
to her piecepts. 

Understanding may exist in the highest de- 
gree, even where the most profligate aims are 
manifest. It executes with equal assiduity the 
best and the worst. Of itself, it knows not 
what is good or bad, but only what is more or 
kss. It can only mete according to a given 
measure ; it can only deliberate, not subordi- 



nate ;* it can only number, compute, calculate. 
To make out a first cause or an ultimate aim, 
lies entirely beyond its sphere. 

"What is good," says the wise man of 
Stagira, "is so by the inherent power of the 
object; and life itself is a good, only because 
we learn what is good, by means of it." Rea- 
son alone makes known to us what is good in 
itself Reason is the faculty of proposing to 
ourselves the highest. As such, it stood with 
the ancients, under the title of Wisdom, at the 
head of the virtues ; it arranged them, it had 
invented them. Prudence is the virtue of the 
understanding. That faculty discovers and re- 
veals what is serviceable, unconcerned as to the 
worth of the end, whether good or bad. 

"If Reason had the power as she has the 
authority," says a profound English tliinker,-j- 
"Justice and Peace, the Good and the Beautiful 
would everywhere reign supreme." But now 
she has only right on her side; strength dwells 
elsewhere, with sensual desire, with the appe- 
tites and passions. This disproportion cannot 
be universally abolished, but the nobler or the 
ignobler may obtain more or less the ascen- 
dancy, and the times, accordingly, be better or 
worse. 

Only that — according to the definition of one 
of our most acute and noble thinkers — deserves 
to be called a better age,in which human nature 
in a state of the most active self-development, 
although defective in some points, yet, on the 
whole, harmonious, has distinguished itself by 
nobleness of sentiment and energy of mind in 
entire nations; in which a noble and diflicult 
aim was clearly discerned and bohlly and stead- 
fastly pursued. The value of an age, therefore, 
is not to be estimated by the bloom of the arts, 
or by the multitude of learned acquirements, 
by which particular classes of cultivated indi- 
viduals may be distinguished; not by the pow- 
ers and deeds of single, celebrated men, nor by 
the predominance of a so called enlightenment, 
in the best sense of the word ; seeing that the 
faculty of moral self-determination is cultivated 
less by instruction than by living example, and, 
in an enervated century, all moral doctrines, 
although they may take root in the understand- 
ing, act but feebly on the character. Least of 
all, is the value of an age to be estimated by 
the standard of public self-content, which is 
generally considered a less fallible one; since 
man may easily sink so low that the manner of 
his well-heing shall concern him but little, if 
only, on the whole, he is tolerably well. Let it 
first be ascertained what kind of well-being the 
people enjoy. Enjoyment is stimulating and 
honourable, only as a consequence of true self- 
development; and the real happiness of man, 

* The epigrammatic force of the German is lost in this 
translation of the phrase, nar ueber: nicht uiiterlcgen, i. 
e., only overlay, not underlay. But the rendering, ii is 
believed, is otherwiae exact. Tr. 

t Jusepli Buller, 



JACOBI. 



229 



wliicli, at bottom, we all crave, is a noble hap- 
piness.* 

Tried by these principles, the age in which 
we live, can hardly receive the testimony that 
it belongs to the better sort. 

Means we have, as no generation ever had 
before us. But with this wealtli of means what 
ends do we attain? What ends do we propose 
to ourselves? We are full of science, and are 
daily inventing new arts, but men, such as the 
ancient, and even the middle times — such as 
tiie fifteenth and sixteenth century produced, 
are proportionally rare among us. Our pride is 
to be able to di:-peiise with such powers and 
virtues. So Pericles of old pronounced his 
Athenians happy, in that they had no need to 
be Spartans in virtue. t As, in the earliest 
times, men were at pains to subdue wild beasts, 
and to impart to the beasts which tliey sub- 
dtied, liabits contrary to their instincts; so, in 
later times, an entire, degenerate Humanity 
strives to subdue true humanity, wherever it is 
still active, to bring it beneath the power of a 
cultivated animalism which deems itself su- 
perior, to suppress or to pervert, on all sides, 
the higher instinct, so that, of all which has 
ever borne the name of virtue, there sliall be 
nothing left but so called utilities, which may 
also be applied to vicious ends. To tliis class 
belong courage, industry, moderation, obedience, 
to wliich men may actually, to a certain extent, 
be merely trained, as we train animals. Tliis 
is the true pedagogic of our time, the only one 
which the time esteems. It shows itself inex- 
haustible in deviling new methods to attain 
the abovementioned end, — to separate what is 
merely useful in virtue from virtue itself, and 
to make it a matter of public opinion, that 
nuked virtue, which would be estimated, not by 
what it fetches, but by what it costs, should be 
sent to the mad-house. And thus we become 
every day more intelligent,t more ingenious, 
and, in the same proportion, more irrational. § 
Lidiviilually and in the mass, — nationally, — we 
have become more devoid of reason. 

" Egoisin and rage for enjoyment on principle," 
says the writer just quoted, " under the naine 
oi' sound philosophy, destroy the fairest relations 
of life. The flattering happiness-doctrine, by 
which it was proposed at first to dam the stream 
of passion, has long since become a frail skitf, 
which follows the current. The more earnest 
and exalted morality which inspires man with 
a consciousness of his dignity, has become too 
strange and too high for the people. They can- 
not comprehend it. Man, in general, is consci- 
entious, in the strictest sense, only then, when, 
in secret also, he feels the necessity of shame, 

* Se.e, DiK gnldeiien Jahrhuriderte, v. Fr. Bouterwok. 
Neups .Musi^uni lier Phil, und Lit. Band I. H«ft 2. 

t Thncydides, li. 34-3fl. 

I Veraliindig. 

5 Unncrniiiifiig. — Observe all along the ilistinction, no 
Where so proiniiienl as with Jacobi, between the under- 
standing and the reason. Tr. 



before another than himself. The belief in that 
other, has been, for centuries, by instruction and 
tradition, identified with attachment to a church. 
The inconsiderate cry of enlightenment has torn 
the people away from the Church, and Con- 
science is left without house or home. And 
now one party thirsts for sweet pleasure, to 
drain the cup of life to the dregs, and the other 
party crawls back to the cross in the literal sense 
of these words. Amid this disgusting (we may 
call it) opposition between a reviving priestcraft 
and a happiness-theory which knows not God, 
a generation is growing up whose destiny no 
philosophy can control. It would need no ex- 
traordinary occurrences to deliver up this gene- 
ration to a new Mohammed. For it needs but 
few syllogisms now-a-days, to rob men of the 
principles of their 'human understanding,' as 
they call it. Popular enlightenment among us 
is unnaturally ad vanced. Its unnatural begin- 
ning and progress portend its natural termina- 
tion. Posterity will not wonder if, in the desert 
of unbelief, men raise serpents and pray to 
golden calves once more; and if, in this ser- 
pent-and-calf-service, philosophers tend the 
altars.'' 

Remarkable signs exhibit themselves. But 
twenty years ago, all shallow heads were agreed 
with Voltaire, Helvetins, Diderot, and their dis- 
ciples, tliat philosophy and every method of 
cultivating and ditlusing it, were good and 
wholesome. Now, all shallow heads are equally 
unanimous in the contrary opinion. All philo- 
sophising is afliriried to be useless and even 
pernicious. They became convinced, by an 
extraordinary event, that egoism cannot be made 
just, at least, not in the gross, in the way which 
their teachers had affirmed. They became 
convinced that a pure democracy of mere appe- 
tites and passions, however organized, can never 
becoiTie a kingdom of happiness and peace 
Hence they concluded (for the principle of ego- 
ism, as the oidy true principle, they once for 
all, could not let go) that it is better to renounce 
all hope of justice, to give up Humanity, and 
to abandon everydiing to Chance. 

Far be it from us to concur with them. A 
loud appeal against them to the genius of Hu- 
manity, is the duty of every noble-minded man. 
We need heroes of humanity; and they will 
appear, as they have hitherto appeared in every 
case in which the highest necessity demandeil 
theiTi. As to the how and the when, let no one 
ask. Let each one perform, in his place, what 
the better, the reliable spirit within him enjoins. 

This spirit, as it is its own highest end, so it 
is its own only means. Against tiie power 
thereof no other power may stand. It will 
pierce through and overcome. 

It is impossible that a pure and clear under- 
standing should be incompatible with an ele- 
vated reason. Rather, when used aright, they 
must mutually promote each other. There can 
be no bail use of the reason. And even of the 
understanding, there can only then be a bad 
20 



i30 



J A GOBI. 



use, when that faculty is already, in part, sub- 
jugated, and, in the same measure, eclipsed by 
the senses which it was ordained to rule. Only 
then will it prove itself hostile to reason, — place 
itself as a dark body before the sun of the spirit 
and intercept its rays. Its self-eclipses are not 
to be likened to the eclipses of the moon, in re- 
lation to which Thucydides says ; " that the 
Greeks of his day had long since ceased to be 
afraid of eclipses of the sun, but that eclipses of 
the moon still excited their alarm." They did 
not comprehend how a body could stand in its 
own light. 

It is plain, to him who reflects, in what way 
these general considerations connect themselves 
with what was said above, concerning learned 
societies of old and recent time, and what bear- 
ing they have on the new dedication of the 
Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences. They 
came unsought. Dnlness and narrowness can- 
not comprehend tlie design of these intellectual 
alliances. With bold assumption, they pronounce 
judgment upon them, or ask for results of im- 
mediate utility. These our Academy indeed, as 
the Keeper of the scientific (and what splendid !) 
treasures and collections of our illustrious mo- 
narch and of this kingdom, (a beauti/'ul addition 
to its destination, which hitherto no other aca- 
demy in the world has possessed, to this extent) 
can point to with serene brow ; but they are not 
the only thing that gives value to this fair circle 
of the priests of humanity. The high ancestors 



of our Maximilian Joseph founded this Instituti 
and made its conduct their care. The Genius 
of this kingdom would have mourned if our age 
had suffered it to become extinct. This was 
not to be apprehended. The lofty prince whom, 
with joy and triumph, we call ours, — whom, 
with full heart, we call the king ; he who, in all 
ways, blesses his people, is willing also to in- 
crease their fame by helping to preserve to them 
so sacred an inheritance, by furnishing it anew, 
by enlarging its powers, by increasing its splen- 
dor. 

Those who conclude, this day, the renewed 
alliance of truth and wisdom, are justly inspired 
with the hope of something better, and with 
courage to promote it. "^n institution of peace, 
and for the mediation of the antagonistic in lime, 
by science,''* has been founded. It is allowed 
us to speak freely of the advantages, but also of 
the defects of the time. Whatever it possesses 
that is costly and excellent in relation to science 
and art, is presented to us, in rich abundance, 
by royal liberality. To contribute something 
toward the promotion of the highest, and of 
whatsoever is wanting to the time, shall be 
the unalterable aim of our most zealous en- 
deavours. 

Blessings on the best of kings, who called this 
union into being, and who will foster and pre- 
serve it! 

* Excellent words of Schelling. 




'Enp-a-red lay A33, 'Walter, 



D^ E ^ © E [^ 



JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER. 



Bora 1744. Died 1803. 



This honored name, than which Germany 
has few more prized, represents a wide range 
of intellect, and covers a large space in the 
national literature. Herder is a literature in 
himself, including theology, philosophy, history, 
criticism, poetry ; all tlie various departments 
of literary effort, and approved in all. He sur- 
passes all his contemporaries in breadth, and 
most of them in depth. Such union of breadth 
and depth has seldom been seen. To him may 
be ascribed the epithet " myriad-minded." He 
towers above the ordinary level of humanity, 
not, like most great men, in a single peak, but 
with a many-headed elevation; a vast moun- 
tain-range whose highest summits mingle with 
the skies ; whose sunny slopes are covered with 
luxurious vegetation ; whose secret valleys are 
haunted by the Muse of Romance, and beneath 
whose surface are mines of gold. 

Had Herder possessed the element of form in 
any degree proportioned to the suinless wealth 
of bis intellect and his all-sided culture, he 
would have been the first poet, not of Germany 
only, but of his age, of any age. There lay his 
defect. He was no artist. Like king David, 
he collected materials from the ends of the 
earth, but it was not given to him to rear a 
temple therewith. With all his voluminous- 
ness he has left no perfect work. Even his 
'' Ideas toward a philosophy of the history of 
Humanity" is fragmentary, as the name im- 
ports. 

Herder was born at Mohrungen in East 
Prussia, where his father was Can/or* of the 
church and usher in a female seminary. His 
early education was better adapted to make 
him a good man than a brilliant scholar, being 
confined to the reading of the bible and the 
hymn-book. Other books, which his thirst for 
knowledge constrained him to seek, he was 
obliged to road by stealth ; and it is related 
that he used to climb a tree and lash himself 
with a leathern strap to one of the branches for 
this purpose. 

* An office ill the Lutheran Chnrch, of which the iH'in- 
ci]ml duty is that of precentor — whence the name. 



He learned to write, and the beauty of his 
chirography procured him a patron in Tresc.ho, 
a clergyman who employed him as amanuensio, 
and permitted him to share the instruction of 
his sons in the Latin and Greek languages 
The intense application with which he devoted 
himself to the pursuit of knowledge brought on 
a disease of the eyes, from which he never en- 
tirely recovered. A Russian surgeon who had 
afforded him temporary relief, and who was 
then a visiter in the house of Tresclio, per 
suaded him to study surgery in St. Petersburg 
and offered not only to pay his expenses thither, 
but to give him gratuitous instruction. But at 
Konigsberg, on their way. Herder was so over- 
come by the sight of a dissection which he 
witnessed, that he abandoned this project, and 
turned his attention to theology. He remained 
in Konigsberg for this purpose, supporting him- 
self, as a private instructor, while pursuing his 
studies at the university. He there formed an 
acquaintance with Hamann and with Kant. 

In 1765, he was appointed teacher and 
preacher at the Cathedral school at Riga, 
where he kindled the enthusiastic devotion 
of his hearers and pupils by his word and his 
writings. For here commenced his career as 
an author. In 1768, he declined a call to St. 
Petersburg as inspector of the St. Peter's school 
in that city, and accepted the office of travel- 
ling chaplain to the prince of Holstein-Eutin. 
lu this capacity he travelled through Germany 
as far as Strassburg, where he was induced to 
resign his office on account of his eyes, which 
began to trouble him again, and to undergo an 
operation which detained him for a long while 
in that city. Here he became acquainted with 
Goethe, who was then a student of Law at 
Strassburg. Goethe attributes great value to 
this acquaintance in his auto-biography, and 
makes much of Herder's influence on his mind 
and character at that forming period of his life. 
"I might count myself fortunate," he says, 
"that by an une.xpected acquaintance, what- 
ever of self-complacency, of self-mirrorinff. of 
vanity, pride, and highmindedness mieht slum 

r23Ii 



232 



HERDER. 



ber or work in me, was subjected to a very 
severe trial which was unique in its kind, by 
no means proportionate to the time, but so much 
the more penetrating and sensible. 

" For the most significant occurrence and that 
which was to have the most important conse- 
quences for me, was an acquaintance and a 
consequent nearer connection with Herder. He 
had accompanied the prince of Holstein-Eutin, 
who was afflicted with melancholy, in his tra- 
vels, and had come with him as far as Strass- 
burg. Our society, as soon as they were aware 
of his presence, felt an earnest desire to ap- 
proach him, and this gratification happened to 
me first in a quite unexpected and accidental 
manner. I had gone to the hotel ' Zum 
Geist,' to visit I know not what distinguished 
stranger. At the foot of the stairs 1 met a man 
who was also on the point of ascending, and 
whom I might have taken for a clergyman. 
His powdered hair was rolled up into a round 
lock; a black dress likewise distinguished him, 
but still more a long black silk mantle, the end 
of which he had gathered together and thrust 
into his pocket. This somewhat striking, but, 
on the whole, gentlemanly and agreeable ap- 
pearance, of which I had already heard speak, 
left me no doubt that he was the celebrated 
arrival, and my address must have convinced 
him at once that 1 knew who he was. He 
asked my name, which could be of no import- 
ance to him ; but my frankness appeared to 
please him, for he responded to it with great 
kindness, and, as we ascended the stairs toge- 
ther, showed himself ready at once for a lively 
communication. It has escaped me whom we 
then visited. Enough, at parting, I begged 
permission to call upon him at his lodgings, 
wiiich he accorded to me in a manner suffi- 
ciently friendly. I did not fail to avail myself 
repeatedly of this permission, and was more and 
more attracted by him. He had somewhat 
gentle in his carriage that was exceedingly 
fitting and graceful, without being exactly 
adrell ; a round face, a significant brow, a 
somewhat blunt nose, a somewhat prominent 
buthighly individual, agreeable, amiable mouth; 
under black eyebrows a pair of coal-black eyes 
which did not fail of their effect, although one 
of them was wont to be red and inflamed. By 
manifold questions he sought to make himself 
acquainted with me and my condition, and his 
pov.'er of attraction operated ever more strongly 



upon me. I was generally of a confiding na- 
ture, and for him, especially, 1 had no secret. 
But it was not long before tiie repellent pulse 
of his nature came in and occasioned me no 
little discomfort. • » » 

" Herder had now separated himself from the 
prince and removed to quarters of his own, re- 
solved to submit himself to an operation by 
Lobstein. Here I found the benefit of those 
exercises by which I had endeavored to blunt 
my sensitiveness. I was able to assist at the 
operation, and, in various ways, to be helpful 
and serviceable to so worthy a man. I had 
every reason to admire his great fortitude and 
patience; for neither under the various wounds 
inflicted by the surgeon, nor under the oft-re- 
peated, painful bandage, did he manifest the 
least vexation ; and he appeared to be the one 
among us who suffered the least. But then, in 
the intervals, we had to bear in various ways 
the mutations of his humor. • • • • • 

" Herder could be most sweetly engaging and 
genial ; but he could as easily also turn forth a 
vexatious side. All men indeed have this at- 
traction and repulsion according to their nature, 
— some more, some less, — some in slower, some 
in quicker pulses. Few can really overcome 
their peculiarity in this regard, although many 
appear to do so. In the case of Herder, the 
overweight of his contrary, bitter, biting humor 
was unquestionably owing to his malady and 
the sufferings which arose from it. This case 
often occurs in life, and we do not sufficiently 
consider the moral effects of diseased condi- 
tions, and therefore judge many characters 
very unjustly, because we regard all men as 
healthy, and require of them that they shall 
conduct themselves accordingly. 

" During the whole time of this cure, I visited 
Herder morning and evening; I also remained 
with him sometimes the whole day, and accus- 
tomed myself in a short time to his chiding and 
fault-finding, the rather that I learned every 
day to estimate more highly his great and 
beautiful qualities, his extended knowledge, 
and his deep insight. The influence of this 
goodnatured grumbler was great and important. 
He was five years older than I, which makes a 
great difference in our younger days, and since 
I acknowledged him for what he was, since I 
Knew how to value what he had already pro- 
duced, he necessarily acquired a great supe- 
riority over me. But the relation was not an 



HERDER. 



233 



agreeable one. Older people with whom I had 
hitherto conversed had spared me while endea- 
voring to educate me ; perhaps they had spoiled 
me by their yieldingness ; but no approbation 
was ever to be had from Herder, whatever pains 
one might take to obtain it. While, therefore, 
on the one hand, my great attachment and re- 
verence for him, and on the other, the discom- 
fort which he awaliened in me for ever con- 
tended together, there arose in me a contradic- 
tion, the first in its kind I liad ever experienced. 
As his conversations were always significant, 
whether asking or answering, or in whatever 
way he imparted him=elf, it could not fail that 
I should be daily and hourly led on by him to 
new views. »«•*** 

During so vexatious and painful a cure, our 
Herder lost nothing of his vivacity, but that 
vivacity grew ever less beneficent. He could 
not write a note containing a request, without 
spicing it with some kind of jeer. Thus, for 
example, he wrote to me once : 

'*lf the epistles of Brutus thou hast in Cicero's Letters, 

Thou whom, from well-polished shelves, the school-conso- 
lers — the chissics 

Comfort in spletidiU editions ; but outwardly rather than 
iniy ; — 

Thou who from Gods or from Goths, or, it may be, fi-om 
mud* art descended, 

Goethe send them to nie." 

To be sure, it was not handsome that he al- 
lowed himself this jest with my name; for the 
proper name of a man is not like a cloak which 
merely hangs round him, and at which one can 
pluck and twitch, but a close-fitting garment; 
nay, it is sometliing which grows to him like 
the skin itself, and which cannot be scratched 
or wounded without injury to himself. 

On the other hand, the preceding reproof was 
better founded. I had taken the authors which 
I had received in exchange from Langer, toge- 
ther with some beautiful editions out of my 
father's collection, with me to Strassburg, and 
arranged them in a neat book-case with the 
best intention to use them. But how should 
the time which was broken into fragments by a 
hundred different kinds of activity, suffice for 
thisT Herder, who was a great observer of 
books, because he needed them every moment, 
noticed my beautiful collection on his first visit; 
but he noticed too, that I made no use of it ; 
wfierefore, as the greatest enemy of all seem- 
ing and ostentation, he used with every occa- 
sion to twit me on that point. * • * 

* " Von Odllern von Qoihen oder vou Kolhe;'' puns on 
Goethe's name. — Ed. 

2e 



Of such jests, more or less gay or abstruse, 
lively or bitter, I might mention many. They 
did not vex me, but they were unpleasant. But 
as I knew how to value whatever contributed 
to my education, and since I had sacrificed 
many of my earlier opinions and inclinations, I 
soon adjusted myself thereto, and only endea- 
voured, so far as it was possible for me from 
my then point of view, to separate jiist reproof 
from unjust invective. And so not a day passed 
that was not most fruitfully instructive for 



After the cure had been protracted beyond 
all reasonable bounds, and Lobstein began to 
waver and to repeat himself in his treatment, 
our whole relation was overcast. Herder be- 
came impatient and out of humor; he could 
not succeed in continuing his activity as here- 
tofore, and he was obliged lo restrain himself, 
the rather that the blame of the unsuccessful 
chirurgical undertaking was imputed to his too 
great intellectual activity, and his uninter- 
rupted, lively and even merry intercourse with 
us. In short, after so much torture and suffer- 
ing, the artificial lachrymal duct would not 
form, and the desired communication could not 
be brought about. It was found necessary to 
let the wound heal in order that the evil might 
not grow worse. If, during the operation, we 
were compelled to admire Herder's fortitude 
under such pains, his melancholy, nay, grim 
resignation to the idea of being obliged to bear 
such a blemish through life, had in it something 
sublime, whereby he secured to himself forever 
the veneration of those who saw him and loved 
him. This misfortune, which disfigured so sig- 
nificant a face, could not but be the more vexa- 
tious from the circumstance, that he had be- 
come acquainted with and had won the affec- 
tions of a distinguished lady in Darmstadt. It 
was chiefly on this account that he had sub- 
mitted to that cure, in order, on his return, to 
appear more free, more joyful, and with im- 
proved looks before his half-betrothed, and to 
connect himself more surely and inseparably 
with her."* 

In 1770, Herder received a call to Biicke- 
burg as superintendant, court-preacher, and 
member of the consistory. There he became 
the confidential friend of Count Wilhelm, of 
Schaumburg-Lippe and his wife, and added to 

* Aus meinem Lebeii. Part 2d. Bonk lOth. 
20* 



234 



HERDER. 



his literary fame by several important publica- 
tions. In 1775, he was invited to a professor- 
ship of theology in Gottingen , but objections 
having been raised on the score of questionable 
orthodoxy, he accepted a call which came to 
him from Weimar to fill the offices of court- 
preacher, of general superintendent, and coun- 
sellor of the upper Consistory in that Electorate. 
Here he remained during the rest of his life, 
and by his fame as pulpit-orator, by his services 
as superintendent of the schools, and zealous 
promoter of all good works, by the establish- 
ment of a seminary for teachers, by the reforms 
which he introduced into the liturgy and the 
catechetical instruction, he endeared himself 
alike to prince and people. In 1789, he was 
made vice-president, in 1801, president of the 
upper Consistory. At the same time he received 
from the Elector of Bavaria the diploma of no- 
bility. 

He died, December 18th, 1803, in the sixtieth 
year of his age. His remains were deposited 
in the vault of the city-church, and, in 1819, 
a monument of cast-iron was erected over them, 
■which expressed the characteristic aspirations 
of his soul with the brief inscription, Licht, 
lAebe, Lfhen.^'* 

The highest panegyric on Herder is that 
pronounced by his true friend and fervent ad- 
mirer, Jean Paul, in his Vorschule der JEsthetik. 

" That noble spirit was misunderstood by op- 
posite times and parties, yet not entirely with- 
out fault of his own. For he had the fault, 
that he was no star of first or of any other 
magnitude, but a clump of stars out of which 
each one spells a constellation to please him- 
self; one man a pair of scales, or the constella- 
tion of Autumn ; another, a crab, or the constel- 
lation of Summer, and so on. Men, with powers 
of various kinds, are always misunderstood; 
those with powers of only one kind, seldom. 
The former come in contact with all, both like 
and unlike; the latter only with their like. * * 

" Born, as it were, with a love-potion of fervid 
passion for nature, like a Brahmin, with the 
lofty Spinozism of the heart, he cherished and 
neld fast to his heart every animalcule and 
every blossom. A travelling-carriage driven 
through greening life was his sun-chariot, and 
only under the free heaven, as also at the sound 
of music, would his heart, like a flower, with a 
right, wide-cheered expansion, unfold. 

* " Liflil, LovH, Life." See Wolff's jEiicyclopedia of 
German literature. 



* * * * I can say but little 
about him, and insufficient at best. A man 
who could be resolved into words must be an 
every-day man. The star-heaven no star-map 
paints, although painting may represent a land- 
scape. ****** 

" So this beloved spirit resembled the swans 
which, in the harsh season of the year, keep 
the waters open by their motion. 
** * ***** 

" I have not yet spoken the fullest word con- 
cerning him. If he was no poet, as he often, 
indeed, thought of hitnself, and also of other 
very celebrated people, standing, as he did, 
close by the Homeric and Shakspearian stand- 
ard; — then he was merely something better, 
namely, a poem, an Indian-Greek epos made by 
some purest God. * * * * 

"But howshall I analyze it? since in his beau- 
tiful soul, precisely as in a poem, everything 
coalesced, and the good, the true, the beautiful, 
constituted an inseparable triunity. Greece 
was to him the highest, and, however universal 
too his epic -cosmopolitan taste, praising and 
acknowledging — even the style of his Hamann 
— he still clung most intensely, like a much- wan- 
dered Odysseus after his return from all blos- 
som lands, to his Greek home. He and Goethe 
only (each after his own fashion) are our resto- 
rers, or Winkelmnnns of singing Greece, whose 
Philomel-tongue not all the prosers of foregone 
centuries had been able to loose. 

Herder was, as it were, a Greek composition 
after the life. Poetry was not merely a hori- 
zon-appendix to his life, — as one often sees, in 
bad weather, a pile of rainbow-coloured clouds 
in the horizon, — but it rose shining, like a free, 
light rainbow, over the thick atmosphere of life, 
and spanned it as a heaven's-gate. Hence his 
Greek veneration for all the stages of life, his 
adjusting, epic manner in all his works, which, 
like a philosophical epos, brings all times, 
forms, people, spirits, as with the great hand of 
a god, impartially before the secular eye that 
measures years only by centuries, and so pro- 
vides for them the widest arena. Hence his 
Greek disgust at every preponderance of the 
scale to one or the other side. Many storm- 
and-rack poems* could aggravate his mental 
torture into a bodily one. He wished to see 
the sacrifices of poesy as fair and undefiled as 
the thunder of heaven permits to scathed hu- 

* His soiil-words first reclaimed the author from th» 
youthful confounding of force with beauty. 



HERDER. 



235 



manity. Therefore, like a Grecian poem, he 
often drew, by mere dint of jest, around every 
fairest sentiment, — e. g. pathos, — an early boun- 
dary-line of beauty. Only men of shallow sen- 
timents revel in them ; those of more profound 
sensibility shun their despotism, and, therefore, 
have the appearance of coldness. A great 
poetical soul can more easily be anything else 
on the earth than happy, for man has something 
of the Lavatere-p\a.ui, which, for years, defies 
every winter, but grows tender and perishes as 
soon as it bears flowers. True, the poet is an 
eternal youth, and the dew of the morning lies 
upon him his whole life-day long ; but without 
sun the drops are dim and cold. 

" Few minds are learned after the same grand 
fashion as he. The greater part pursue only 
the rare, the least known in any science. He, 
on the contrary, received only the great streams, 
but those of all sciences, into his heaven-mirror- 
ingocean, which, resolving, impressed upon them 
its own motion from west to east. Many are 
clasped by their learning as by a withering ivy, 
but he as by a grape-vine. Everywhere — or- 
ganically poetizing — to appropriate to himself 
the opposite, was his character ; and around the 
dry kernel-house of a Lambert he wove a sweet 
fruit-hull. Thus he combined the boldest free- 
dom of philosophy, concerning Nature and God, 
with the most pious faith, a faith extending 
even to presentiments. Thus he exhibited the 
Greek humanity, to which he restored the name, 
in the most tender regard for all purely hiiman 
relations, and in his Lutheran indignation 
against all whereby they were poisoned, how- 
ever sanctioned by Church and State. He was 
a fort overgrown with flowers, a Northern oak 
whose branches were sensitive plants. How 
gloriously irreconcilable he burned against every 
creeping soul, against all looseness and self- 
contradiction, dishonesty, and poetical slime- 
softness; as also against German critical rude- 
ness and all sceptres in paws; and how he 
exorcised the serpents of his time ! But would 
you hear the softest of voices, it was his in love 
— whether for a child or a poem, or for music — 
or in mercy for the weak. He resembled his 
friend Hamann, who was at once a hero and a 
child ; who, like an electrized person in the 
dark, stood harmless, with a glory encircling 
his head, until a touch drew the lightning from 
hi... 

" When he painted his Hamann as an angry 



prophet, as a demoniacal spirit, and even placed 
him above himself, (although Hamann was less 
Grecian and mobile, light-blooming and mi- 
nutely organized,) and when we heard with 
grief that his true world and friendship' s-island 
were merged in that writer's tomb, we became 
aware, from his longing, that, inwardly, he 
judged the age (according to his highest ideal) 
more severely than he outwardly appeared to 
do, with his toleration and his all-sidedness. 
Therefore there pervades his works a secret, 
now Socratic, now Horatian irony, which only 
those who knew him understand. Altogether, 
he was little weighed and little estimated ; and 
only in particulars, not in the whole. That 
task remains for the diamond-scales of posterity, 
into which none of the flint-stones shall come, 
with which the rude prosaists, and ruder Kant- 
ians, and rude poeticians* would half stone 
and half enlighten him.f 

"The good spirit gave and sufl^red much. 
Two sayings of his, though unmeaning to 
others, remain to me always for contemplation. 
One was vvhat he once said to me, with a me- 
lancholy feeling of the coldness and barrenness 
of the times, upon a Sunday amid the ringing 
of the near church-bells, whose tones flowed 
down to us as out of the old centuries : that he 
wished he had been born in the middle ages. 
The other, very different, was: that he wished 
to behold an apparition, and that he felt nothing 
and had no presentiment of the usual fear of 
ghosts. O, the pure soul, of spirit-kin ! To 
him this was possible, poetical as he was, and 
although such natures usually shudder most at 
the long, silent veils which pass and rest behind 
death, — for he himself was a spiritual appa- 
rition to the earth, and never forgot his own 
kingdom. His life was a shining exception to 
ofttimes tainted geniality ; he sacrificed, like 
the ancient priests, even at the altar of the 
Muses, only with white garments. 

" He seems to me now, — much as Death usu- 
ally lifts men up into a holy transfiguration, — in 
his present distance and elevation, no more shin- 
ing than formerly, by my side, here below. I ima- 
gine him yonder, behind the stars, precisely in 
his right place, and but little changed, his griefs 
excepted. Well then ! celebrate right festively 
yonder thy harvest-feast, thou pure, thou spirit- 

* Poeliker, This word means neither poets nor poetns 

ters, but men who theorize on the subject of poetry. Tr 

t In Loniion transparent Sints are ground into 'cn»e> 



236 



HERDER. 



friend ! May thy coronal of heavy wheat-ears 
blossom on thy head into a-light flower-chaplel! 
Thou sun-flower transplanted to thy sun at last ! 
"In his song to the night he says to his 
sleeping body : 

Slumber well, meanwhile, thou slug:gish burdea 
Of my earthly walk. Her mantle 
Over thee spreads the Nigfit. and her lamps 
Burn ahuve thee in tlie holy pavdion. 

Otherwise now and colder stands the star-night 
above his mould. Alas! he who only read him 
has scarcely lost him ; but he who knew and 
loved him is not to be consoled any more by his 
immortality, but only by the immortality of the 
human soul. If there were no such immortality, 
if our whole life here is only an evening twilight 
preceding the night, not a morning twilight; 
if the lofty mind is also let down after the body 
by coffin-ropes into the pit: O! then I know 
not why we should not, at the graves of great 



men, do from despair what the ancient savage 
nations did from hope, that is, throw ourselves 
after them into the pit, as those people did into 
the tombs of their princes, so that the foolish, 
violent heart that will obstinately beat for some- 
thing divine and eternal, may be choked at 
once. ******0!l well know 
that he tolerated such griefs least of all. He 
would point now to the glittering stars of 
spring, above which he now dwells ; he would 
beckon to ns to listen to the nightingales which 
now sing to us and not to him ; and he would 
be more moved than he seemed to be. * * 
******* 

We will now love that great soul together, and 
if, at times, we are moved too painfully by his 
memory, we will read over again all whereby 
he made known to us the immortal and divine, 
and himself" 



LOVE AND SELF. 

jlS appendix to the letter of hebr hemstebhuis, on desibe. 

It is a beautiful legend of the most ancient 
poetry ; that Love drew forth the world from 
chaos and bonnd the creatures reciprocally to 
each other with the bands of desire and long- 
ing; that, by these tender ties, she keeps all 
things in order and leads all to the One, — the 
great fountain of all light, as of all love. How- 
ever various the names and garbs under which 
this poetical system has been presented, we re- 
cognise in all this general truth ; that love 
unites and that hate divides ; that all enjoyment 
of gods and of men consists in the love and 
union of homogeneous things; but, that longing 
and desire are, as it were, the bride-maids of 
Love, — the strong, yet tender arms, which in- 
duce and prepare all enjoyment, nay more, 
which confer in themselves the greatest ejijoy- 
meiit, by anticipation. 

Soon, however, another side of this system 
became apparent, viz. : that this love has limits, 
and that a perfect union of beings in our uni- 
verse is seldom or never known ; that, there- 
fore, the bands of this union, desire and long- 
ing, must often relax in the moment of the 
greatest strain, and yield, too often, alas ! weari- 
nerss and satiety instead of enjoyment. It was 
soon perceived, that, iu this law, also, there was 

wisdom ; since the Creator, by this means, has 
provided as carefully for the firm persistence 
ol individual beings, as, by means of love and 
'onging, he has provided for the union and kind- 

y co-presence of many. It was seen that both 
iliese forces, which are, in the spiritual world, 

what attraction and repulsion are in the cor- 
poreal, are requisite to the preservation and 



firm tenure of the universe. And I believe it 
was Einpedocles who first made Hatred and 
Love delineators of the outline of all beings.* 
" By Hatred," he says, " things are separated, and 
each individual remains what it is; by Love 
they are united and connect themselves one 
with atiother." That is, as far as they can be 
united. For even Love, according to the Greeks, 
is ruled by Fate ; and Necessity, the oldest of the 
gods, is mightier than Love. According to 
Plato's idea, the latter was born of Need and 
Superfluity, in the gardens of Jupiter. Accord- 
ingly, she partakes of the nature of both, and 
is always dependent on her parents. 

I fancy it will not be unpleasant to follow 
this double walk; the rather, that Herr Hem- 
sterhuis has led us very agreeably on one side, 
reserving to himself the other for another trea- 
tise ; which, however, he has not yet written, 
or which I have not yet seen. 

That love unites the d liferent beings, and that 
all desire is only a striving after this union, as 
the only possible enjoyment of beings now 
separated, — this our author has proved with such 
exquisite examples, that too copious additions 
on this point would be a useless superfluity. 
Every craving for sensual and spiritual enjoy- 
ment, all desire of friendship and of love, 
thirsts after union with the object affected, be- 
cause it forefeels, in that object, a new and 
delightful enjoyment of its own reality. The 
Godhead has wisely and kindly ordained that 
we shall be sensible of our existence, not in 
ourselves, but only by reaction, as it were, in 
some object without us ; after which, accord- 

* Kf Sc KOTu} Stafjofxpa Kat aiii^a navra neXovTat 
yivv doclirj ev iptXoTtjTt Kat aAA/;Xo(fft iro^sirat 
£k Ttj)v yap iravr* oaa* rjv oaaa re tan Kai ccTai, 



HERDER. 



ingly, we strive, for which we live, in which 
we liave a double and manifold existence. The 
multitude of attractive objects with which Na- 
ture has surrounded us, have, therefore, been 
placed by her at such various distances, and 
endowed with such various kinds and degrees 
of attraction, as to produce in us a rich and 
delicate concert of sensations, of various tones 
and modes; and to make our lieart and life, as 
it were, a Harmonica of desire, the artistic image 
of an ever purer, insatiable, eternal longing;. 

Coarse, sensual enjoyment converts the object 
which we craved, into itself, and destroys it. 
It is vivid, therefore, for, in it there is a perfect 
union; but it is, likewise, coarse and transient. 
There are those who enjoy only with the tongue. 
Hence, in common life, the word taste* is gene- 
rally used in reference to this sense. Enjoy- 
ment, in this case, is a union. — that is, a solution 
of the finest juices. But it also ends with this, 
for the object is devoured, destroyed. In a cer- 
tain sense, therefore, the finest enjoyment, here 
too, precedes the enjoyment. The craving for 
a beautiful fruit is pleasanter than tlie fruit it- 
self The eye excites the most agreeable sen- 
sation in tlie tongue. "Voluptatem prasagit 
multa cupido." Thus it is with the enjoyment 
of odors, and even of tones. We draw them 
into ourselves; we drink the stream of their 
delight with long draughts. And only then, do 
we say that we enjoy music, when it dissolves 
the heart and becomes one with tlie inward 
music of our sensations. The stream of melody, 
fine as it is, is nevertheless devoured. It con- 
tinues to exist only in the harmonious effects,^ 
the pleasant vibrations which it produced in us. 
The more spiritual our enjoyment, the more 
permanent it is; the more permanent its object 
without us. But let us also add, the weaker it 
is; for the object is and remains without us; 
and only in its image, that is, — slightly or not 
all, — becomes one with us. The eye is never 
wearied with seeing: for how little does the 
heart receive with the sight! How little can 
the mere liglit-ray contribute to the most intense 
enjoyment ! ***** 

******* 
Indeed, the virtuosi in regard to this organ — 
those wlio have cultivated their vision to a 
luxurious enjoyment — appear to be sensible of 
this. How do they seek to animate the object 
before them ! They hunt after every impres- 
sion of light and shade, of colour, form, ges- 
ture; in order to feel and grope out the spirit 
of the author, if they are artists, or the objects 
themselves, if they live in these, although it is 
a mere apparition which they have before them. 
Here again, the enjoyment consists in the con- 
ceit of a union. A feeble conceit, but a happy 
one ! The eye does not destroy the essence of 
the beloved object, only because it cannot incor- 
porate the same with itself If this object seems 
to the deluded a fountain of inexhaustible 

* In German, genietsen, literally, to enjoy. 



charms, it is well for him, the blissfully de- 
luded, who enjoys it. He draws forever, and 
never exhausts, because he can draw no perfect 
and intense draught. The beloved images flee 
before him and are still present to him. He 
lives in the sweet dream of a visible, intellec- 
tual phantom. 

Imperceptibly, we have come upon that form 
of enjoyment, which, apparently, is the most 
enduring, but which, also, is the least satisfac- 
tory to our mortal nature, — the ideal fruition of 
corporeal beauty, — or, as it is called by enthu- 
siasts, the enjoyment of Platonic love. The 
name of Plato is improperly applied to it; for 
lie is speaking of intellectual Ideas, to be 
enjoyed by the intellect, and which cannot be 
enjoyed in any other way; and not of a mad 
spiritualizing of the corporeal, which often ends 
in a too coarse corporeity. That this is not a 
spiritual fruition, is evident from the fact that it 
destroys the body without satisfying the mind. 
It sins against the nervous fluid, as the passion 
of love, when of too coarse a character, sins 
against flesh and blood. It shews itself herein, 
not to be genuine enjoyment, — a happy contem- 
plation of that kind, in which the beloved ob- 
ject becomes one with ourselves. How can 
that which is corporeal become one with pure 
spirit? Two things, that, properly speaking, 
have nothing in common, and could only be 
combined, in the beginning, as the Greeks 
fabled, by a kind of voluntary intoxication. 
The mind can enjoy spiritual qualities and ob- 
jects. Its union with these is pure and so cal.ii 
as that ancient Hymn makes God say: ".^H is 
mine, for I have it in me!" A possession and a 
fruition of which the soul is capable only in 
respect to the purest objects. Then it hovers 
and tastes like a beautiful butterfly which enjoys 
the flower without destroying it. Where it 
enjoys as a caterpillar, it devours, alas ! leaf and 
flower. 

We begin then to speak of the more genuine 
kinds of spiritual longing, — Friendship and Love. 
After what Hemsterhuis has told us o'f these, I 
shall add but a few traits. 

The image of Friendship employed by the 
ancients, — two hands joined together, — appears 
to me the most fitting symbol of its union, its 
aim, and its enjoyment. More significant than 
the two according instruments. These express 
only companionship, which is far from being 
friendship. A companionable man is easy and 
well disposed. He adapts himself easily to 
every company, and every company adapts it- 
self easily to him. He oppresses no one with 
his presence, he crowds no one; and therefoie 
every one likes to be with him. In a certain 
degree, one is even intimate with him, because 
one feels that there is no- mischief in the man. 
Characters of this sort are good for daily inter- 
course. But Friendship! what a ditferent, sacred 
band is that! It unites hearts and hands in one 
common aim; anil where that aim is obvious, 
where it is continuous, requiring exertion, wheio 



238 



HERDER. 



it lies among or behind dangers ; there, the band 
of friendship is often so strict, so firm and 
hearty, that nothing but death has power to 
separate it. The phalanx of Greek friends in 
battle, who all conquered or died as one man, — 
tho^e bright twin stars of friendship, which, in 
all nations, Hebrews and Greeks, Scythians and 
savages, shine forth from the night of ages, and 
are so grateful to the heart of man, — what made 
them friends'? A common aim united them; 
danger drew the knot; tried faith, continuous, 
growing zeal, glorious labour, common enjoyment 
of that labour; — finally, necessity and death, 
made that knot indissoluble. 

How truly said one, of his friend : "Thy love 
to me surpassed the love of women!" Creation 
knows notliing nobler than two voluntarily and 
indirisolubly united hands. — two hearts and lives 
that have voluntarily become one. It matters 
not, whether these two hands are male or fe- 
male, or of both sexes. It is a proud but irra- 
tional prejudice on the part of men, that only 
they are capable of friendship. Woman is often 
tenderer, truer, firmer, more golden-pure in that 
relation, than many a weak, unfeeling, impure, 
masculine soul. Where there is want of truth, 
where there is vanity, rivalry, heedlessness, 
there, friendship, in either sex, is impossible. 
Marriage, likewise, should be friendship; and 
wo! if it is not, if it is only love and desire. 
To a noble woman, it is sweet to suifer for her 
husband, as well as to rejoice with him, to 
feel that she is honoured, esteemed and happy 
in him and he in her. The common education 
of their children is the beautiful, leading aim 
of their friendship, which sweetly rewards them 
both, even in gray old age. They stand there, 
and will continue to stand like two trees with 
branches interlocked, begirt with a garland of 
youthful green, — saplings and twigs. In all 
cases, a life, in common, is the marrow of true 
friendship. Mutual unlocking and sharing of 
hearts, intense joy in each other, sympathy in 
each other's sufferings, counsel, consolation, ef- 
fort, mutual aid, — these are its diagnostics, its 
delights, its interior recompense. What delicate 
secrets in friendship! Refinements of feeling, 
as if the soul of the one were directly conscious 
of the soul of the other, and, anticipating, dis- 
cerned the thoughts of that soul as clearly as its 
own! And, assuredly, the soul has sometimes 
power thus to discern thoughts and to dwell 
immediately and intimately in the heart of an- 
other. There are moments of sympathy, even 
in thoughts, without the slightest external occa- 
sion, which indeed no psychology can explain, 
but which experience teaches and confirms. 
There are mutual, simultaneous recollections of 
one another — even at a distance — on the part 
of absent friends, which are often of the most 
wonderful, overpowering kind. And indeed, 
if ever the soul possesses the mysterious power 
to act directly, without organs, on another soul, 
where would such action be more natural than 
'n the case of friends 1 This relation is purer, 



and therefore, assuredly, mightier also than 
love. For if love will lift itself up to the strength 
and duration of eternity, it must first purify it- 
self from coarse sensuality, atid become true and 
genuine friendship. How seldom does it arrive 
at this! It destroys itself or destroys its object 
with penetrating, devouring flames; and both 
the loving and the loved lie there, as it were, a 
heap of ashes. But the glow of friendship is 
pure, refreshing, human warmth. The two 
flames upon one altar play into each other, and 
frolicking, lift and bear one another aloft, and 
often, in the melancholy hour of separation, they 
soar rejoicing, and united, and victorious, up- 
ward to the land of the purest union, of truest, 
inseparable friendship. 

May the reader pardon the explicitness with 
which I have handled this point! Since I look 
upon it as the true, singular, and most beautiful 
union of souls, and therefore also, as the noblest 
and sweetest enjoyment of which humanity is 
capable, to which even love itself is subservi 
ent; — since there are so many degrees of friend 
ship, from easy companionship, to the most sub 
lime, silent, enduring sacrifice, which, to be sure 
has been the portion only of the most selec/ 
souls, and only in very rare circumstances anj 
combinations; but which is to be regarded ir 
such instances as the highest privilege, the genu 
ine antepast of a future, higher existence; — 
briefly, since, in friendship, there is union, al- 
most without organs, pure, perfect and ever- 
growing; — therefore, as it seems to me, it is also 
the highest point of all desire, and, precisely, in 
seasons of the greatest strain and pressure, be- 
comes the purest joy of earth. Here operates 
the genuine magnetism of human souls, and we 
know that the magnet attracts the more power 
fully the more it is exercised. Unused, it is dead. 
Without confidence and truth severely tried, no 
friendship, no interchange of hearts is possible. 

But Nature saw that this pure, heavenly flame 
is, for the most part, for us on the earth, too re- 
fined. Therefore she clothed it in earthly, sen- 
sible charms ; and so Venus Urania appeared 
as — Aphrodite. Love was intended to invite 
us to friendship. Love is to become, itself, the 
most intense friendship. 

I find its highest degree of rapture not there 
where, as Herr Hemsterhuis says. Nature de- 
ludes us with an instant of earthly union, (an 
instant which loses itself in mere surrounding 
want,) but in the first happy discovery, — in that 
moment, beyond all description sweet, when 
the beloved two become aware that they love, 
and tell each otlier so, with such certainty and 
sweet consent, however iinperfect and invohm- 
tary the confession. Why must I use the word, 
'tell.' How poor! What can the dead tongue, — 
what can pining language say, when even the 
soul-enkindled, fiery glance drops it wings and 
veils its glory? If there is a moment of hea- 
venly rapture, and a pure union of embodied 
beings here on earth, it is this. So unlike that 
which pining enjoyment allows us! I know 



HERDER. 



239 



not what mythology of some Asiatic nation it is, 
which divides its periods of highest antiquity 
according to the manner in which men, wliile 
as yet they were paradisaical spirits, loved each 
other. At first, for many thousands of years, 
with looks; afterwards, with a kiss — a mere 
touch ; — until, at last, in the course of long ages, 
they gradually degenerated into lower forms of 
enjoyment. That moment of spiritual recogni- 
tion, that betraying of the soul by a"look, trans- 
ports us as it were into those primeval times, 
and, with them, into the joys of Paradise. Then 
■we enjoy, with a retrospective sentiment, what 
we had so long sought and did not dare to con- 
fess to ourselves. Then too we enjoy prospect- 
ively the delights of the future, — not with pre- 
sentiment merely, but with possession. Yes! 
if one may say so, with more than possession. 
Tlie future can only unfold, seldom add. Often 
it detracts, and diminishes, with every enjoy- 
ment, the belief in enjoyment. That first mo- 
ment, is when Psyche first beholds the god of 
love, whom, veiled, she had so long loved. Ah ! 
why, unhappy one! didst thou let the spark 
fall, and thereby terminate, for so long a period, 
all thy joys? 

Certain it is, that those souls which are created 
for the truest, purest, noblest love, fear this mo- 
ment of betrayal as their worst foe, and defer it 
with the utmost shyness. The female sex which, 
in all matters of love, is more delicate than ours, 
feels how much its flame loses with every en- 
joyment, and how, contrary to the nature of all 
other flames, it goes out wjien it breaks forth, 
and with every manifestation, weakens its inte- 
rior force and blessedness. Sliy and holy, they 
seek, therefore, to preserve the secret in the 
heart of the lover himself as soon as it is made 
certain. And nothing is more easily made cer- 
tain than this. The secret is profaned, as it 
were, if it but touch the lips. It dies, in a mea- 
sure, with the first kiss, wiili the first sigh. But 
since we are, once for all, bodies. Psyche, as the 
ancient fable teaches, must lose lier celestial 
wings, with her first descent into matter. Is it 
strange that she should endeavor so long, and 
with so much pains, to delude herself with the 
belief, that she loves not the body, but only that 
which is connatural with herself, — the soul of 
the beloved? It is, as if she were ashamed of 
her degradation, and prophesied the brief dura- 
tion of the pleasure which slie seeks. How does 
she accordingly disguise that pleasure! In the 
kiss, she seeks only a union of souls, as sings the 
love-breathing poem below.* 

* Dfini scmihiilco sunvio 
Meiim puelluin suavior, 
Dulceiiir|je flnrem spiritiis 
Duco ex uperto tratiiite; 

Aninia tunc, lEsra et saucia, 
Cuciirrit a<l Inbias mihi, 
Orisque rictum porviuin 
£t labra piieri inollia, 
Riiiiata itineri transitus, 
Vl traiiailiret nilitur. 



Long passages in the fourth book of Lucretius 
describe this striving, this vain and ever unsa- 
tisfied striving after a union of beings, so em 
phatically, so philosophically and powerfully, as 
if Lucretius had written to illustrate the system 
of our author, or as if the latter had taken his 
system of love and enjt^yment from the former. 

It is fortunate that Nature coupled this decep- 
tive phantom of intimate union, on the spiritual 
side, with friendship; and, on the side of the 
body, with an electric spark of her omnipotence, 
by which, from a union, incomprehensible to 
us, of two beings, a third is produced; — as it 
were a creation of love, of desire and unsatis- 
fied longing. And so the fiery chain trails itself 
along. There is added to it, between need and 
excess, a new link, in which is propagated the 
kindling spark of desire. I remark in generaf, 
that the Creator has left no degree of utuon, 
among the creatures of his Nature, without fruit. 
The first degree of sensual enjoyment, which 
the very infant sucks in, yields us life-sap. It 
elaborates for us a nobler material out of a 
poorer. The finer the organ, the more spiritual 
the offspring of its conception. Odors strengthen 
and refresh the soul. Music comforts and soothes 
the heart with celestial drink. Pictures — " S£- 
mulacra pabula amoris" — bring thoughts to the 
mind, more delicate than their own material. 
And finally. Friendship and Love — the one the 
marriage of spirits, the other of bodies — offer us 
a cup of enjoyment, wreathed with the fairest 
fruits. Friendship awakens noble sentiments, 
aspirations, deeds. Love, like the divine spring- 
sun, quickens the tender, motherly vine with 
foliage and fruits. In it is laid the creative 
power of the first Cause. 

It would seem also that Nature has taken 
care to replace and requite the brief and fleet- 
ing enjoyment of love, with a dower direct from 
her own bosom, by which it was designed that 
the humblest living creature should be honoured 
with a spark of the Godhead. That is, parental 
affection, the love of Father and Mother. This 
love is divine, for it is disinterested and often 
without return. It is heavenly, for it is capable 
of being shared among many, and still remains 
entire, undivided, and without envy. Finally, 
it is infinite and eternal, ibr it vanquishes love 
and death. Detestable is the mother who pre- 
fers her lover to her child. The very beasts 
shame her. They have often died joyfully for 
their young. ****** 
Maternal tenderness is the pledge of love with 
which Nature, as it were out of her own hearl, 
has requited the mother's pains. Nothing sur- 
passes the anxiety with which the mother seeks 

Turn, si mora; quid plusculs 
Fuisset in coitu osculi, 
Aiiioris igne percita, 
Transisset et me liiiqiieret; 
Et iiiira prorsurn res foret, 
Ut ad lue herein mnrtuus, 
Ad puerum ut intus vivercm. 

Aul: Cell: L. XIX. Cap. 11 



240 



HERDER. 



a lost oliild, and nothing can equal the joy with 
which, afte"- long seeUing, after many years' se- 
paration, she finds it again, and embraces it as 
if new-born. The craving of a mother after 
children is the most beautiful form of longing 
which lay in the girdle of Love ; — out of which 
that girdle seems to be wholly woven in pure 
female hearts. They are the priestesses at the 
sacred fire of Vesta ; and wo to the despicable 
creature that glows with another flame instead 
of this I Only the point of his arrow has Cupid 
anointed with desire.* Alas! if the whole ar- 
>ow glows with it. 

From the tender, divine, eternal love of the 
parent, to whom can I ascend but to Thee? 
great universal Mother! Tender, highest Fa- 
ther! My language has no name for the feeling 
with which Thou hast established Thyself in 
every creature, in every nerve and corner of 
each beating heart, and hast given to each its 
own joys, immeasurable, inexplicable, insensible 
to every other. Thy whole creation is a weft 
which Power drew forth out of nothing, of which 
Wisdom laid the warp, and in which Love in- 
wrought its thousandfold figures rich in signifi- 
cance and love. Who shall not love Thee, there- 
fore, since every creature draws but to thee, 
points but to thee? And who can love Thee as 
he ought, seeing he is overwhelmed in the ocean 
of thy| thougiits and fore-reaching sensations; 
and even, regarding himself alone, sinks down 
into the deepest deep? Thou sharest the fate 
of all parents, — more loving than loved. But 
Thou art exalted above all others in this, that 
Thou thyself hast created in me the longing 
after Thee, and canst lead me ever nearer to 
Thyself by the bands of knowledge and of love. 
Thou wilt and must do this; my whole heart 
declares it. For the little spark of knowledge 
and of love that is in me is only an off-glance 
of thine infinite flame. Therefore must Thou 
know and name and seek and love me a thou- 
sand-fold more intensely than I can name and 
seek Thee. And this eternal drawing of thy 
heart to mine is, to me, an implanted voucher 
of my undying inclination to Thee, and of an 
ever-growing enjoyment of Thee. 

But how is the Eternal enjoyed ? By contem- 
plation or by sensation t Our author lias a hard 
remark about enthusiasts, which, if carefully 
examined, miglit prove alas! too true. It is a 
general experience that, in all cases of enthu- 
oiasir., women have been implicated. Often, 
the men have only caught the infection from 
tin: women, who, it was said, had borne them' 
anew. The women were a kind of mediators 
of tlie Godhead to the men. And how they 
conceived of the Godhead, especially the human 
God, and with what /'eeling they embraced him, 
is known to the world, from many writings and 
letters. The fainting which the holy Theresa 
experienced before the altar, when the celestial 

* Xpiffaf a<pvKTov oij-oi/ i/icf)i|i. Euripides. 
t i. e, liispireil by thee. Tr. 



Cupid touched he- heart, considered in relation 
to the body alone, could hardly have differed 
from every other faintness caused by love. For 
love is the same in its action on the vital fluids 
of the body, whatever may be its object. In all 
sentiments of this kind, the greatest caution is 
necessary, even to the most innocent. Even 
upon the stream of divine love, the heart re- 
mains a human heart still. All mediatresses, 
even though it were the Mother of God, are 
dangerous. And so, to the female heart, all 
earthly mediators may become dangerous ; and 
the heavenly mediator likewise, if too sensually 
felt. God requires to be loved with the whole 
soul and all its powers, but not with the eifer- 
vescence of the nervous fluid, in a diseased, 
epileptic body. 

We come naturally to the limits which have 
been set to love and longing, in every enjoyment 
here below. These are not merely, as Herr 
Hemsterhuis seems to think, our organs; but, as 
he himself discovers, at last, our isolated indivi- 
dual existence. He likens that property of the 
soul,' which resists commixture with other be- 
ings, to the vis inertia in matter. And, assuredly, 
this power of inaction must be something dif- 
ferent and more than the great mass of mecha- 
nical philosophers know or say about it. The 
words themselves, — Power and Inaction,— relate 
to each other like Bewegung (motion) and Grund 
(stationary ground) in lUe word Bewegungsgriinde 
(motives). Moreover, Leibnitz and all the better 
class of thinkers have hazarded conjectures re- 
lative to the interior constitution of matter, to 
which I would fain hope for a pleasant addition 
in the promised observations of Herr Hemster- 
huis. For ihe present, we will leave this re- 
semblance where it is, and consider the limits 
which have been set to desire in the soul, by 
the nature of the soul itself. We are individual 
beings, and must continue so, unless, in the pur- 
suit of enjoyment, we abandon the ground of 
all enjoyment — our own consciousness — and are 
willing to lose ourselves, in order to find our- 
selves again, in another being, that, after all, 
is not and never can be, our self Even if I 
should lose myself in Deity, as mysticism re- 
quires, without .any further feeling or conscious- 
ness of myself; it would no longer be I that 
enjoyed. The Godhead would have swallowed 
me up, and would enjoy in my stead. How 
well has Providence contrived, therefore, in 
awakening the music of our sensations gradually 
in various tones and modes; now exciting de- 
sire, now checking it, exercising it here actively, 
there passively, and ever, after the most honey- 
ed enjoyment, throwing us back upon our poor 
self, as if saying to us, 'Thou art but a limited 
individual creation. Thou thirstest after per- 
fection, but findest it not. Do not pine at the 
fountain of this one enjoyment, but gather thy- 
self up and strive for something further.' 

Let us look at this in some of the most striking 
proofs and examples. 

All robber-like enjoyment, all enjoyment which 



HERDER. 



24. 



destroys its object, is given us merely as a want 
by the hand of Necessity. It uses itself up and 
dies in itself. Man is a tyrant in the universe, 
but how soon is even this little tyrant satiated 
with plunder, if he keeps within the bounds of 
nature! Every sensual enjoyment is, strictly, 
but a modified necessity. Where mutual de- 
struction ends, there, first, begins a freer, finer en- 
joyment, — a joyful consorting together of several 
beings who mutually seek and love each other. 
A tyrant who would be all in himself, who 
would devour all, as Saturn devours his chil- 
dren, is capable neither of friendship nor of 
love, not even of paternal affection. He op- 
presses and suppresses. Nothing can grow by 
his side, much less together with him, in a com- 
mon crown. 

Where several beings are in pleasant juxta- 
position, and wish mutually to enjoy one another, 
it is evident that no one of them must aim at 
individual, peculiar, consequently, not at the 
highest enjoyment: otherwise he destroys all 
around him. He must give and take, suffer and 
act, attract toward himself and gently impart of 
himself This, indeed, makes every enjoyment 
imperfect; nevertheless, it is the true tact and 
the very pulse of life; — the modulation and eco- 
nomy of desire, of love, and of all the sweets 
of longing. Here I direct attention to the beau- 
tiful wisdom of Nature, who, with sexes, mo- 
ments, circumstances, ages, situations, has divided 
and, as it were, cradled all things in this systole 
and diastole of passive and active, giving and 
receiving. As yonder in the heavens two lights, 
so Gotl has created here on the earth, two sexes 
which are designed to afford each other a mu- 
tual counterpoise, in the oscdiation of feeling. 
One supplies to the other what is wanting of 
tenderness on the one side, and of strength on 
the other. And in the domain of love tender- 
ness is mightier than strength. God has indem- 
nified and veiled with attractions the weakness 
of woman. Where, in compliance with some 
necessity, he has departed from the law of 
beauty, there he has flung around her the girdle 
of love endowed with Desire, which, as said the 
Goddess, " vanquisheth all strength." In friend- 
ship aUo, one party is always the more active, 
the other, auxiliary and passive; one masculine, 
the other feminine; and often, in the inverse 
order of the sexes. In this marriage of souls, 
a monotone is neither agreeable nor profitable, 
nor possible. Consonant tones are required for 
the melody of life and enjoyment, not unison. 
Otherwise, friendship is soon lost in mere fel- 
lowship. 

Hence it is evi<lent, moreover, that tlie attrac- 
tive power of an individual, human soul neither 
can nor ought to extend itself without limit. 
Nature has drawn narrow boundaries around 
each individual, and it is the )nost dangerous of 
all dreams to imagine one's sell unlimited where 
one is limited, to believe one's self the Despot 
of the universe when one is living only on single 
alms. To embrace the whole creation with love 
2f 



sounds beautiful, but we must begin with the 
individual, with the nearest. And he who can- 
not love that, deeply, intensely, entirely, how 
should he be able to love that which is reiiKJte 
and which throws but feeble rays upon him 
from a foreign star? How should he be able to 
love it with any feeling which deserves the 
name of love? The greatest cosmopolites are 
generally the neediest beggars, and they who 
embrace the entire universe with love, for the 
most part, love nothing but their narrow self 

I come to the comparison which Herr H. 
makes between the States of Greece and our 
own; in which he seems to reproach the Chris- 
tian religion with lessening the interest of its 
followers in the transient welfare of the secular 
State, through over -much care for the eternal 
well-being of the individual. The reproach 
would be well founded if the care for the eter- 
nal were opposed to the care for the temporal ; 
and if a happy State could be anything else than 
a collection of happy individuals. It is only a 
misunderstood religion, a religion of priests, that 
will inaintain the former. And with regard to 
the latter, the individual can only care for his 
own welfare and leave it to him who has con- 
trived or who trains the machine, (as Herr 
Hemsterhuis himself calls the State,) to care for 
the welfare of the whole, according to his good- 
will or power. That lawgivers have, almost 
uniformly, misused the Christian religion and 
mixed it up with their barbarous feudal and 
knightly institutions, is the crying evil in all 
Christian liistory. But, for diis, we are not to 
blaine the religion, but the coarse hands which 
have kneaded it with this heterogeneous politi- 
cal dough. Religion, as our author has justly 
defined it, is the free relation of the individual 
to the Supreme Being. Those who have sought 
to honour it with the name of a political ma- 
chine, have, more than any others, deformed 
and degraded it. 

But to our subject ! Nature always begins 
with the individual, and not till she has adjusted 
and satisfied the propensities of the imlividual, 
in his own little circle, does she connect several 
together, and arrange their sentiinents into a 
common weal. The welfare of the State con- 
sists of happy families, or else it is an imaginary 
quantity. When, in the individual man, sensual 
and spiritual joys, friendship and love, parental 
affection and personal virtue, are well-ordered 
and well-paired, then he is happy in himself 
and in others. He cannot, like ocean-slime, 
commingle with all ; he cannot love, praise, arid 
approve all in an equal degree, or change every 
mote into a sunbeain, in order to love it as a 
sunbeam. In attempting to do this, he injures 
the good as well as the bad, and, at last, loses 
entirely his judgment and his stand-point. Who- 
so cannot repel, neither can he attract. The 
two powers are but one pulsation of the soul. 

Thus it is with us in this world; and how 
will it be, farther on, in our eternal pilgrimage? 
It can scarcely be otherwise. The existence of 
21 



242 



HERDER. 



others, so far as they are connected with us, by 
love and longing, rests wholly on our own being 
and consciousness. If we could lose that, we 
coidd have no enjoyment from those. With each 
succeeding step, our existence must necessarily 
become more free and effective. Our enjoy- 
ments will become less corrupting and destruc- 
tive. We shall learn evermore to find pleasure 
in giving and in doing, rather than in passive 
reception. Nevertheless, it should seem that 
the mutual relation which constitutes the sum 
of our wliole happiness, can never entirely 
cease. In order to give, there must always be 
objects to receive. In order to act, there must 
always be those for whom to act. Friendship 
and love can never exist except between beings 
mutually free, — consonant,not unison, least of all 
identified. And finally, as to the enjoyment of 
the Highest, it must always be, as our author 
says, " hyperbole and asymptote." The hyperbole 
forever a[)proaches the asymptote, but never 
reaches it. It is our happiness that we can 
never lose the conception of our own being and 
attain to the infinite one, — that we are God. 
We shall always remain creatures, though we 
should become the creators of vast worlds. We 
shall ap[n'oach perfection, but never become in- 
finitely perfect. The greatest good which God 
could bestow on his creatures was, and will be, 
their individual existence. It is even through 
this that He exists for them ; and, through this, 
he will be to them more and more, from stage 

►O stage, ALT, IN ALt. 



TITHON AND AURORA. 

Although, in general, no epitaph or pane- 
gyric uses to notice how long a man has outlived 
himself, yet is this one of the most remarkable 
and not infrequent phenojnena in the history of 
human lives. The earlier the play of the facul- 
ties and passions begins, the more impetuously 
it is continued, and assailed in various ways by 
external accident, the oftener sliall one discover 
cases of that early exhaustion of the soul,.^of 
the warrior laid prostrate without death or 
wound, — of a manly, and, often even, of a 
youthful extreme age. A man may go about for 
a long while, with a living body, like the image 
of his own funeral monument; his spirit gone 
from him, — a shadow and a memory of his 
former name. Many causes may contribute to 
this early death: qualities of mind and heart, 
too great activity and too sluggish patience, re- 
laxation as well as over-tension, too rapid pros- 
perity and too protracted adversity. For it is a 
general truth, that health, cheerfulness, pleasure, 
and virtue, are ever the medium between 'two 
extremes. Either on the precipitous or the shal- 
low shore of the stream, the vessel may be 
wrecked. In the midd le, it is easy and pleasant 
sailing. Many a one has grown old because he 
wanted the true interior source of activity. He 



was a brook that contracts its waters into itself 
and soon dries up and shows its melanchol) 
bed. This one endeavoured to make seeming 
supply the place of being. The darkness pass- 
ed away, and the glow-worms in the hair glit- 
tered as sparkling diamonds no longer. Tliat 
one would accomplish by toil and memory, 
what intelligence and genius alone can perform. 
The overloaded memory gave way, excessive 
labor tired, and the want of the essential was 
at last painfully apparent. Another, while a 
youth, overstrained his nobler powers; he piled 
up mountains of imagination to the skies, and 
soon, without the lightning of Jupiter, found 
under them his grave. Still another, whose 
learning and effort had no object but his own 
ease, abandoned learning and eflx>rt as soon as 
he had obtained that ease, and buried himself 
in a blessed decay. Here, one, without desert, 
has had his brain turned by an unexpected pros- 
perity, a too rapidly acquired fame, an unlooked 
for success in action. He has no longer any 
thought beyond this success. His seductive 
goddess, Fortune, has crowned him at once with 
laurel, with poplar, and with poppy. He falls 
asleep or babbles nonsense in her enervating 
lap. There, one of great merit has sulfered too 
long with undeserved misfortune, until his 
shoulders are bowed, his breast contracted, his 
arm paralysed, and he can no longer stand erect 
and recruit himself A thunderbolt from heaven 
has stricken the oak even to its root and de- 
prived it of the power of life. To this one — a 
man of manifold capacity — there was wanting 
a capacious breast to despise envy and to wait 
for better times. He suffered himself to be 
drawn into conflict with it, and the flying eagle 
was unworthily vanquished by the viper that 
held him in her folds. That one, — a man of 
honest industry, — was wanting in intelligence. 
His more cunning enemies soon made him 
powerless and wretched. And thus it belell 
ten other characters, in other situations. Hard 
by the theatre of civil life, there is generally a 
hospital, and in that the greater part of the 
actors gradually lose themselves. 

Two things especially contribute to this re 
suit, and they, too, are extremes. In the first 
place, the arbitrariness of the ruling great; and, 
secondly, a too refined delicacy and carefulness. 
As to the former, it is a well-known and favorite 
saying, that nothing is so troublesome as grati- 
tude, nothing so insupportable as contiiuied re- 
spect and the daily spectacle of acknowledged 
merit. Accordingly, new favor purchases for 
itself new gratitude; and creatures whom the 
great purposely attract to themselves, — in whom 
they even pretend to find gifts and merits which 
the gods never gave them, — have, for them, a 
peculiar charm, as their own creation. The sap 
is withdrawn from the old trees that the young 
world may bloom and thrive. Whoso, in such 
cases, is not greater than he on whom he de- 
pends, dies inwardly with self-consuming vexa- 
tion. The majestic voice of Philip the second. 



HERDER. 



»4.3 



" Vo el Rey" lias slain many a one of this de- 
Bciiptioii. Opposed to this miinJer of human 
meiits and powers, there is anotlier, which may 
be termed the most refined species of self-mur- 
der. It is the more to be lamented because it 
occurs only in the case of the most elect of men ; 
suddenly or gradually breaking in pieces their 
costly mechanism. Men of extreme delicacy 
of feeling have a 'Highest' after which they 
strive, — an idea to which they attach themselves 
witti unspeakable loiigins, — an ideal perfection 
which they pursue with irresistible impulse. 
When deprived of this idea, when this fair 
imaije is destroyed before their eyes, the heart 
of their flower is broken, and feeble, withered 
leaves alone remain. Perhaps, more of the 
dead of this description go about in society, 
than one might at first suppose, because they, 
of all men, most careiully conceal their grief, 
and hide even from their friend the slow poison 
of their death, — that sad secret of the heart. 
Shakspeare, who depicted all conditions of the 
soul, has delineated, also, this epoch of the sink- 
ing or confusion of tlie faculties, in various situa- 
tions and characters, with great truth and exact- 
ness. One, — perhaps the crown of lamentations 
over such a state, — may serve as an example 
of all. 

! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, 

The expeciancy and rose of the fair State, 

The glass of lasliion and the mould of form, 

The observed of all observers ! quite, quite down ! 

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 

Like sweet hells jangled, out of tune and harsh ; 
That unmatched form and stature of blown youth, 
Blasted with extasy. 

Not only individual persons outlive them- 
selves, but much oftener and longer, those poli- 
tico-moral persons, so called, — institutions, forms 
of polity, classes, corporations. Often, their body 
remains, for centuries, as a show, when the soul 
of that body has long since fled ; or they creep 
about as shadows among living forms. To be 
convinced of this, let any one enter a Jewish 
synagogue, or read Anqnetil's Zend-Avesta, and 
the sacred books of the Brahmins. There is no 
doubt that all these religious institutions were 
once very useful, anti that, in everyone of these 
hulls, lay the germs of a great development. 
Time has developed each of them more or less, 
— one happily, so that we are disposed perhaps 
to look for more in it than was there ; another 
imperfectly and feeble; as in the great course 
of Nature it will fall out. Nevertheless, every- 
thing has its goal, and the Rabbi, the Destur, the 
Mobed, — perhaps also the Brahmin, — has, in the 
great whole, outlived himself In some regions 
of Mahomnieilanism, something similar is al- 
ready reported of the Koran, although that is 
the youngest of bibles. And in Christendom, 
true as its pure fountain streams, with the water 
of eternal life, how many a vessel is already 
broken that was thought to have exhausted this 
fountain! How many a form which still stands 
there, had long ago outlived itself! Look at the 



Romish Mass! Listen to many of their litanies 
and prayers! Into what tiines do they take us 
back! What a strange savor of long-perished 
ages! As, in Religion, the priestly order, so in 
other institutions the orders connected with them 
follow each its living or its dead. Consider so 
many institutions and orders of the middle ages ! 
Where they could not follow the Genius of opi- 
nion and renew their youth with him, they 
either remained stationary on the shore or else 
the stream bore them lifeless on, until they found 
somewhere their place of rest. Even in Cer- 
vantes' days the Duke of Bejar would not allow 
that Don Quixote should be dedicated to him, 
so long as he supposed.it to be a serious book 
of knight-errantry ; because the taste for such 
things had already begun to be ridiculous. He 
accepted the Dedication gladly when, as the 
book was read to him, lie discovered its true 
character. Time has enacted novels of this 
kind with several institutions. The princes and 
heroes of Corneille are for the most part insup- 
portable to us, and we wonder how other times 
could ever put together, believe and admire 
such nonsense. Shakspeare's court-scenes seem 
to us like Capital and State acts. The knights 
of our day are no longer of the ancient order; 
and that kingly word of Louis XIV. : " L'EtatI 
c'est moi !"' will ever remain the appropriate 
epitaph of that great world-monarch. 

"Whatsoever had a birth must die," says the 
Brahmin ; and that, which seeks to defer its 
downfall by artificial methods, in resorting to 
such methods, has already outlived itself In 
the early spring, the foliage and grass of the 
former year are often still visible; much of it 
has retained its place ; but, in a short time, the 
whole is vanished, and a new raiment covers 
the trees and the bosom of the earth. 

If there is anything in the circle of Humanity 
which ought not to outlive itself, it is Science 
and Art. The nature of these is eternal, and 
they are capable of the purest truth and of infi- 
nite extension. And indeed the real essence 
of Art and Science never dies, never clianges. 
But their forms are all the more perishable, as 
they appear, above all things, to depend on their 
masters and discoverers, — to originate, to flou- 
rish, and to perish with them. So long as the 
discoverer lives, so long as the master teaches 
and directs, men draw living thoughts from his 
living fountain. In the second and third gene- 
ration, one already wanders through schools that 
echo and ape him. The image of the master 
stands there dead. His science and his art has 
outlived itself, not in his own, but in his suc- 
cessors' works. 

Iravels give us a long catalogue of things 
which have thus outlived themselves. Travels 
in the history, as well as in the actual inspection 
of regions, countries, institutions, persons, classes. 
Who that enters an ancient castle, an old-fa- 
shioned knightly hall, an archive of old diplo 
mas and treaties, of old arms and decorations.. 



244 



HERDER. 



old court-houses, churches, convents, palaces and 
iiiipeiial cities, does not feel himself translated 
into a perished century? In a tour through Ger- 
many, one often finds, within a circle of a few 
miles, the ancient, the middle, the modern and 
most modern ages together. Here, we breathe 
still the air ol' the twelfth century; there, we 
hear the n''»lodies of the sixteenth, the tenth, the 
fourth. All at once, you enter cabinets which 
have been instituted under the luxurious Ducal 
Government, — galleries collected \mder Louis 
XIV., and end with institutions which seem to 
have been devised for the twentieth century. 
Instructive as this chaos may be for the travel- 
ler, it would be very confusing and oppressive 
for the resident, did not human nature accustom 
itself to all things. " Lord, by this time he stink- 
eth, for he hath been dead four days ;" said the 
sorrowing sister; one might say, with regard to 
many institutions, four centuries, and still they 
are not offensive to their brothers and sisters. 
These are accustomed to the odor, and find it 
nourishing. 

Italy seems tome the most instructive theatre 
of these life-epochs and world-ages. There, 
you can be with Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, 
Etruscans, nay, if you please, with Chineses, with 
Hindoos, and with the people of Madagascar! 
In Rome, alone, you may follow Paganism from 
Romulus to Diocletian, and Christianity from 
Constantine to Pius. There, and in the Italian 
provinces, you may live at pleasure in the fif- 
teenth, the sixteenth, or the eighteenth century. 
And if you investigate the monuments of Na- 
ture, you will come upon self-survivals which 
will take you beyond the bounds of history. It 
requires a capacious mind to embrace, to dis- 
tinguish, to classify all these scenes. But, to 
such a mind, they exhibit a compend of all his- 
tory, which floods us, at last, with, I know not, 
what pleasing but dissolving melancholy. 

The cloud-capt towers, &c. <kc. 

We are such stuff 

As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

Enough of sleep and of dying out! Let us 
now speak of waking and rejuvenescence! 
How is this brought about? By Revolution? 

I confess that, among the misused words of 
our modern, fashionable vocabulary, few are so 
displeasing to me as this ; because it has entirely 
departed from its original, pure signification, 
and carries with it the most inischievous con- 
fusion of thought. In astronomy, we call revo- 
lution a movement of the great world -bodies 
which returns into itself, — determined by mea- 
sure, number and forces; a movement, which 
is not only the most peaceful order in itself, -but, 
in connection with other hannonious powers, 
establishes the kingdom of eternal order. Thus 
the earth revolves around itself and makes day 
and night, and by means of these, arranges and 
regulates the sleep and the waking of its crea- 
tures, their time for rest and the circle of their 



occupations. Thus the earth moves around tha 
sun and makes the year, and by means of that, 
the seasons, and by means of them, the changes 
of labour and of mortal enjoyment. The revo- 
lution of the moon around our earth gives to the 
sea its ebb and flood, determines the periods of 
diseases, and perhaps, of the growth of plants. 
In this sense it is useful to notice revolutions; 
for, in them, we observe a course of affairs 
which returns into itself, and, in that course of 
things, the laws of a perpetual order. In such 
a course there is nothing abrupt, arbitrary, with- 
out reason. There is nothing of destruction in 
it, but a gently vibrating thread of conservation. 
Revolutions of this kind are the dance of the 
Hours around the throne of Jupiter. They aie 
the chaplet of victory on the immortal head of 
the god, after the conquest of chaos. 

Also, if we draw down this idea of Revolu. 
tion from heaven to earth, it can be no other 
than the idea of a silent progress of things, of 
a re-appearance of certain phenomena, accord- 
ing to their peculiar nature, consequently, of the 
design of an ever-working Wisdom, Order and 
Goodness. In this sense, we speak of the revo- 
lutions of arts and sciences, that is, a periodical 
return of them, the causes of which, we en- 
deavor to investigate in history, and, as it were, 
to calculate astronomically. Thus the Pytha- 
goreans spoke of the revolutions of the human 
soul, that is, of its periodical return into other 
forms. Thus have men investigated the laws 
of the revolution of human thoughts; when 
they return from oblivion into remembrance ; 
when visions and desires, when activities and 
passions which had gone to sleep, reappear 
once more. In all these things, it has been at- 
tempted to discover the laws of a hidden, silent 
order of Nature. 

But the meaning of this word has undergone 
a detestable change, because, in the barbarous 
centuries, men knew of no other revolutions 
than conquests, overturns, oppressions, confu- 
sions v/ithout motive, aim or order. Then it 
was called revolution, when the nethermost 
was made uppermost, — when, by the so-called 
right of war, a nation lost more or less of its 
property, its laws, its goods; or when, by the 
right of monarchy, all those so-called rights 
were enforced, which St. Thomas, Machiavel 
and Naud6 afterwards collected from actual 
events and brought together in one chapter. 
Then, finally, it was called a revolution, when 
the ministers did what the rulers themselves 
would not do; or when, here and there, the 
People undertook that which they could rarely 
execute so well as kings or ministers. Hence 
the numerous Histoires des Revolutions, — a kind 
of book whose title is all the more popular, that 
its contents are, lor the most part, unintelligible 
or abominable. The notion of an aim or object 
was almost lost sight of History became an 
exhibition of entanglennents without a denoue- 
ment. For, after the conclusion of each revolu- 
tion, so called, the confusion, in the kingdoms 



HERDER. 



24 a 



ivhere they occurred, was greater than before. 
Revolutions of this sort, whencesoever they 
may derive their origin, are signs of barbarism, 
of an insolent force, of a mad wilfulness. 
The more reason and moderation increase 
among men, the rarer they will become, until, 
at last, they entirely disappear. Then the word 
Revolution will revert to its pure and true mean- 
ing. Then it will mean, in history also as 
elsewhere, a course of things arranged accord- 
ing to laws, — a course of events which peace- 
fully returns into itself. In this view alone is 
history worth the study; for, as to the revolu- 
tions of wild elephants, when they tear up trees 
and devastate villages, — from these there is not 
much to be learned. 

Not to mislead, therefore, with this abused 
word, and not to make destructive violence a 
meilicine for mortal ills, we will keep the path of 
healing Nature. Not Revolutions, but Evolutions 
are the silent process of the great mother, where- 
with she awakens slumbering powers, brings 
germs to maturity, gives renewed youth to pre- 
mature age, and new life to seeming death. 
Let us see what this remedy comprehends, and 
how it heals. 

If we suppose Nature to have an aim on the 
earth, that aim can be no other than tlce develop- 
ment nf her powers in all forms, kinds and ways. 
These evolutions proceed slowly, often iinper- 
ceptibly; and, ibr the most part, they appear 
yenodkally. After a night of sleep, follows a 
morning of awakening. Under the shade of 
the Ibrmer, Nature had re-collected her powers, 
in order to meet the latter with spirit. In the 
ages of man, childhood continues long; body 
and mind advance with a slow growth, until, 
Willi collected energies, the flower of youth 
breaks forth, and the fruit of later years comes 
gradually to maturity. Very improperly have 
these periods of tievelopmcnt been called revo- 
lutions. There is nothing here that revolves, 
but faculties are evolved, developed. Ever, 
the more recondite and deeper-lying come forth 
to view, which, without many a preceding one, 
could not have been brought into action. There- 
fore Nature made periods. She gave the crea- 
ture time to recover itself Irom one exertion 
gone through with, in order , to begin, with joy, 
and to accoiuplish another and more difficult. 
For when the plant puts forth a flower, or when 
the fruit is Ibrining in it, unquestionably more 
inward and flner forces are put in action than 
when the sap was entering the stem, and the 
lowest leaves were brought forth. In the ordi- 
nary course of things. Nature does not leave her 
work until all its physical powers have been 
brought into action ; the innermost, as it were, 
turned outward, and the development, which, 
at every step, is assisted by a kindly epigenesis, 
ha-s becoine as perfect as it could become, un- 
der the given conditions. 

Men are accustomed to regard each individual 
object, and especially each living individual as 
«n isolated whole ; but a nearer view shows it 



to be connected with soil, climate, weather, 
with the periodical breath of all Nature; and 
that, according to these, it lasts for a longer oi 
shorter time, grows early old or easily renews 
its youth. Man, a rational, moral and political 
creation, lives, by means of these capacities and 
powers, in a peculiar and itifinitely extended ele 
ment. His reason is connected with the reason 
of others, his moral culture with the conduct of 
others, his capacity to constitute himself a free 
being, — both in himself and in connection with 
others, — is so intimately connected with the way 
of thinking, the reasonableness, the active enter- 
prise of inany, that out of this element, he must 
needs be like a fish on dry land, or a bird in a 
space destitute of air. His best powers die out, 
his capacity remains a dead capability; and all 
effort, out of time and place, and without the 
co-operation of the elements, is like a flower in 
the midst of winter. It is Nature that makes 
seasons; it is she that furthers capacities. She 
furthers them also in human kind. Individual 
men, classes, corporations, whole societies and 
nations, can only advance with this stream, they 
have done all if they steer wisely upon it. Let 
no one think that, if all the regents of the earth 
from the proudest Negro King to the mightiest 
Khan of the Tartars should combine to make 
to-day yesterday and to hinder forever the pro- 
gressive development of the human race, whe- 
ther it lead to youth or to old age they could 
ever accomplish their aim. This can never be 
an aim with wise rulers, simply, because there 
is no sense in such fruitless entleavor. 

A wise ruler then will always regard himself 
as the householder, not as the antagonist of Na- 
ture. He will improve every circumstance which 
she offers, to the best issues. Here leaves are 
falling, there a whole autumn of leaves lie al- 
ready in their shrouds. He will not attempt to 
restore them again to their foriner places on 
limb and twig. Can he give tliein back their 
former freshness and sap which inade them a 
living whole with the tree on which they hung'? 
And if he cannot do this, how then? Will he 
crown himself with a withered wreath of dried 
leaves, because they were other once than they 
are now? What Nature could not keep, will 
the gardener keep it? and that too, not in con 
formity with the ends of Nature, but in direct 
opposition to them ? Infinitely more beautilul 
the task to follow Nature, to mark her times, to 
awaken powers wherever they slumber, to pro- 
mote thought, activity, invention, joy and love, 
in whatsoever field of useful eiriployment. Ne- 
cessity comes at last and comjjels with iron 
sceptre. He who obeys reason and measure 
will prevent necessity. Often, he will need 
only to beckon with the lily-staff of Oberon, and 
here new flowers will spring instead of the 
withered ones, and there, if the blossom-time is 
past, nourishing fruits will come to maturity. 
He will come to the aid of the young shoot and 
take it under his protection against op|iressive 
weeds. The old wild tree he will not cut down 
21* 



246 



HERDER. 



but graft more genial fruits upon it, and the 
rejuvenized tree will wonder, itself, at its nobler 
existence. A slight anticipation of tliis kind, by 
wliicli one nation iiad got the start of another, 
has often secured to it, for centuries, unattaina- 
ble advantai;cs. England acquired the position 
which she now occupies, by a somewhat earlier 
adoption and application of certain points of 
constitutional finance and commerce, which had 
long before germinated in other countries, but 
which folly and passion had suppressed. After 
many violent revolutions which passed over 
her, like bloody thunder-showers, it was given 
to the most peaceful and silent revolution, to 
awaken a new activity, and thereby to establish, 
for centuries, the prosperity of a living constitu- 
tion. If in the time of William the Third, she 
had attempted to renew the feudal, military and 
forest laws of William the Conqueror, where 
would she be now? 

All orders and arrangements of society are the 
children of Time. This ancient mother produced, 
nourished, educated thein ; she adorned and 
fitted them out ; and after a longer or shorter 
term of life, she buries them as she buries and 
renews herself. Whoever therefore confounds 
his own being with the duration of an order or 
institution, gives himself unnecessary torment. 
That which was before thee, will be behind 
thee too, if it is to be. For thine own part, act 
understandingly and wisely; time will proceed 
in its great course and accomplish its own. Be 
in thine own person more than thine order; and 
then, however that may grow old, thou wilt be, 
for thyself and for others, always young. Yea, 
the darker the night, the brighter shalt thou 
beam a star! He who does not raise himself 
above the breastwork of his order, is no hero 
within it. An order, as such, makes only pup- 
pets. Personality makes worth and merit. The 
more that idle, dead hull which conceals the 
best as well as the poorest kernel falls away, 
the more the fair and ripe I'ruit appears. Assu- 
redly, therefore, it is no retrocession, but an 
evolution of the times, when the order ceases to 
be all, and men demand to see, in each order, 
persons, men, active heings. And since, without 
a new incursion of barbarism, and with the daily 
increasing necessities of Europe, this feeling 
must necessarily increase, there remains only 
one counsel which can secure each one against 
the senescence of his order. Be something in 
your order, and then you will be the first to 
perceive, to avoid and to amend its defects. 
Its old age will appear rejuvenized in you, 
precisely because there is something in you 
which would grace every form and live in all. 

The excellent Paolo Sarpi wrote a treatise, 
the title of wliicli attracted me exceedingly: 
" How opinions are born and die in us." I was 
very curious to liiv-onie acquainted with its con- 
tents. And alt.iuiigli I saw from Fosoarini's 
extract in Grisellini, that it was not likely to 
contain what I had siqiposed, this capital pro- 
blem nevertheless was often in my thoughts. 



Many are the ways in which, from earliest 
childhood, we arrive at opinions with which 
we clothe ourselves, body and soid. Many o^ 
them cleave to us widi great tenacity, and the 
silliest we generally keep concealed behind our 
innermost, ninth skin, where, let no one pre- 
sume to touch them I Unfortunately, however, 
Time will touch them, and often with very rude 
hands. And he who, in order to save his life, 
that is, his reason, peace and the self-conscious- 
ness of interjial worth, cannot yield the skin 
and hair of his opinions to the meddling Satan, 
is in bad hands. For that which is mere opi- 
nion, or even false opinion, will assuredly perish 
in the fierce fire of purification. But is it not 
something better that shall arise in its place? 
Instead of opinions received on authority or 
even, as Franklin relates, from politeness, know- 
ledge from conviction, reason approved by our 
own investigation, and a self-acquired felicity 
shall be our portion. The old man in us must 
die that a new youth may spring up. 

"But how may this be! Can a man return 
into his mother's womb and be born again?" 
To this doubt of old Nicodemus, the only an- 
swer that can be given is: ^ Paling(nesia !' — not 
Revolution, but a happy Evolution of the faculties 
which slumber in us, and by means of which 
we renew our youth. What we call outliving 
ourselves, — that is, a kind of death, — is, with 
souls of the better sort but sleep, which precedes 
a new waking, a relaxation of the bow which 
prepares it for new use. So rests the fallow- 
field, in order to produce the more plentifully 
hereafter. So dies the tree in winter, that it 
may put forth and blossom anew in the spring. 
Destiny never forsakes the good, as long as he 
does not forsake himself, and ignobly despair 
of himself The Genius which seemed to have 
departed from him, returns to him again, at the 
right moment, bringing new activity, fortune 
and joy. Sometimes the Genius comes in the 
shape of a friend, sometimes in that of an un- 
expected change of times. Sacrifice to this 
Genius even though you see him not! Hope in 
back-looking, returning Fortune, even when you 
deem her far off! If the left side is sore, lay 
yourself on the right; if the storm has bent your 
sapling one way, bend it the other way, until it 
attains, once more, the perpendicular medium. 
You have wearied your memory? Then exercise 
your understanding. You have striven too dili- 
gently after seeming, and it has deceived you? 
Now seek being. That will not deceive. Un- 
merited fame has spoiled you ? Thank Heaven 
that you are rid of it, and seek, in your own 
worth, a faine which cannot be taken away. 
Nothing is nobler and more venerable than a 
man, who, in spite of fate, perseveres in his 
duty, and who, if he is not happy outwardly, at 
least deserves to be so. He will certainly be- 
come so, at the right season. The Serpent of 
time often casts her slough, and brings to the 
man in his cave, if not the fabled jewel on 
her head and the rose in her mouth, at least 



HERDER. 



247 



rnedicinal herbs which procure him oblivion of 
the past, and restoration to new life. 

Philosophy abounds in remedies designed to 
console us for tnisfortnnes endured, but unques- 
tioiiahly, its best remedy is when it strenythens 
lis to bear new misfortunes, and imparts to us a 
firm reliance on ourselves. The illusion which 
weakens the faculties of the soul, comes, for the 
most part, from without. But the objects which 
environ us are not ourselves. It is sad indeed, 
when the situation in which a man is placed, is 
so embittered and made so wretcheil, that he 
has no desire to touch one of its grapes or 
flowers, because they crumble to ashes in his 
hands, like those fruits of Sodom. Nevertheless, 
the situation is not himself; let him, like the 
tortoise, draw in his limbs and be what he can 
and ought. The more he disregards the conse- 
quences of his actions, the more repose he has 
in action. Thereby the soul grows stronger and 
revivities itself, like an ever springing fountain. 
The fountain does not stop to calculate through 
what regions of the earth its stream shall flow, 
what foreign matter it shall take in, and where 
it shall finally lose itself. It flows from its own 
fulness, with an irrepressible motion. That 
which others show us of ourselves is only ap- 
pearance. It has always some foundation, and 
is never to be wholly despised; but it is only 
the reflection of our being in them, mirrored 
back to us from their own; often a broken and 
dim form, and not our being itself Let the 
little insects creep over and around you, and be 
at the uttermost pains to make you appear dead ; 
they work in their nature. Work you in yours, 
and live! In fact, our breast, our character, 
keeps us always more an<l longer upright, than 
all the acumen of ihe head, than all the cunning 
of the mind. In the heart we live, and not in 
the thoughts. The opinions of others may be a 
favorable or unfavorable wind in our sails. As 
the ocean its vessels, so circumstances at one 
time may hold us fast, at another may power- 
fully further us; but ship and sail, compass, 
lielm and oar, are still our own. Never, then, 
like old Tithonus, grow gray in the conceit tliat 
your youth has passed away. Rather, with 
newly awakened activity, let a new Aurora 
daily spring from your arms. 

I oiiglit now to speak to the greater problem, 
so peculiarly adapted to our times: Whether 
nations, countries, states, must also decline with 
old age, or whether they too are capable of a 
new youth? And by what means that youth 
may be renewed? On this question there is 
great division of opinion, and, as each opinion 
knows how to fortify itself witli examples from 
history, this very difference in the answers is 
itself a proof of the indefiniteness of the ques- 
tion. What is it that can grow old in a nation, 
a country, a state? What, in them, can or ought 
to be made young again ? Is it the soul, the 
air, the .«ky? And how are these changed for 
the better or worse? Is it the farms, meailows, 
forests, salt-springs, mines, trees? Or is it the 



manner of working them, the profit and the ap- 
plication of their products ? Is it these alone, 
or is it man himself, his race, his manners, his 
education and mode of living, his principles and 
opinions, his relations and conditions? And 
how shall these be changed? By speeches and 
writings, or by institutions and well-directed, 
consistent, continued action ? And what object 
shall this change accomplish? Superfluity for 
the few, comfort and idleness for the many, or 
the happiness of all? And wherein consists 
the happiness of all? In arts and sciences? 
In seeming or in being? In loquacious enlight- 
iiiment or in genuine culture? All these, and 
perhaps other questions, should be considered 
with careful reference to place, time and cir- 
cumstances, and a comparison with more an- 
cient examples and their consequences. And 
then, it would probably be found : 

1. That laud and people never grow old, or 
only at a very late period ; but that States, as 
human institutions, as children of the times, or 
even, in many cases, as the mere growth of ac- 
cident, have their age and their youth, and, con- 
sequently, an ever-progressive, imperceptible 
movement toward growth, toward blossoming, 
or toward dissolution. 

2. That man, often individual men, may re 
tard or promote these periods, nay, that they are 
mostly promoted by opposite measures. 

3. That when forces are at work, either for 
bloom or for dissolution, their progress is rapid, 
and everything appears to assimilate itself with 
them, until trivial circumstances, — often again, 
individual men, — give the stream a different di- 
rection ; which new direction, again, is the re- 
sult of a living presence, although it sometimes 
appears to be the effect of chance. 

4. That, finally, in order to forestall those 
fearful explosions which are called political re- 
volutions, and which ought to be entirely foreign 
from the book of human affairs, the State has no 
other remedy, but to preserve or to restore the 
natural relation, the healthy action of all its 
parts, the brisk circulation of its juices, and 
must not contend against the nature of things. 
Sooner or later the strongest machine must suc- 
cumb in that contest; but Nature never grows 
old. She only renews her youth periodically, 
in all her living forces. 

The timid nature of man, always compassed 
about with hope and fear, often prophesies dis- 
tant evils as near, and calls tliat death, which is 
only a wholesome slumber, a necessary, health- 
bringing relaxation. And so it generally de- 
ceives itself in its predictions concerning lands 
and kingdoms. Powers lie dormant which we 
do not perceive. Faculties and circumstances 
are developing themselves, on which we could 
not calculate. But even when our judgment is 
true, it usually leans too much to one side. " If 
this is to live," we say, "that must die." We 
do not consider, whether it may not be possible 
that both shall live and act favorably on "'ach 
other? 



248 



HERDER. 



The good Bishop Berkeley, who was no poet, 
was inspired, by his beneficent zeal for America, 
to write the following ; • • • * 

Westward the star of empire tiikes its way; 

The four first acts nlready past, 
The fifili shall close tlie drama with the day, 

Time's noblest oifspriiig is the last,* 

So prophesied the good-natured Bishop, and 
if his spirit could now glance at yonder up- 
striving AiTierica, he would perhaps discover, 
with that same glance, that, in the arms of the 
old Tithon, Europe, also, a new Aurora was 
slumbering. Not four, scarcely three acts in the 
great drama of this, still youthftd, quarter of the 
globe, are past; and who shall say how many 
times yet the old Tithon of the human race may 
and will renew his youth upon our earth! 



METEMPSYCHOSIS, 

IN THREE DIALOGUES. 

DIALOGUE I. 
CHARICLKS AND TUEAOE3. 

Char. You are just the person I wished to 
see, Tlieages. You will be surprised to find me 
in this laboratory of learning. 

Theag. What books are these ? Greek, Latin, 
English, even Hebrew! What are they all 
about? — Metempsychosis. Well! to be sure, that 
is a fertile subject to talk about and to write 
about. 

Char. Let us talk about it then. 

Theag. With all my heart; I have nothing 
else to do. An hypothesis so rich and concerning 
things so reinote ; for and against which so 
much may be said, certainly deserves a few 
words for and against. But we must first come 
to an understanding with ourselves as to the 
meaning of metempsychosis. There are three 
sorts, an ascending, a descending, and a circular. 
Do we understand each other? 

Theag. Perfectly. The ascending is the re- 
fining of lower germs of life into higher; as if, 
for example, the soul of a plant should become 
an animal, the soid of an animal a man, &c. 
The descending is the Brahminical hypothesis ; 
that good men are rewarded by being changed 
into cows, sheep, and white elephants, and the 
wicked punished by becoming tigers and swine. 
The third or circular is — circular. Which shall 
we discuss first ? 

Theag. Whichever you please. The first or 
ascendina is very probable, and, if true, destroys 
the second and the third. If the upward course 
IS the law of Nature with all living things, then 
nothing can move backward or in a perpetual 
circle. Then man too must forward. The chain 
r.annot break with him — tlie highest link that 
we know. He is a being like all other beings, 
and if everything else advances, according to a 

* The original gives the entire poem of which the ahove 
is the concluding stanza, together with a German version 
of it. 



universal law of Nature, then he too must ad- 
vance. 

Char. But we are supposing this law of Na- 
ture already proved. 

Theag. We will not suppose it then. For the 
present, we will know nothing of the first sort 
of metempsychosis; whether, e. g., man was 
first a plant, then an animal, and has reached 
his present condition by a constant progress. 
We will speak only of the second and third 
journey, — backwards and round about. We will 
inquire whether there are data in nature, ex]>e- 
riences of the human species, fore-feelings in our 
soul, ideas in God, as far as he is known to us, or 
in the general course of the world, which autho- 
rize such a supposition. Do you trust yourself 
to answer that question? 

Char. Almost. And I will begin with the 
most intelligible — with the experiences of hu- 
man kind. Do you not know great and rare 
men who cannot have become what they are, 
at once, in a single human existence? Who 
must have often existed before, in order to have 
attained that purity of feeling, that instinctive 
impulse for all that is true, beautiful and good; 
in short, that elevation and natuila.1 supiemacy 
over all around them ? Do you know none 
such ? 

Theag. I know none. 

Char. Have you never read of such rare, 
great, eminent characters? 

Theag. O friend, why amuse ourselves with 
ranging great men according to uniforms? I 
knov.' great men in life and in history, but no 
one who must tiecessarily have been several 
times in a human mother's woinb, in ortler to 
be the man he is. The greatest men, I have 
always found, were the most modest and sin- 
cere. They made no mystery of what they 
seemed to themselves, of what they once were, 
of what they became and how. They did not 
throw themselves into mount iEtna in order to 
become gods ;t for the iron sandals will come 
to light in time. On the contrary, they confessed 
and gave their " Confessions" to the world and 
to posterity. 

Char. And what did they confess? Do not 
you remember Pythagoras who had been Eu 
phorbus? Do you not remember ApoUonius of 
'J'yana? 

Theag. We will leave these fabulous shades, 
and come, if yon please, to persons who stand ii 
the light. Petrarch's, Cardanus's, Montaigne's, Lu 
tlier's, Rousseau's Confessions, — do they breathe 
a syllable of those great, or at least rare men 
having been in the world before ? of their feeling 
that they could not otherwise have become what 
they endeavored to be? On the contrary, do they 
not candidly confess how they had worked their 
way upward, how, with difficulty, they had 
raised themselves out of nothing, how they still 
felt all manner of faults and weaknesses within 

t Deus imtnortalis haheri 
Bum cupit Enipedocles, ardentem frigidus .(Etnain 
Insiluit.— i/orat. 



HERDER. 



249 



themselves, and how, carried away thereby, 
tlit-y would undoubtedly have become bad men 
if tliey had given themselves the reins? You 
remember what Socrates said of the physiogno- 
mist? And Socrates was certainly very capable 
of Pythagorean dreams. 

Char. Perhaps, of this Pythagorean dream, 
too. But ahogether, we know too little about 
Socrates from his own mouth; he speaUs only 
through the mouth of others. Therefore leave 
examjiles, and say: do you not tliini; there have 
been very few truly great people in the world? 

Theag. They would not be called great, were 
there not few of them. 

Char. Do you suppose that these great men, 
rare as they have been in all centuries, became 
what they were and what, in all time, they will 
be. by mere industry, by pains-taking of which 
every mechanical mind is capable? or by Na- 
ture alone, by a kind of native sense, by an in- 
spirHtion which they did not give to themselves, 
which never deserted them, which no one coulil 
imitate, and which every one who attempted to 
imitate, failed? They appeared like Genii, they 
vauinhed like Genii, and men could only say : 
"there he was, there he stood; he is no more; 
where is there another like him?" Is not that 
your opinion ? 

Theag. I need not opine, for all history con- 
firms it. But what has this to do with metem- 
psychosis ? 

Char. Hear me further. Do not these great 
characters appear, for the most part, all at once ? 
Like a cloud of celestial spirits, they descended 
from on high; — like men risen from the deail, 
born again, who, after a long night of sleep, 
brought back the old time, anrl stood forth as 
youths in new and celestial beauty. Does it 
not seem as if the wheel of the times must re- 
volve in order to produce the human race anew, 
to waken the imderstanding, to renovate virtue? 
What if these revolutions in the visible world 
are, what the name imports, revolutions also in 
the invisible, — the spirit-world, — a coming again 
of (lid, noble spirits and races of men ? 

Theag. That sounds fine. Let us see what 
the splendid virion amounts to. That great 
spirits are rare, 1 do not dev.y. I grant further, 
that what they were, they coidd be by nature 
alone, an<l not by an iniprubui labor. But this is 
no argument for iVIetenii)sychosis. Among brutes 
also, there are, in every species, large gradations 
and difi'erences of faculty which only those ob- 
serve, who live, as it were, on intimate terms 
with that species. Must the souls of these ani- 
mals have therefore migrated? Must the more 
intelligent dog have been many times a dog, in 
order to becojne what he is? Or is it not rather 
evident, that everything depends on hapjiier 
organization, a more sprightly genesis, a nobler 
lineage, on favorable local circumstances, on 
climate, birth, training and limidred-anned ac- 
cident, which, with all its ramifications, it is so 
didicMit to compute and to moidd ? Now com- 
pare brutes with man, a two-stringed fiddle with 
2a 



the organ! What an infinite diversity mus: 
there not be in the human species, even because 
the extent of man's powers is so great, his for- 
mation so delicate, his faculties so manifold, the, 
climate in which he lives, the world of circum- 
stances which acts upon him so wonderfully 
diverse, in short, the links of his chain so com- 
mensurable and so incommensurable, as you 
please to consider it! What may not man become? 
Who has ever determined the goal — so much 
and no morel What may not come to pass out 
of so great a multitude, in the stream of the 
ever-progressive development of the world and 
of human kind? Woidd it not be a far greater 
wonder, if all men were born blockheads, than 
that there should be, occasionally, a man of 
sense, as is now the case? Shall the electric 
spark, in no instance, shine forth pure and 
bright? Shall tiot the genuine human form 
show itself here and there in an army oClarvcE? 
What need of goblins and revenants? since this 
nobler form is the true and peculiar form of 
humanity, from which we have only degene- 
rateil, by malformations too easily accounted for. 
You might as well maintain that angels embody 
themselves in these higher specimens of huma- 
nity, or, — if their genius works instinctively,^ 
that certain animals endowed with certain art- 
istic faculties are reproduced in them. I see 
not why we must needs disturb the dead and 
conjure up the prophet Samuel in his night- 
gown, merely that we may say; "I see gods 
arise out of the earth." View Humanity hu- 
manly, and it will appear human to yon. View 
individual great men in their organization, their 
birth, their education, their place and position, 
and you will not need to cross the sea, in quest 
of shadows. 

Char. But that these rare men should be, for 
the most part, cotemporary? — 

Theag. Is that your proof, my good metemp- 
sychosist? As though a heap of shadows Were 
blown along, as in Dante's hell, by a gust of 
wind; or as if a troop of giants, as in Bodmer's 
Noah, came sailing in a balloon, and were 
pleased to alight here! Consult history, you 
will always find that men are awakened by 
external causes, that circumstances, a demand, 
a want, a reward, called them forth; that emu- 
lation stimulated them : that a long series of 
errors hail just run itself out; that a night of the 
ages had past away, and it was time, at last, 
that morning should dawn once more. Gene- 
rally, there had been so much preparatory labor 
and discipline, that these more fortunate men 
needed only to profit by the failures and pains 
of their ancestors, to attain to honor. After 
many dissonances, they hit at last the copsciiaiu 
points of the conl. — That is all that our eye can 
discover from a comparison of periods and of 
men. As to groping farther into the invisible 
after the finger of the Godhead, and endeavor- 
ing to ascertain when and how lie causes men 
to be born ; — I hold that to be above onr sphere 
If we are going to jwelise, I can as well derive 



200 



HERDER. 



ihem from the moon, under certain happy phases, 
as by a palingenesia from the fore-world, which 
does not change quite so regularly as the moon. 

Char. The latter circumstance matters not. 
We are as yet far too young in history, we have 
experienced too few of those periodical revolu- 
tions, to be able to compute them as we do the 
changes of the moon. 

Theag. Then also we are too young to clierish 
fictions which we cannot prove, for which all 
history furnishes no sure data. Young or old, 
the return of the human species must have be- 
come perceptible, the ebb and flood of spirits 
must have been observed, though only by way 
of conjecture. Nay, if with that return, the hu- 
man understanding and moral refinement, the 
inward activity and elasticity of men be sup- 
posed to increase; heavens! what glorious men 
we should have, by this time, in those who have 
been here ten times before ! And where are 
tliesc? Where are they, my friend^ The wisest, 
best and strongest men, — have they lived in 
modern times or in antiquity? And how often 
have the Homers, the Soorateses, the Pythago- 
rases, the Epaminondases, the Soipios appeared 
in the world ? to say nothing of their having 
grown from century to century. The human 
phcEnixes have always been rare, and will al- 
ways remain so. We need not expect that, 
suddenly, with the year ISOO, gods will walk 
the earth instead of men, because the revolving 
wheel has dried the wet clay and brought the 
figures into shape. Let us therefore leave these 
divinations in their proper place, and content 
ourselves with being men, such as our forefathers 
were, once -baked men, and not sewed up, a 
second time, in Jupiter's thigh. Or if, my dear 
niigrationist, you know any story out of your 
primeval world, wliicli I also remember, bring 
it forwards. 

Char. You shall have it; only I beg you to 
be candid, and not to deny the thoughts and 
reminiscences of your youth, especially of your 
early, unso[)histicated childhood. Have you 
never had remembrances of a former state, 
whicliyou could find no place for in this life? 
In that beautiful period, wlien the soul is yet a 
half-closed bud, have you not seen persons, been 
in places, of which you were ready to swear 
that you had seen those persons, or had been in 
those places before? And yet it could not have 
been in this life, as you can satisfy yourself on 
reflection. Whence then are those remini- 
scences ? Whence can they be, but from some 
former state ? Therefore are they so sweet, so 
elevating! The most blessed moments, the 
grandest thoughts, are from that source. In our 
more ordinary seasons, we look back with asto- 
nishment on ourselves, we do not comprehend 
ourselves. And such are we; we who, from a 
hundred causes, have sunk so deep and are so 
wedded to matter, that but few reminiscences 
of so pure a character remain tons. The nobler 
class of men who, separated from wine and 
meat, lived in perfect simplicity, temperate, and 



according to the order of Nature, carried it fur- 
ther, no doubt, than others, as we learn IVoni the 
example of Pythagoras of larchas, of Apollonius 
and others, who remembered distinctly what 
and how many times they had been in the 
world before. If we are blind, or can see but 
two steps beyond our noses, ought we therefore 
to deny that otliers may see a hundred or a 
thousand degrees farther, even to the bottom of 
time, into the deep, cool well of the fore-world, 
and there discern everything plain and bright 
and clear ? 

Theag. You are a true Pythagorean, my friend, 
and worthy to attain-to the deepest well of the 
fore-time; yea! to the original fountain of truth 
itself, if men ever arrive there. I will freely 
confess to you, that those sweet dreams of me- 
mory are known to me also, among the expe- 
riences of my childhood and youth. I liave 
been in places and circumstances of which I 
could have sworn that I had been in them be- 
fore. I have seen persons with whom I seemed 
to have lived before ; with whom I was, as it 
were, on the footing of an old acquaintance. 
But may there not be some other cause for such 
experiences? 

Char. I know of none but the remembrance 
of a former state. 

Theag. Certainly, of a former state; only not 
beyond this life, and in another body. Have 
you never watched yourself, and observed how 
the soul is always occupied in secret? how, 
especially, in childhood, it makes plans, com- 
bines thoughts, builds bridges, meditates ro- 
mances, and repeats all tliis in dreams, with 
the magic colors of the dream-world? Look at 
that child playing and entertaining itself in 
silence. He talks with himself; he is in a 
dream of vivid images. These images and 
thoughts will some time return to him, at a time 
when he does not expect it, and no longer re- 
members whence they are. They will appear 
to him with all the decorations of the scene in 
which he first conceived tliem.or which, it may 
be, a youthful dream brought before his mind. 
Tlie situation will create a pleasant delusion, 
as every retrospect which brings agreeable 
images before the mind deludes us. It will be 
taken for an inspiration because it actually 
comes like an inspiration from another world ; 
that is, rich in images and without pains. A 
single trait of the present picture will recall it; 
a single sound which now touches the soul, 
awakens all the slumbering tones of former 
times. These are moments of the sweetest 
rapture, especially in beautiful, wild, romantic 
spots, in motnents of pleasant intercourse with 
persons who, with an agreeable illusion, unex- 
pectedly create in us, or we in them, the feel- 
ing, as it were, of an earlier acquaintance: re- 
miniscences of paradise, but not of a previous 
human life; the paradise, rather, of youth, of 
childhood, or of pleasant dreams which we had 
either sleeping or waking, and which, in fact, 
are the true paradise. The palingeiiesia is there 



HERDER. 



fore correct, only not so wonderful as you sup- 
pose, but, OTi the contrary, very natural. 

Char. Your explanation is charming, but — 

Thcug, I tliink it will prove convinciti", if 
we watch ourselves. Do you not think that 
man experiences the highest delight and even 
a kind of ecstasy, when he beholds a dream, 
wliicli the soul had composed out of its dearest 
images, suddenly and unexpectedly, though only 
partially realized ? Must not the soul welcome 
such a dream with rapture, and embrace it as 
Adam emblazed Eve, when it sees in it the 
image of itself, the creation of its sweetest mo- 
ments, the fruit of its secret love? Behold, 
my friend, hence come those surprises, those 
suilden and often so pleasing, so deeply pro- 
phetic and powerful sympadiies ; hence the 
divine and divining power of first impressions. 
The second impression can never give it. That 
only wetvkens the rapture of the first and de- 
composes the picture. As long as the soul 
realizes the fir=t dream, it floats, as it were, in 
the Elysium of childhood. When the dream is 
dissolved, then, alas! the gods have become 
men, then we must till the ground and eat our 
bread in sorrow and in the sweat of our face. 
Observe particularly, that, with well-organized 
men, reminiscences of this kind are mostly 
beautiful, but wild, romantic, often exaggerated, 
precisely like the impressions and feelings of 
their youth. Sickly people retain ideas of pain, 
weak people feelings of difflculiy and trouble — 
tlie reflections of their early impressions. Tliese 
feelings return, at certain times, in moments of 
weakness, of sudden attack, when tlie soul is 
otf its guard and gives itself up to involuntary 
combinations of thought; they return often; 
they become dominant feelings. 1 could men- 
tion striking examples of this, but they would 
lead us too far out of the way. Observe people 
in love, and insane people, — especially melan- 
choly love and mild insanity, — you will see the 
power of first impressions, the entire youth of 
the soul in every trait of the pictures which 
filled their minds; you will hear them in all 
the complainings of their aberrations. Nay, 
observe your own soul in dreams. There, we 
all wander alike. After a certain age, we de- 
corate all our dreams with scenes of our youth: 
the very persons who a|)pear in them, if they 
were our nearest and most beloved, assume 
other, and, as ilseenis, more lovely and roman- 
tic forms. In all the fantasies of love the first 
impression is the dearest, the most indelible. 
In short, we spell together, where we can, an 
alphabet out of our youth whose traits are the 
moot agreeable, the most impressive, the most 
familiar to us. Have I satisfied you with my 
solution ? 

Char. Not entirely. Some reminiscences are 
so wonderful, so foreign, and, to use your lan- 
guage, so incapable of being spelt with the im- 
pressions of the youth and childhood of this 
life, that — 

IVicag. That they necessarily require another 



world, a former life? Well, then, why are yott 
not true to your own hypothesis? Why do you 
not actually assume another world, a foregone 
connection in the world of spirits and of souls, 
as Plato fabled, as the old Rabbins and many 
nations conceived? Methinks, if we must dream, 
we shall do well to dream the freest of dreams. 
Imagine, for example, how once, with your be- 
loved in the land of spirits you 

" Swarmed unseen, smsill as a ray of light ; 
Tliink htiw, updn an oransre le<if, 
You met for sport and jest ; 
In the luxuriou-s lap of young auriculas, 
Oft winged with converse sweet the laggard time." 

Why must yon make your scene so narrow and 
let the soul beg so often and laboriously, in our 
poor humanity, the spiritual alms which it 
may have far cheaper and all at once if you 
send it into the realm of spirits and divest it 
entirely of its corporeal nature. Have you never 
read letters from the dead to the living? 

Char. Many. 

Theag. Well, then, you know what freedom 
and absence of restraint there irin tlie kingdom 
of spirits. Therefore it is that children love 
dreams of this kind so much, because they blend 
them with their own dreams, which they seein 
to confirm therewith as with traditions from 
another world. For myself, thougli I tolerate 
these things in poetry, and once delighted in 
theiti, at my present time of life I am voiitent to 
renounce the dream of pre-existence, and to 
study my soul in its present bonds, in its poor 
actuality. 

Char. And what results do you draw from 
your studies in it? 

Thcag. Results? That's more than I know. 
But the study itself, it seems to me, is very pro- 
fitable, and I wish that we might study our 
children for the same purpose. 

Char. For what purpose? 

Thcag. To notice their first impressions, the 
manner in which their souls are aflected by 
thein, the secret ideas and images with which 
they entertain themselves, which they spin and 
spin, like a fine invisible web, according to their 
own will and pleasure. Have you never ob- 
served that children will sometimes, on a sud- 
den, give utterance to ideas which make us 
wonder how tlieygot possession of tliem, which 
presuppose a long series of otiier ideas anil se- 
cret sci/'-commuiiings, which break forth like a 
full stream, out of the earth, an infallible sign 
that the stream was not produced in a moment 
from a i'ew rain-drops, but bad long been flow 
ing concealed beneath the ground, and, it may 
be, had broken through many a cave, had car 
ried away many a rock, and contracted many 
defilements? 

Char. And if we do observe this, who can 
resist Nature? Can we arrest the course of 
these streams or bring them to light? Can we 
change the constitution of the earth and of 
human souls accortling to our pleasure? 

2'heag. We can in one sense, and in anothei 



252 



HERDER. 



sense we cannot. We can as far as we ought, 
and we ought as far as we can. If the souls 
of our cliiliiren are dear to us, and we are as 
deeply convinced as I am, of the power of first 
impressions, ought we not imperceptibly to 
guide and to determine these first impressions, 
so far as they are in our power? I say, imper- 
ceptibly, for else it is all in vain. The soul, in 
its most secret operations, bears no restraint, no 
mechanical law; it works freely out of its own 
nature; and these first efforts contain the em- 
blem of ail its future workings tlirough the 
whole course of its life. To watch it, therefore, 
and, when in pleasant wilds and agreeable 
labyrintlis it wanders and loses its way, to 
guide it in the shape of a briglit star, or like 
Minerva in Homer, in the form of a foreign tra- 
veller, — not teacher or overseer, — in short, as a 
certain philosopher desired for liis daily por- 
tion, to supply to our children joyful morning- 
iuiiiges and youthful pictures, that hereafter at 
evening and in old age, they may have glad 
reminiscences from the Platonic kingdom of 
spirits and may acquire no debasing and terrible 
ideas of metempsychosis ; — that I think we can 
ami ought to do; although, of course, subject to 
the power of fate. 

Char. Yes! to be sure, subject to the power 
of late. 

Tlieag. For we are not masters of all our 
own ideas and im[)ressions, much less of the 
impressions of our friends and our children. It 
is not we ourselves who have placed our souls 
here, much less have we armed their forces against 
the universe which streams to lliem from every 
side. There are actually persons who are des- 
tined to sorrows and misfortune, for wlioin early 
impressions and ideas, cares and disease have 
in a great measure ditninished and destroyed 
the joy of life. The cnp which they are to 
drink has been made bitter, or else turbid and 
distasteful ; for there are evils wliich cannot be 
wholly done away in this life. These persons, 
too, must content themselves, meanwhile, to bear 
with cheerfulness, at least with equanimity, the 
burden which is laid upon them, the insepara- 
ble burden of life, and to await in hope another, 
freer, better being. 

Char. Do you see now how you arrive at my 
nieteiupsychosis? Who knows what these peo- 
])le may have committed in their former state, 
that they are now made so miserable by the 
hand of fate and not by their own fault? But 
you are preparing to go. 

Tlieug. It is late. Another time we will 
begin where we leave oif, as is the law of me- 
tempsychosis. Sleep well, Charicles, and dream 
of the primeval realms of love, and not that 
you were once Sejanus or Ravaillac. 

Char. In that case it were well that I am no 
'onger so, and that my evil destiny lies already 
behind me. Sleep well ! 

DIALOGUE U. 
Charicles. I hope, my friend, to hear you speak 



more reasonably to-day on the subject of out 
conversation. Yesterday you were somewhat 
warm. 

Theages. That depends on what you mean 
by ' reasonable' and ' warm.' If equanimity is 
shown by investigating, then I had it yesterday ; 
but if you desire that laxity and coldness to 
which everything is indiflerent — 

Char. Not exactly iiulitferent. To whom can 
it be a matter of indifference that poor, vexed 
man should find some indemnification for pre- 
sent, pressing evils, at least in the beautiful 
visions of hope? that he should receive some 
light concerning God, the world, the course of 
fate? Where Seneca's reasons cease, where 
even Religion does not explain, but only ties 
new knots, there — 

Theag Charicles, let us not bring religion into 
the play, especially in so disparaging manner. 
Religion, most surely, knows nothing of metem- 
psychosis, but points in quite another direction, 
with all its promises, threats, commands, exam- 
ples. The wheel of Ixion, the stone of Sisy- 
phus, the drawing of the Danaides — such would 
be the eternal revolution of human destiny, not 
a comforting, heavenly recompense. In Dante's 
hell, the hypocrites walk with leaden mantles 
and averted, backward-looking-face, in a perpe- 
tual circle; they go forever and never move 
from the spot, and forever look behind them 
with their twisted tiecks. 

Char. But, my friend, do you also look back 
calmly, a few moments. How many wretches 
are there behind yon, who have not deserved to 
fall so low, who, therefore, nmst rise higher in 
this life in order to reconcile us, in some degree, 
with Divine justice and mercy. 

Theag. To reconcile? You would tlien be an 
enemy of God, if there be no migration of souls 
in the circulations of Himianity? You must 
needs deny his justice and paternal goodness, if 
he did not permit you to return to this earth 
again and again? For myself, I confess I am 
heartily satisfied with having been once on the 
earth and lived my life, as man. For at best, 
says one of the eldest sages, it is " labor and 
sorrow :"' and that is its everlasting circle. 
" Man who is born of woman is of few days and 
full of trouble. He cometh forth as a flower 
and is cut down ; he fleeth also as a shadow 
and continueth not." That is his destiny. 

Char. A sad destiny! 

Theag. Sad or consoling, — enough, it is his 
destiny. When you look at human life in all 
its connections, does not everything within you 
seem to cry aloud : " God be praised ! I am to 
be lived but once." The morning of our days, 
how soon past! The bud of our earthly being 
how soon withered ! Now the day gets sultry, 
wearinessof life succeeds ; gradually the evening 
draws nigh, and the sun goes down. Man fades 
as he bloomed, he forgets his own thoughts, he 
distrusts his own powers, he dies before he dies, 
and rejoices to find his grave. This is the un- 
changeable circle of the days and seasons, of 



HERDER. 



253 



the life-period and human ages on our earth. 
And you would have the wretch tread this circle 
a thousand times when he rejoices to have trod- 
den it but once ! You would have Nature, liUe 
Penelope, forever weave her web and weave it 
anew, only to destroy it again. Unfortunate 
Humanity with all its talents, hopes and powers ! 
Weak-minded Penelope! — for whose under- 
standing at least I would not be a suitor. 

Char. But, my friend, has not the tree, the 
flower, the day, the same destiny? and do they 
not return too? It appears to be the law of 
Nature; why should weak, proud man alone 
resist iti 

Theag. Truly, he would be weak and proud, 
to resist it as a tree, as a flower, or as the day ; 
but he is neither of the three; and furthermore 
tliese three do not return. The tree stands rooted 
in the earth, and if it has, as I doubt not, a life, 
it is only the first germ of an inferior kind of 
life. This, it is a great while in working out, 
and must remain long in its place. Every year 
is to it but one day ; the spring its morning, the 
■winter its sleep. It must endure, produce many 
leaves, blossoms and fruits which serve the air, 
animals, man, — the whole superior creation. 
Then it gradually grows old and dies. That 
which now shoots forth around it, is not itself 
but its olTspring. What has become of its life- 
power and lile-breath, in odors, blossoms, leaves, 
fruits, we know or do not know. Our glance 
cannot and must not penetrate the kingdom of 
productive powers. The tree, then, does not 
come wiiliin your palingenesia ; it does not mi- 
grate, but lives out its life, as a world of change- 
able, unreturniug leaves, blossoms and fruits. 
The same of the flower. And the simile of 
the day, which certainly never returns, was, un- 
doubtedly, meant oidy as a simile. You are, 
tlierelure, entirely without example in the order 
of nature. And do you tliink that man, man 
alone, is to be this example of an Ixionic-Tan- 
talistic-Danaidal destiny'! an example without 
example, nay, almost without design? 

Cliur. Not entirely without design. He would 
learn the science of life in theotdy way in which 
it can be learned ; by the most uiany-sided view 
of it, and the most living experience. He would, 
therefore, always be tried, purified, refined, con- 
firmed ; the thread of his identity would con- 
tinue and he would advance, however much he 
might seem to move in a circle. 

Theag. A slow progress ! in which Fate would 
treat us as Phrygians, who are always wise be- 
hindhand, and never know how the boy feels 
who receives the stripes, until they have re- 
ceived them themselves. And to receive these 
stripes forever! 

Char. Fate will not inflict them without need ; 
and since it is once for all established, that we 
really and truly know otdy that which we have 
ourselves tried and experienced — 

Theag. It seems to me, my friend, that you 
abuse the truest of propositions, when you 
apply it in that way. 1 need not try everything 



in this world; else, wo to poor hnmanity! 
What wise man would wish to be inoculated 
with the plague in order to ascertain its true 
nature? What man would wish to be a jiatri- 
cide or a matricide, in order to learn how Nero 
or any other monster must have felt? Arid 
what kind of a destiny would that be, which 
should find pleasure in making me perform all 
sorts of detestable parts, in order to give ine ihe 
feeling that I had performed them? You see 
what a system it is that can furnish occasion for 
all manner of enormities, making the lusts 
which the villain feels within himself, his pre- 
serit ^destination,^ and giving him, when he dies 
upon the gallows, the sweet consolation that 
"now he has expiated one of his debts; — it 
was his destination to tread that path at pre- 
sent ; what he has not yet learned and e.\pe- 
rienced, he will have time to learn in other sta- 
tions." 

Char. We will not speak of these abuses. 
The best things may be abused, in the worst 
manner, by foolish and wicked men. I return 
to my question. How will you vindicate the 
goodness of God who has made the lot of man 
so unequal? Either, the ideas of evil and good, 
perfect or imperfect, happy or unhappy, must 
be very indifi'erent to him ; or — 

Theag. Or we ought not to measure him by 
our petty, narrow, pitiful standard. Who is 
happy? Who is unhappy? Is the civilized 
man more so than the savage? The slave in 
golden, more than the slave in iron chains 1 
Where, on our earth, dwells perfection ? Where 
has it built itself an house? Are we constituted 
its judges? We who live only on the dole of its 
grace and mercy? God created us not to judge 
the human species, but to live in it and to re- 
joice in our place, and to bless our kind wherever 
and as far as we can. He himself has done no 
more than, according to his wisdom, he could; — 
than, according to his goodness, he should. He 
took counsel of both, and so he created the hu- 
man race. Who can ask; "why no higher?" 
" why no lower?" Enough, it exists; and let 
each one rejoice that he too exists, enjoy his 
being, and trust in Him who brought him hither, 
that He will also lead him forth and lead him 
farther. 

Char. So, the inequalities of the human con 
dition, on our earth, find no explanation with 
you? 

Theag. No other than this : " they lay in the 
plan of creation." Our planet, as it is once for 
all constituted, was intended to bear what it 
can, to produce what it can. Therefore it has 
been inade a globe with all varieties of climate, 
of country, of vegetable, animal, human kinds. 
The ladder is erected in both hemispheres, its 
rounds are innumerable: where do they termi 
nate ? Through an hundred gates everytliing 
presses into the kingdom of God, and, through 
hundred thousand, forth again, in all gradations, 
upwards, forwards. Where God shall bles» the 
poor, merchandised negro? whether in a para- 
Si 



254 



HERDER. 



dise among; the nioiintains,* or beneath a lazy 
oishop s mitre, because lie lias once ground him- 
self weary, — let those decide who can. As 
diverse as this world is, so diverse will the 
future also be. Or if not, — if everytliin<^ is to 
be united by simpler ends and more determinate 
mafiuiludes, — why, so much the better ! Enough, 
1 often find happiness here, where I sought it 
not; beauty beneath a covering which seemed 
most foreign to it; wisdom and virtue, for the 
most part, in rude, despised and undistinguish- 
ahle forms. Precisely, where paint and prink- 
ing begin, there truth, justice, happiness cease ; 
and shall we let our poor pilgrim migrate to 
these gilded pagodas, to lose the truth which 
they possess and to exchange inward worth and 
wealth for wretched outward tinsel? The more 
I learn to know Humanity by other tokens than 
the cut of the cloak, the more cause I find, even 
in this stage of being, to adore Providence with 
kneeling reverence. Where we expect the 
greatest misery, there dwells often the greatest 
happiness. Simplicity is not stupidity, and cun- 
ning is neither blessing nor wisdom. I there- 
fore still hold with the poet; — 

" Wisely doth Destiny its gif s allot ; 
To each, food, shelter, raiment and what not, 
Strengili to liie poor and to the weak man, place." 

Char. But, my dear friend, yon surely know 
the law of econoiny which holds as well in re- 
garti to power as to space? It rules throughout 
all Nature. Is it not very probable that the 
Deity is guided by it in the propagation and 
progress of human souls? He who has not 
becoiTie ripe in one form of Humanity, is put 
into the oven again, and, some time or other, 
must be perfected. 

Theag. But suppose he should be burned in 
the process? The mould of humanity is so 
narrow, the position — whether here or there, in 
rags or in purple — has so little to do with the 
residt, that he who cannpt be upright in oi^e 
costume, will scarcely be so in another. At all 
events, there inust be no necessity about it, else 
all the morality of free-agency is at an end, and 
man is thrown about like a stone, and shoved 
hither and thither like a clod of earth. Do you 
see where your hypothesis is leading you again? 
To a fatal necessity which enfeebles all striving 
and aspiration after happiness, beauty, virtue 
in every form, under every mask, and binds us 
in fetters of blind obedience to the car of Des- 
tiny. But we have been prating long enough 
in this narrow room ; and that has made our 
conversation assume such a contracted, meta- 
physical character. Look at the beautiful, 
starry night! Yonder rises the moon. I pro- 
pose, that we should betake ourselves, soul and 
body, out of this metaphysical atmosphere into 
free Nature. 

* — "Simple Nature to his hope has given 
Behind the cloudtopt hill an huiiiblei- heai'on. 
Some safer world in depth of woods embr.tced 
fiome happier island on the wal'ry waste." 



They went forth and soon the tone of thcit 
conversation was changed. The holy silence 
wliich night spread around them, the bright 
celestial luminaries suspended like lamps above 
their heads, on the one side some lingering 
shimmer of the evening red, on the other the 
moon lifting herself softly from behind the 
shadows of the forest: — how does this magnifi- 
cent temple exalt, expand, enlarge the soul ! At 
such moments, one feels so perfectly the beauty 
and the nothingness of earth, and what refresh- 
ment God has provided for us on this star, on 
which sun and moon, the two fair lights of 
heaven, alternating, conduct us through life, 
and how low and small and vanishing is this 
speck of our earth, compared with the measure- 
less splendor and glory of stars, suns and 
worlds. 

What think you now, said Theages, of your 
principium minmd, according to which, you would 
be forever knocking about on the earth, chained 
to a grain of sand ? Look at the heavens, God's 
star-writing, the primeval tradition of our im- 
mortality, the luminous chart of our far pil- 
grimage! Where does the universe end? And 
why do rays come down to us from yonder 
farthest star ? Why have there been given to 
man the glance and the flaming flight of im- 
itiortal hopes? Why, when we have been ex- 
hausted with the rays of the sun and bound fast 
to the dust all the day, does God unveil to us at 
night this sublime field of infinite eternal pros- 
pects? We stand lost amid the host of the 
worlds of God, lost in the abyss of his immen- 
sity round about us. ' And what should bind 
my spirit to this weary sand-grain, when my 
body, the hull, has sunk into the ground? All 
the laws which bind me here, evidently relate 
to my body only. That is formed of this earth 
and must return to this earth again. The laws 
of motion, the pressure of the atmosphere, — 
everything confines that, and only that, here 
below. The spirit once escaped, once rid of 
the delicate but strong bands of sense, impulse, 
propensity, duty and custom which bind it to 
this little sphere of visibility; what earthly 
power ean hold it longer? What law of Nature 
has been discovered which should compel souls 
to revolve in this narrow race-course? The 
spirit is raised above the bounds of time, it 
despises space and the slow movements of 
earth. Once disendDodied, it is immediately in 
its place, its sphere, in the new kingdom to 
which it belongs. Perhaps that kingdom is 
around us and we perceive it not; perhaps it 
is near us and we know not of it, except in 
occasional inoments of happy fore-feeling, when 
the soul, as it were, attracts it to itself, or it the 
sotd. Perhaps, too, there are appointed for us 
places of rest, regions of preparation, other 
worlds in which, — as on a golden heaven-lad 
der — ever lighter, more active and blest, we 
may climb upward to the fountain of all light, 
ever seeking, never reaching the centre of our 
pilgrimage, — the bosom of the Godhead. For 



HERDER. 



25f 



we are and must ever be limited, imperfect, 
finite beings. But wherever I may be, through 
wliatever worlds I may be led, I shall remain 
forever in the hands of the Father who hath 
brought me hither and who calls me further; 
forever in the infinite bosom of God. 

I am sorry, said Charicles, to interrupt you in 
your conteinplations which remove you so far 
from our earth; but do not leave me behind. 
Wherever you are free, wise and active, there 
is heaven; and why, then, do you shun and flee 
the earth? If you can live more freely, wisely, 
happily, in some other human form, and so 
ascend continually in your inward condition, 
what matters place and scene? Here or tliere, 
Gods world is God's world; one theatre is as 
good as another. Our earth too is a star among 
stars. 

Theag. Well, my friend ; but how far is it 
possible to climb in our humanity? Is not its 
sphere as narrowly bounded, as dusty and as 
filthy as this star itself? The best of hearts is 
still but a human heart; body is body and 
earthly life .is earthly life. The miserable de- 
tails of business, the cares of life, so necessary 
and yet so unprofitable, still recur. The difi'er- 
ent life-periods, with their changing imperfec- 
tions, recur. Even in regard to virtues, the 
human race is divided into its two sexes, which 
stand over against each other, on one root, 
mutually embrace and crown one another, but 
can rjever become one and the same perfection, 
in human life. What the one has, is wanting 
to the other. What one man has, another man 
wants. Birth, station, climate, education, office, 
mode of living forever limit and impede. Man 
grows for a few years only, and then stands 
still or declines and recedes. If he attetnpts, 
in old age, to appear a youth and to imitate 
others, he becomes ridiculous, he becomes 
childish. In short, it is a narrow sphere, this 
earthly life; and do what we will, as long as 
we are here, it is impossible to escape this nar- 
rowness without greater injury and the entire 
loss of ourselves. But hereafter, when death 
shall burst these bonds, when God shall trans- 
plant us like flowers into quite other fields and 
surroimd us with entirely ditlerent circumstan- 
ces, then, — Have you never experienced, my 
friend, what new faculty a new situation gives 
to the soid ? a laculty, which, in our old corner, 
in tlie stifling atmosphere of old circumstances 
and occupations, we had never imagined, had 
never supposed ourselves ca|)able of? 

Char. Who has not experienced that? From 
that very circumstance 1 drew the refreshing 
draught of the Lethe stream with which my 
■patiiigenesia has already rejuvenized me, here 
on this earth. I feel, as you do, that, in spite 
of all our striving and eflbrt, the sphere of 
humanity is insurmountable, and that our nature 
is circumscribed within fixed limits. Here, on 
this earth, no tree reaches to the heavens; cer- 
tain stains, once contracted, all the rivers of the 
world cannot wash out; many weaknesses and 



imperfections, after a certain length of time, 
can scarcely be recognised, much less laid asiile. 
Often, the coarser are exchanged for the more 
refined and more dangerous. All that is true. 
Moreover, I see very well, that, in the narrow, 
ever repeated circle of earthly lite, nothing 
superlatively great is to be effected. There is 
so much useless trouble, and, from renewed 
effort, so little of fresh acquisition. The do- 
main which you unfold is indeed more exten- 
sive, the field to which you invite is infinite, — 
the host of all the worlds that lie in my eternal 
path toward the Godhead. But, friend, who 
shall give me wings for such a flight? It seems, 
always, as if something hurled me back to my 
earth. It seems to me, as if I had not yet used 
up that, had not yet made myself sufficiently 
light to ascend higher ; who shall give me wings ? 

Thcag. If you will not receive them from the 
sacred hand which points thither, then receive 
at least some feathers fronj friendly — from your 
friend Newton's hands. 

Char. From Newton's? 

Theag. Even so. The system which he con- 
structed out of stars and suns — let that be to 
you the fabric of your immortality, of an ever- 
during progress and upward flight. Are not all 
the planets of our solar system bound to each 
other and to their centre or focus, the sun, by 
the power of attraction ? 

Char. Unquestionably. 

Theag. They constitute then a firm, an inde- 
structible whole, in which, if anything should 
be changed or disturbed, the whole, with its 
great harmonies, must suffer and go to ruin. 

Char. Precisely so. The planets all relate to 
the sun, and the sun, with its forces, its bulk, its 
light, its warmth and distance, relates to the 
planets. 

Theag. And yet the planets are only the 
staging of the theatre, the dwelling-places of 
the creatures, who, on ihein, revolve around the 
infinitely more beautiful Sun of eternal goodness 
and truth, in various degrees of removal, with 
various eclipses, perihelia and aphelia. Is it 
possible that the scenes themselves should be 
so closely connected and not the contents of the 
scenes, — the play itself? Is it to be supposed, 
that the planets are so exactly arranged iii rela- 
tion to each other and to the Sun, and that the 
destiny of those who live in them, and ibr 
whose sake they have been prepared, is not as 
closely connected, and more closely, inasmuch 
as being is more than costume, matter more than 
place, life and subject more than theatre and 
stage? In nature everything is related, — morals 
and physics — like body and spirit. Morality is 
only a inore beautiful physique, of the spirit. 
Our future destination is a new link in the chain 
of our being, which connects itself with the pre- 
sent link most minutely and by the most subtile 
progression, as our earth is connected with the 
sun, and the moon with our earth. 

Char. I surmise what you would say, my 
friend, but — 



256 



HERDER. 



Theag. In these matters we can do nothing' 
else but surmise and forebode. And beneath 
tiie silent gaze of the stars, in th,e face of the 
friendly moon, the surmises which we send into 
that immeasurable distance are so great, so 
elevating! Imagine, for a moment, tl«it our 
star-fabric is as closely connected in regard to 
the moral condition of its inhabitants as it is in 
its physical circumstances, — that it is a choir of 
sisters praising the Creator in various tones and 
pro])ortioiis, but with the harmony of a single 
power. Imagine that, from the farthest planet 
to the sun, there are gradations of being as of 
light, of distance, of masses, of forces, (and no- 
thing IS more probable) ; imagine the sun to be 
the rendezvous of all the beings of the system 
which he rules as he is the king of all light, of 
all warmth, of all beauty and truth which he 
communicates, in various gradations, to the 
creatures. Behold here the great ladder by 
which all ascend, and the long way which we 
have yet to tread, before we arrive at the centre 
and father-land of that which, in our star-sys- 
tem, we call Truth, Light, Love I 

Char. So, then, the farther removed from our 
sun, the darker, the coarser? On the other hand, 
the nearer to that body, the brighter, the lighter, 
the warmer, the swifter'? The beings in Mer- 
cury, which is always hidden in the rays of the 
sun, must indeed differ in their nature from the 
sluggish inhabitants of Saturn — those dark Pata- 
gonian giants who scarcely, in thirty years, get 
round the sim, and whose night, even with its 
five moons, is poorly lighted. Our earth then 
would occupy a middle station? 

Theag. And perhaps that is the very reason 
why we are such middling creatures, standing 
half-way between the dark Saturnians and the 
bright sun -light, the fountain of all truth and 
beauty. Our reason is, in fact, but in its first 
dawn here; our freedom of will, too, and our 
moral energy is but so so. It is well, therefore, 
that we are not to tarry for ever on this earth- 
planet, where, it is most likely, we should never 
come to much. 

Char. You think, then, that we are destined 
to travel through all the planets'? 

Theag. That I know not. Each planet may 
send its inhabitants, who are all, in various de- 
grees, aspiring to one Sun, by the shortest route 
to that goal, and by such stages and gradations 
as the Creator shall judge to be necessary for 
them. How if our moon, for example, — and, 
if I remember right, Milton so describes her,* 
and several Oriental sects have so j)hilosophized 
concerning her, — how if our moon should be the 
paradise of recreation, where weary pilgrirns, 
escaped from the mists of this earth-valley, live 
in a purer atmosphere, in gardens of peace and 
social enjoyment, and prepare themselves for 
die contemplation of the higher light toward 
which the inhabitants of other planets are also 

* " Tliose argent fields, more likely, haliitants, 
Translated saints or middle spirits hold 
Betwixt tlie angelical and human kind." 



travelling? It seems to me as if the moon pro- 
mised us this with her calm consoling light, — 
as if she shone for no other purpose but to show 
us the glory of another world, and to inspire 
soft, dewy dreams of amaranthine bowers of 
peace, and an indissoluble, blessed friendship. 

Char. You dream pleasantly, my friend, in 
the face of the moon, and I love to dream with 
you. It has often seemed to me too, ■when 
filled with sadness and gentle melancholy at 
the remembrance of departed, dearly loved 
friends, as if the moon-beains were their lan- 
guage, and I could almost hope to see their 
shining forms before me, or to feel, gliding 
down upon a ray, tVje kiss of their pure lips on 
my soul. But enough of this I We are both 
getting to be fantastic dreamers. Tell me fur- 
ther. 

Theag. I have no inclination. I lack the blue, 
emerald gold-wings to carry you from star to 
star, to show you how our sim, too, speeds 
round a greater sun, how everything in creation 
rejoices in a harmony in which suns and earths 
are measured, numbered, weighed as notes, and 
doubtless, also, and how much more, the des- 
tiny, the life of their inhabitants. O! how great 
is the dwelling in which the Creator has placed 
me, and O, how fair ! fair by night and by day, 
here and yonder, the view of sun, moon and 
star ! My course is the path of the All of worlds ; 
that uttermost star lights me on my way, and 
the harrnony of all stars — the music of spiritual 
ideas and relations — accompanies me in it. But 
ah ! my friend, all this is only twilight, conceit, 
surmise, compared with the infinitely purer and 
higher light of the religion of the spirit and the 
heart. On this earth everything is rounded with 
necessity, and we yearn, with 'the earnest ex- 
pectation of the creature,' to be free. We have 
within us ideas of love, of friendship, of beauty, 
of truth which, here on earth, we know only in 
shadows and dream-images, so imperfect, so 
often disturbed, deceived, and always incom- 
plete ! We thirst for a river of purer joys ; and 
it seems to me that the hope, the desire itself, 
is a sure prophecy of fruition. Take the purest 
relations of this world, the joys of a father, a 
mother, with what cares are they blended ! with 
what paiiis and inconveniences are they inter- 
rupted ; and how do they only minister, after 
all, to necessity, to a foreign, higher relation! 
"In that world," says the scripture, "they nei- 
ther marry nor are given in marriage, but are 
as the angels of God." There love is freed from 
the coarser propensities, there friendship is pure 
and without the separatioirs and burdens of this 
earth ; there is more etiective action with happy 
and beautiful concord, and a true, eternal aim ; 
in fine, throughout, moi-e of truth, of goodness, 
of beauty than this earth, even though we should 
return to it a hundred times, could aflbrd. 

" Him, Parmeno !— him do t pronounce 
The happiest, who when, from sorrow free. 
His eyes have seen the things which we now see— 
This sun, these stars, clouds, moon and tire — 



HERDER. 



257 



Again retumeth thither whence he came. 

Fur whether tliou sh-ilt live an iiuiidred years 

Or live but few, thou eeest these, and aught 

Mure beautiful than these hath no man seen. 

Hold then this term of Ufe, of which I speak, 

But as a mari^et or a caravan, 

Where there is crowding, sreahn^, sport, and pains 

Luuw. Tlie earlier thou departest hence, 

The sooner shall thou find the better hostelry, 

If tliou the pilgrim's penny — Truth 

Provided hast, and hast no enemy. 

Who long delays grows weary of the way 

Him overtakes old age, and many wants 

And plagues are his, and many foes. 

He dies not happUy who lives too long."* 

How then would it be with him who should 
tarry here for ever, and again and again return 
to this 'market-place?' 

Whether the silence of the night and the 
sublime harmony of the stars had reconciled 
the systems of the two friends, or whether 
Charicles had much to answer, they embraced 
and parted in silence. Tlieages seemed lost in 
the infinite blue of heaven and the shining star- 
ladder which so many nations, savages and 
sages, have denominated the way of souls. And 
truly a more sublime race that, and a richer, 
fairer Palingenesia than, even in its happiest 
forms, the needy narrow earth could afford. 

" Pater anne aliquas ad coelum liinc ire putandum est 
Subhmes animas? iterunique ad tarda reverti 
Corpora? Quae lucis miseris tarn dira cupidol" 

DIALOGUE HI. 

The next morning, as if by appointment, 
Theages and Charicles met in a walk of which 
both were fond, and where they were accus- 
tomed often to bathe their souls in the beams 
of the rising sun. Both were wrapped in the 
silence which twilight and waking bring with 
them, a holy silence from which the dawning 
day gently and gradually rouses us. They left 
each other undisturbed. With the blush of the 
morning before them and the joyous choir of all 
the newly awakened beings around thein, they 
sat dumb for awhile, until, at last, when the 
sun had risen, and the scene became more 
animated, Charicles proposed that they should 
strike into the neighbouring wood through 
which, by a small circuit, they might take their 
way home. During the walk he imperceptibly 
directed the conversation to yesterday's topic. 

Charicles. What did you dream of last night, 
Theages? Your visions nmst liave been agree- 
able, for you seemed to be entirely lost last 
night among the stars and worlds. 

Theages. When the sun is in the sky, one 
must not relate dreams, Charicles; then they 
lose the accompaniment of scene and decora- 
tion. There is a time for everything. See you 
not how the sun, with its glory, has veiled the 
entire host of those worlds of yesterday, and 
how sadly the moon looks in the heavens yon- 
der — a pale cloudlet! Probably our conversa- 
tion would be like it, if it should attempt to 
resume the prophecies of yesterday. There- 
• From a fragment of Menander. 
2h 



fore, Charicles, put out the night-lamp and bring 
forward something of a more clieerful character 
wherewith we may strengthen ourselves for the 
day. 

Char. I think we may resume our yesterday's 
conversation and still attain tliat end. For, my 
friend, I feel now, very plainly, that llie morn- 
ing and not the evening is the time for discus- 
sions which take us back into the childhood of 
our race — the early morning of huinan ideas 
and images. Our studied night-wisdom has 
dazzled us. Where we should have conjectured 
we asserted ; where we should have tliought 
huinanly, we thought divinely. 

Theag. Do you mean me ? 

Char. Perhaps a little. For you too, I am 
afraid, have been too much exalted by theology 
and philosophy, Newton and Christianity. You 
would soar to the stars ; but our way at present 
is still on the earth; you are ashamed of your 
step-brothers, the brute animals, and would 
mount up into the society of beings whom you 
have never seen, and perhaps never will see — 
the inhabitants of Mercury, of the sun and of 
the moon. 

Theag. No, I am not ashamed of my half- 
brothers, the brutes ; on the contrary, as far as 
they are concerned, I am a great advocate of 
metempsychosis. I believe, for a certainty, that 
they will ascend to a higher grade of being, 
and am unable to comprehend how any one can 
object to this hypothesis which seems to have 
the analogy of the whole creation in its favor. 

Char. Now you are in the right way. 

Theag. It is the way I have always been in, 
as far as this point is concerned. Do not you 
remember that you yourself strayed from it yes- 
terday? Do you like jEsop's fables, Charicles? 

Char. Very much, but what have they to do 
with the matter? 

Theag. I regard them as the compass which 
shows us our relation to the brutes. Severally 
and collectively the animals still play their 
fables. jEsop, the great philosopher and mo- 
ralist, has only made their play intelligible to 
us ; he has made their characters speak to our 
comprehension ; for, to their own comprehen- 
sion, they speak and act continually. And know 
yOM what is man's part in this progressive fable 
of the animals? He is the general proposition, 
t\ie moral of the fable, the tongue in the balance. 
He uses the whole creation, and consequently 
the characters of animals. They act before 
him, they act for him, and he — thinks. His 
' this fable teaches,' he has to repeat every mo- 
ment. 

Char. And has this anything to do with the 
metempsychosis of animals? 

Theag. Much, as it seems to me. To make 
the brute-fable a man-fable, there wants nothing 
but the conclusion, the general proposition, he 
doctrine. That brute-character, so determined, 
so sure, so rich in art and so instructive, — give 
it but a little spark of that light yve call reason 
and you have the man. There he is, and he 
22* 



258 



HERDER. 



gathers now instruction, doctrine, art from his 
former character as brute. He brings his former 
mode of life more or less into consciousness, 
and if he chooses, learns wisdom therefrom. 
He must learn, as man, to order wisely and well 
what, as brute, he can, and likes and wills. 
This, metliinks, is the anthropogenesia and the 
paliugenesia of brutes into men. 

Char. The picture is fine: but the thing? Is 
it so certain, Theages, that every man has an 
animal character? 

Theag. If you doubt it, look at the countenances 
of men under the influence of passion, of strong 
passion ; observe in secret their mode of life 
and the sharply marked traits of their character ; 
it shall go hard but you will discover in the for- 
mation, the air, tlie gesture, and still more in tlie 
progressive action of their life, the fox, the wolf, 
the cat, the tiger, the dog, the weasel, the vul- 
ture, the parrot, with the rest of the honorable 
company that came out of Noah's ark. 

Char. You jest. I have hitherto considered 
the whole hypothesis as a joke, over the dessert, 
when we cover our mouths to the nose exclusive, 
with the napkin and ask: 'Who was I? What 
beast have I been V 

Theag. As things go, it is a joke and must re- 
main so. Who knows himself to the bottom of 
his character? And how should another know 
us at a glance, as soon as we cover up the 
mouth with our napkin ? What would come of 
it, if man should set the images of the animals 
with which he is daily conversant in his life's- 
almanac, and should converse with them in his 
own animal character in return? It was de- 
signed that we should be men, not animals. The 
tongue in the balance is to guide us, and not the 
dead weight of character and animal instincts 
laid in the scales. The animal-human counte- 
nance is liuman, enlightened. The features are 
separated, especially the most characteristic fea- 
tures. Forehead, nose, eyes and cheeks are in- 
finitely dignified, ennobled, beautiful in man, as 
compared with the brute. 

Char. Then the animal formation is only the 
basis of the human character, which is to be en- 
lightened by the light of reason, and systematized, 
beautified, and elevated by the moral sentiments 
of the human heart? The ground of our capa- 
cities and traits, as beings of sense, — the re- 
mains of purely sensual faculties, propensities, 
and impulses — these are animal, and are after- 
ward only polished and regulated by our reason? 

Theag. Study men, and you will find abundant 
proofs of it. For when we separate the haughty 
moral element, we are all pretty much agreed 
in our judgment of traits and characters. In na- 
ture and in an .ffisop's fable, we call a fox a 
fox, and not a lion. In human life our judginents 
are apt to be confused, as from hundred other 
causes, so also from this, that it is actually the 
aim of human culture and the destination of 
man to extinguish the animal character and the 
animal habits, to a certain extent, and to make 
men of us, or, if you will, angels in humanity. 



Every one would fain be thought to have reached 
this point himself; but envy and malice love to 
find in others the old. rude beast entire, with no 
trace of man or angel. Hence it is, that this 
hypothesis is so abused, and, at last, falls into 
contempt, eitlier because it is misunderstood, or 
because it is feared. But, without it, I know 
not what is to become of the numerous host of 
creatures beneath us — our characteristic and 
sensitive half-brothers in field and forest. 

Char. What is to become of them? Nothing 
different from what they are. They transmi- 
grate into new forms of their own species j they 
become finer deer, finer birds. 

Theag. Finer tigers, finer apes and wolves, 
and at the last day, I suppose, these will be 
raised too and accompany us? It is surely not 
your serious conviction, my friend, that the in- 
nermost creation — the ever-proceeding, new 
creation — must needs conform to the classifica- 
tions of the late Baron Linne? 

Char. Not mine exactly ; but our friend Har- 
modius would sufl^er martyrdom for this opinion. 

Theag. Well, he would die a very innocent 
death then. Out classifications are not so exhaus- 
tive as is usually supposed. They exist only 
for our senses, for our faculties ; they are not the 
muster-rolls by which Nature arranges her crea- 
tures, — categories which she has prescribed to 
herself in order to keep each creature in its 
proper place. See how the diflerent classes of 
creation run into each other ! How^ the organi- 
zations ascend and struggle upward from all 
points, on all sides! And then again, what a 
close resemblance between them ! Precisely as 
if, on all our earth, the form-abounding Mother 
had proposed to herself but one type, one proto- 
plasma according to which and for which she 
formed them all. Know you what that form is? 
It is the identical one which man also wears. 

Char. It is true; even in the most imperfect 
animal, some resemblance to this capital form 
of organization is not to be mistaken. 

Theag. It is even more evident internally than 
it is externally. Even in insects, an analogon 
of the human anatomy has been discovered, 
though, compared with ours, enveloped and 
seemingly disproportionate. The different mem- 
bers, and consequently, also, the powers which 
work in them, are yet undeveloped, not orga- 
nized to our fulness of life. It seems to me that 
throughout creation, this finger-mark of Nature 
is the Ariadne-thread that conducts us through 
the labyrinth of animal forms, ascending and 
descending. 

But, my friend, we have walked and talked 
ourselves tired. Suppose we sit down beneath 
these pleasant trees and look at the swan that 
rows and glasses himself on yonder shining 
surface. 

They seated themselves and rested awhile. 
The wash of the waves and the whispering 
trees agreeably damped their thoughts until, at 
last, Charicles resumed the thread of the con- 
versation. 



HERDER. 



259 



Char. ***** Tell me, 
beloved, something of your day-dreams on the 
subjects of which ■we have been speaking, as 
you told me yesterday of your night-dreams. 
The sight of this fair river, the subliine silence 
cf this Ibrest, methinks, are as favorable to such 
imaginings as the starred roof of heaven. Here, 
at least, we form, ourselves, a part of the chorus. 
2'heag. And did we not there, too'? Or are 
we not here, also, in the midst of a river of 
heaven, a chorus of earthly stars! All the life 
of Nature, all the tribes and species of animated 
creation — what are they but sparks of the God- 
head, a harvest of incarnate stars, among which, 
the two human sexes stand forth like sun and 
moon. We overshine, we dim the other figures, 
but, doubtless, we lead them onward in a chorus 
invisible to ourselves. 0, friend, that an eye 
were given us to trace the shining course of this 
divine spark — to see how life flows to life, and 
ever refining, impelled through all the veins of 
creation, wells up into a purer, higher life ! What 
a new city of God, what a creation within crea- 
tion should we then behold ! From the first 
atom, the most unfruitful dust scarce escaped 
from nonentity, through all the varieties of orga- 
nization up to that little universe of multiform 
life — man, what a shining labyrinth! But the 
human understanding- cannot detect it; it sees 
things only the outside, it sees only forms, not the 
transmigrating, up-striving souls. The interior 
mechanism of Nature, her living wheels and 
breathing forces, these, in their too exceeding 
glory, are to us a alna, the Kingdom of Night, the 
hull and vein of unborn lives self-engendered 
in eternal progression. 

• • * • " Ala.*? our sifrht 's so ill 

That things which swiftest move, seem to stand stilL" 

I need not veil myself before thee, great Pan ! 
eternal fountain of life! Thou hast veiled me 
within myself. Do I know the world of lives 
which I call my body ? Doubtless, my too feeble 
soul, could she see the countless host which 
ministers to her in all degrees and varieties of 
animation, would drop her imperial sceptre and 
sink from her throne. In my veins, in the mi- 
nutest vascules allotted to me, these souls are 
pilgriming toward a higher life, as, already, 
through so manifold paths and preparations, 
they have travelled from all creation into me. I 
prepare them for their farther progress, as every- 
thing before has prepared them for me. No 
destruction, no death is there in creation, but 
dissolution, parturition, lustration. So the tree 
with its boughs and limbs elaborates the humors 
of the earth and the air, the fire of the soil and 
tlie heavens into its own nature — itself and its 
children into nobler sap. Its leaves imbibe and 
make fruitful. Every leaf is a tree, foritied 
upon a green plain, in a slender fabric, because 
creation had not room to produce them all as 
perfect trees. From every bud, therefore, and 
every twig she thrusts forth tree-spirits. The 
all-bearing Mother clothes herself with green 
life ; every flower which unfolds itself is a bride, 



every blossoming tree is a great family of lives. 
The kingdom of animals — our mute fellow-citi- 
zens — destroys thousand forms of inferior kind 
in order to animate its own higher forms; and 
finally, man, the chief artificer and destroyer in 
creation, — he gives life and takes it, he is, with- 
out knowing it, the goal of his inferior brethren, 
to which, perhaps, they are all imperceptibly 
conducted. 

Beautiful, floating swan! In what a shining 
element thy creator has placed thee to love and 
admire thyself! With thy fair, bowed neck, ir. 
the pure, fresh whiteness of innocence, thou 
swimmest a queen, a soft splendor-form, on the 
clear surface of the waves. Thy world is a 
mirror, thy life a decoration and an art. What 
will be thine employment, when, hereafter, in 
a human form, thou projectest lines of beauty 
and studiest graces in tliyself or in nature? 

Char. Apropos! my friend, have you ever 
read Bishop Berkeley's* novel, "Gaudentioof 
Lucca ■?'' 

Theag. I am not acquainted with it. 

Char. He has a very pretty idea of metempsy- 
chosis, whicli he ascribes to iiis Mezzoranians. 
He represents them as believing that the souls 
of animals covet the habitation of a human body, 
and seek, by every means, to steal into it. In this 
they succeed so soon as man lets fall the torch 
of his reason, and with it, the power of self- 
government. Then he becomes revengeful, 
cruel, leclierous, avaricious, according as this o: 
that animal has pursued him, and usurped the 
place of his rational soul. Methinks, the alle- 
gory is fine. 

Theag. As indeed, Berkeley was altogether a 
fine and rare man. That way of presenting it, 
clothes a truth so beautifully! 

Char. And what think you of the metempsy- 
chosis of the Jews, which the Rabbins call Tb- 
bur? They say that several souls, human souls, 
may adjoin themselves to an individual, and, at 
certain times, — when a friendly Spirit sees that 
he requires it and God permits, — help, strength 
en, inspire him, dwelling with and in him. But 
they quit him again, when the business in which 
they were to aid him is accomplished, except 
in cases where God favors an individual with 
this sort of aid to the end of his days. 

Theag. A very pretty fiction! It is founded 
in the perception that man acts very unequally 
at diiferent times, and in old age, especially, 
often sinks far beneath himself The foreign, 
auxiliary spirit has forsaken him, and he sits 
there naked with his own. Moreover, the fable 
is a beautiful commendation of extraordinary 
men; for what a compliment, to suppose that 
the sonl of a sage is animated by the soul of an 
elder sage, or even by several at once! But 
surely you do not regard this beautiful, poetical 
invention, as physical historical truth ! 

Char. Who knows? The revolution of hu 
man souls has been universally believed by 



* So, in the uriginal. Tr. 



260 



HERDER. 



many nations. You remember the question put 
to John : Art thou Elias? art thou that prophet? 
You know too, who even confirmed this idea, 
and said expressly, it is Elias. 

The.ag. And you have probably read the 
younger Hehnont rfe revolutione animarum? He 
has adduced, in two hundred problems, all the 
sayings and all the arguments which can pos- 
sibly be urged in favor of the return of souls 
into human bodies, according to Jewish ideas. 

Char. 1 must say, I have always liked the 
Jewish doctrine of the revolution of souls. Are 
you well acquainted with if? 

Theag. Pretty well. It asserts that the soul 
returns into life twice or thrice — in extraordi- 
nary cases oftener — and accomplishes what it 
had left unfinished. It supposes that God has 
divided the periods of the world's history ac- 
cording to tliese revolutions of souls; that he 
has determined the degrees of light and of twi- 
light, of suflferiug and of joy ; in fine, the destiny 
and the duration of the world in conformity 
with them. The first resurrection is a revolu- 
tion of these perfected souls, returned into life. 

Char. What have you to object to that? 

Theag. Nothing, except that I can say nothing 
for it; because the whole is either a poetic fic- 
tion or rests in the counsels of God. At any 
rate, the passages which are quoted in favor of 
it prove nothing. 

Char. And is there no weight in the argu- 
ments from reason which are adduced in its 
support? For example, that God, who is no 
respecter of persons, has shown so much re- 
spect for persons during one existence of souls 
in this world; that the Long-suffering and the 
Just gives every one space and time for repent- 
ance ; that the fruition of life has been, to many, 
so embittered and so abridged, without any 
fault of their own ? You slighted these reasons, 
my friend, because, if I may say so, you were 
prejudiced against the doctrine. But look at the 
thing humanly ; consider the fate of the misborn, 
the deformed, the poor, the stupid, the crippled, 
the fearfully degraded and ill-treated; of young 
children who had scarce seen the light and 
were forced to depart. Take all this to heart, 
and you must either have weak conceptions of 
the progress of such people in the world to 
come, or they must first have wings made for 
them here, that they may learn to soar even at 
a distance after others, that they may be, in 
some measure, indemnified for their unhappy 
or unhappily abbreviated existence in this world. 
Promotion to a higher, human existence, is 
scarcely to be thought of in their case. 

Theag. Why not? None can give as God 
gives, and no one can indemnify and compen- 
sate like God. To all beings he gave their ex- 
istence, of his own free love. If some appear 
to have been more neglected than others, has 
he not places, contrivances, worlds enough, 
where, by a single transplantation, he can in- 
denmify and compensate a thousand-fold? A 
.ihild prematurely removed — a youth whose 



nature was too delicate, as it were, for the rude 

climate of this world — all nations have felt that 
such are loved by the gods,* and that they have 
transferred the treasured plant into a fairer gar- 
den. Or do you suppose that God has no other 
spot but this earth ? Must he root up others in 
order to make room for these, and let the uptorn 
plant wait and wither in the store-chamber of 
unborn souls until he can find a place for it? 
How many are made happy in another world 
by having been unhappy here ! My friend, do 
you know Kleist's fable of the maimed crane? 

Char. I am not acquainted with it. 

Theag. It is one of the finest that was ever 
made. 

"When Autumn-winds had laid the forest bare 
And scattered chrystal rime upon the plain, 
There lighted on the strand a troop of cranes 
Seeiting; a Itinder eartti beyond the sea. 
Lamed by the fowler's shaft one lucltless bird 
Sat lone and sad and dumb, nor lent her voice 
To swell the j ubilee of the exulting host ; 
Mocked and contemned— the outcast of her tribe. 
Not by mine own fault am 1 maimed, thought she. 
Musing within herself. 1 served no less than ye 
Our Commonwealth. Unjustly am 1 spumed. 
But what shall be my fate whom pain 
Hath reft of strength to endure the distant flight T 
Ah, wretched me ! the water soon must prove 
My certain grave. Why left he life — 
The cruel foe that robbed me of my powers ? 
Meanwhile the favoring wind blows fresh from shore; 
The troop begin, in order due, their march. 
And speed with sounding wings, and scream with joy. 
Left far behind, that lone one lighted oft 
Upon the lotus-leaves which strewed the sea, 
And hopeless sighed with grief and bitter pain. 
After long rest she saw the better land. 
The kinder heaven which sudden healed her wound. 
An unknown Providence had been her guide, 
While many mockers found a watery grave. 
* * » * 

Ye whom the heavy hand of dire mischance 
Bows to the earth, ye innocent who mourn, 
Weary of life, despair not of the end. 
But dare the necessary journey through. 
There is a better land beyond the sea 
And ye shall find your healing and reward." 

Char. A beautiful fable for my side, too. Let 
us move, my friend, and on the way, you must 
allow me a few more questions. How comes 
it that the wisest nations of antiquity and those 
far removed from each other have believed so 
long in the doctrine of transmigration, — and 
that, too, of the worst kind, — in the return of 
human beings, in the doctrine which teaches 
that man becomes an animal once more? 

Theag. You have already answered the ques- 
tion, Charicles; it was the childhood of the 
world and the world's wisdom respecting human 
destiny. With some nations, for example the 
Egyptians and Hindoos, and perhaps too with 
Pythagoras, it was designed as a moral fable, 
representing the doctrine of ecclesiastical pe- 
nance in a sensuous and comprehensible form. 

Char. A strange ecclesiastical penance, con- 
veyed in a fiction ! 

Theag. To a certain extent, the two (the doc- 
trine and the fiction) necessitated each other. 

* bv o'i ^£01 ftXStnv airo^v^aKct veos- 



HERDER. 



261 



You know that the wisdom of the most ancient 
nations was lodged with the priests. When 
diey couUl give the rude people no right notions 
respecting the world to come or had none to 
give, was it not well that they should seek to 
deter them by a future of sensuous retribution? 
"You who are cruel, shall be changed into 
tigers, as even now you manifest a tiger-soul. 
You who are impure, shall be swine; you who 
are proud, shall be jeacocks; and so you shall 
do penance for a lona while, until you are found 
worthy to resume your desecrated humanity." 
These representaticci, addressed to the senses, 
and clothed with tne authority of religion, 
would, undoubtedly, have a greater effect than 
metaphysical subtiities. Each one saw the 
nature of the threatened beast and its destiny 
before him. The vicious fell the beastly cha- 
racter in himself, and nothing was more natural 
than that he should fear a corresponding fate, 
that is, a real transition into that animal. This 
doctrine, once established, might deter from 
many vices and lead to many virtues. Who 
would not rather be a white elephant than a 
swine? especially one who viewed the nature 
and the late of animals with the eyes of the 
Hindoos and the Egyptians, — with that quiet 
familiarity in which the cliildhood of the world 
lived with tlie brute creation. But you do not 
S'jppose, Charicles, that this doctrine is neces- 
sary or fitting for us? 

Char. In many cases, a belief in it would be 
no evil. If the cruel man, who persecutes a 
poor stag to death, were seized, at diat moment, 
with a lymphatic presentiment: "So will it fare 
with thee ; tliy soul shall pass into a stag and 
be tortured to death;'" perhaps he might ex- 
tinguish the joyless brutality in himself 

Theng. I doubt it, my friend, if the immediate 
conteiriplation of tlie pain is unable to extinguish 
it. For Us, it seems to me, this whole doctrine 
of transmigration has lost its sting. If I am not 
good as man, am I likely to become so as 
tiger? since then, it is my nature to be that 
whereinto I am changed. If lam condemned 
to eat grass, like an iwational ox, how shall I 
begin, in that state, to use my reason better than 
I used it while a man. God himself has bound 
my eyes and taken from me the light of the 
understanding, and how then shall I learn to 
see more clearly? If my degra<lation is to be 
mere penance in the eyes of an arbitrary judge, 
why, be it so! but reformaiion — a rational, 
moral reformation in myself, it can never be; 
because, in my degradation, that which alone 
could reform me lias been taken away. Is one 
not rather likely to be embittered against God, 
who deprives us of our eyes because we have 
not used them aright, and, because we have 
not disciplined our heart to right sentiments, 
hardens it in the shape of something vicious 
and wretched? 

Char. There is much to be said in relation to 
that point; at any rate, the fiction had its use 
IIS parable for the people. 



Theag. Even as parable for the people, the 
tale is not suited to our times. It seems to me 
that man should learn to look upon himself as 
occupying the highest grade, and use his present 
existence peremptorily. He must know of no 
retreat or by-way where he can bring up what 
he has neglected here. At least, the Deity has 
referred him to none. Aut Ctesar aut nihil : aut 
nunc aut nunquam. Even among the ancients, 
all active, noble nations that were not beguiled 
by fable-wisdom and the foolish penances of 
their priests, have proposed to themselves a no- 
bler condition after death, as the goal of their 
endeavor. The being 'gathered to one's fa- 
thers' of the oriental nations, the Elysium of 
the Greeks, the Walhalla of the Norlanders, are 
certainly more beautiful views of death than 
that of the ox or the cow waiting for the dying 
man who holds the cow's tail in his hand ; or 
the body of a strange mother into which he 
must slip, in order to whimper again as child. 

Char. True, they are low ideas that gather 
about this hypothesis. But how then could the 
wise Pythagoras deem it worthy of being trans- 
planted to Europe? 

Theag. One brings all sorts of things from 
abroad, not only gold and jewels, but also mon- 
keys and curiosities. Besides, it is not probable 
that Pythagoras made the same use of this doc- 
trine that the later false Pythagoreans did. He 
too spoke of a Tartarus and an F^lysium, like 
the other philosophers and poets of Greece 
And, altogether, we know too little of that truly 
great man, to be able to judge of his parables 
and symbols; we know him only through the 
medium of fable. 

And 0! my friend, Pythagoras or no Pytha- 
goras, what need of all this controversy and 
argument, with which we, too, have wasted our 
time? Ask your heart and the truth which 
dwells there. When you stand before the statue 
of a high-hearted Apollo, do you not feel what 
you lack of being that form ? Can you ever 
attain to it here below, and can your heart ever 
rejoice in it, though you should return ten times? 
And yet, that was oidy the idea of an artist, the 
happy dream of a mortal, — a dream which out 
narrow breast also inclosed. How ! has the 
almighty Father no nobler forms for us than 
those in which our heart now heaves and groans? 
Our language, — all communication of thought, — 
what bungling work it is! Hovering on the tip 
of our tongues, between lip and palate, in a few 
syllabled tones, our heart, our innermost soLd 
woidd communicate itself to another, so that he 
shall comprehend us, shall feel the ground of 
our innermost being. Vain endeavor ! Wretched 
pantomime with a few gestures and vibrations 
of air! The soul lies captive in its dungeon, 
bound as with a sevenfold chain, and only 
through a strong grating, and only through a 
pair of light and air-holes can it breathe and 
see. And always it sees the world on one side 
only, while there are a million oth^'r sides before 
US and in us, had we but more and other senses, 



2' 2 



HERDER. 



and could we but exchange this narrow hut of 
oiir body for a freer prospect. And shall we 
be forever contented with this nook, this dun- 
geon ? What wretch, doomed to life-long misery 
in this life, confines his wishes to the throwing 
off of riiis world's burden, without the sense or 
the hope of requital for his present disappoint- 
ment and degradation? When, even at the 
sweetest fountains of friendship and love, we 
so often pine, thirsty and sick, seeking union 
and finding it not, begging alms from every 
earthly object and always poor, always unsatis- 
fied ; and when we find, at last, that all the 
aims and plans of earth are vanity and vanity, 
and feel that daily, — what free and noble soul 
does not lift itself up and despise everlasting 
tabernacles and wanderings 'in the circle of 
earthly deserts. 

" The soul lon^ from her prison-house to come, 

And we would seal and sew up, if we could, the womb I 

We seelc to close and plaister up, hy art, 

Tlie cracks and breaches of the extended shell. 

And in that narrow cell 

Would rudely force to dwell 

The noble, vigorous bird already wing'd to part." 

During these conversations, they had imper- 
ceptibly reached the end of the forest. At the 
inst tree Charicles stood still. Before we leave 
this wood, Theages, said he, I must tell you the 



result of our conversations. In all the forms 
and conditions of humanity, the cultivation of 
our wit, uur sagacity, or other branches of the 
human intellect, is of less consequence than the 
education of the heart; and that heart is in all 
men a human heart. And it may be educated, 
to a certain degree, in all the forms and situa- 
tions of humanity. As to the extent to which 
it has been developed in this situation, and the 
way in which Providence inay succor the un- 
fortunate and the sutiering, that I leave to 
Heaven, and venture not to make its secret 
ways the race-course or the beaten highway of 
an hypothesis by which man is to be scared, or 
in which the sluggish and the froward shall find 
their account. Sacred to me is the saying of the 
gospel : " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs 
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they 
that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed 
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 
Purification of the heart, the ennobling of the 
soul, with all its propensities and cravings, — 
this, it seems, to me, is the true palingenesia of 
this life, after which, I doubt not, a happy, more 
exalted, but yet unknown metempsychosis awaits 
us. Herewith I am content, and I thank you 
that you have unfolded for me my thoughts. 
They embraced each other, and parted. 




I.TLg^'hj P-HinirpliiEyE 



E T Oil [£ 



JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. 



Bom 1749. Died 1832. 



The biography of this extraordinary person- 
age is yet to be written. His own memoirs, 
* Aus meinem Leben\ Sic, — comprise but the 
first half of that full, rich life, of wliich the last 
half was the fullest, the richest. The materi- 
als for a farther and complete delineation are 
not wanting,* but the historian who shall col- 
lect, and arrange, and reproduce these in a 
'Life of Goethe' worthy that name, has not 
yet been found. Shall we look to the author 
of the ' Life of Schiller' for this service 1 Or 
will Germany herself, out of the countless host 
of her literary artificers, furnish the historian 
of her own Genius 1 

Meanwhile, it is gratifying to learn that the 
autobiography is about to be given to the Ame- 
rican Public, in a translation by one of our own 
countrymen,! which, if it fairly represents the 
original, can hardly fail to be a popular work. 
From this they will learn, if they have not 
already learned, that Johann Wolfgang v. 
Goethe was born at Frankfort on the Mayn, on 
the 28th of August, 1749, at midday, "as the 
clock struck twelve;" that his father was a 
wealthy and cultivated Reichsbiirger, who 
lived much in his Italian reminiscences; that 
his maternal grandfather, Johann Wolfgang v. 
Textor, was a man of mark, the chief magis- 
trate of the Imperial city; that the experiences 
and observations of his boyhood, — house-build- 
ing, coronation, the seven years' war, the as- 
pects of his native city, arts and trades, boyish 
love and shame and disappointment — wrote 
imperishable records, materials for future cre- 
ations, on the poet's heart ; that, after a various 
and careful education at home, he was in due 
season matriculated at Leipzig, fell sick and 
returned to Frankfort, a confirmed invalid, 
much to his father's chagrin ; that he recovered 
his health and studied law at Strassburg where 
he received the Doctor's degree, and where he 

* See the volumes of Goethe's correspondence with dis- 
tinKiii^heil cnteriiporariea, piiblishe'l since his death, tlie 
' Taff und Jahrcs Hefu," and the works of Eckerniann, 
Falk. V. Miiller, Doriiii; and others. 

t I'arke Godwin, Esq. Since the above was written the 
work referred to had appeiired. See No. L.XXV. of Wi- 
ley and Tutnam's Library of Choice Reading. 



diverged into an episode of love and romance 
of which the charming Friederike of Sesenheim 
was the heroine ; that he began to practise his 
profession at Frankfort, but soon slid into lite- 
rature, made an era therein, publishing Wer- 
ther's Leiden and Goelz von Berlichingen, 
and so completed the first phase of his poetic 
life. Furthermore, if all the parts of these 
memoirs are given, we shall see the poet again 
in the character of declared and accepted lover, 
— the betrothed of the beautiful Lili ; — since 
"it was the strange ordination of the High, 
above us ruling, that, in the progress of my 
wondrous life-course, I should also experience 
the feelings of a betrothed." We shall see 
him, next, this cold, impassive, self-sufficing 
Goethe, — as he has been depicted, — the man 
who lived only for self and Art, — we shall see 
him, on the summit of the Alps, turning his 
back upon Italy, the land of his youthful dreams, 
the pilgrim -goal of the artist, and hastening 
home, unable to resist any longer the passion 
which drew him back to his beloved :* and that, 

* Hear his own account of the matter. " It seems to 
me as if man, in such cases, had no power of decision in 
himself, hut were rather governed and determined by 
earlier impressions. Lombardy and Italy lay as some- 
thing^ wholly foreign before me. Germany as something 
known and love-worthy, full of friendly, domestic pros- 
pects. And — let me confess it — that which had so long 
compassed me about, which had borne up my existence, 
continued, at this moment al,<o, to be the most indispen- 
sable element, out of whose limits I did not trust nij'self 
to pass. A small golden heart which I had received from 
her in the fairest hours, hung still, by the same riband 
by which she had fastened it, love-warmed upon my neck. 
I seized ami kissed it. And here let me insert tlie poem 
occasioned by this circumstance. 
" ' Memorial thou of a joy whose sound has died away ! 

Which r yet wear about mv neck, 

Boldest thou, longer than the soul-band, us two? 

ProloiiL'est thou the brief days of love ? 

Do I flee, Lili, before thee? Must I, still led by thy band, 

Through distant vales and foretsts wander ! 

Ah Lili's heart could not so quickly 

From my heart fall. 

Like a bird who breaks his string 

And returns to the forest ; 

He drags— captivity's dishonor, — 

A bit of the string still after him. 

It is the old, free-born bird no longer. 

He has already been some one's property.' 

" I rose quickly that I might get away from the steep 
spot, and that the friend storming toward me, with the 
knapsack-bearing guide, might not whirl me away Willi 

(263) 



264 



GOETHE. 



after the resolution to separate himself from 
her, wrung from him by his sister, was already 
formed or forming within him. We shall see 
this connection sundered, for reasons which are 
not very obvious ; but not till after long and 
dire struggles through "a cursed state which, 
in some respects, might be likened to Hades," 
and a " torture which, even in tlie remembrance, 
is well nigh insupportable." 

Finally, we shall see him called to the court 
of Weimar by the hereditary prince, Karl Au- 
gust, afterward Grand Duke, there to become 
the client of a life-long patronage, as honorable 
to one party as it was beneficial to both. 

Then, we have what may be regarded as the 
continuation of these memoirs, in the " llalien- 
isc.he Reise" the " Zweiler romischer Aufent- 
halt,''' and the " Camfagne in Frankreich." 
And, be it remarked by the way, these are not 
the least impressive of Goethe's works. He 
maintains, as a writer of travels, the same rank 
which distinguishes him in every species of 
composition. 

In 1779, Goethe was made Privy Counsellor ; 
he received the title of nobility in 1782, tra- 
velled in Italy and Sicily, and sojourned in 
Rome during the two years from 1786 to 1788 ; 
made another visit in 1790; and, in 1792 ac- 
companied the Grand Duke in the French cam- 
paign. In 1806, he married a iVTiss Vulpius, the 
mother of his only surviving child. In 1815, 
he was made Prime Minister; and although, 
during the last four years of his life, he with- 
drew himself from State aifairs, lie continued 
to labor in his vocation as a poet witii unabated 
diligence, and apparently with unabated faculty, 
until the hour of his death, which overtook him, 
as it were with the pen in his hand, on the22d 
March, 1832, in the eighty-third year of his 
age. 

There is great satisfaction in contemplating 
so complete a life, a life in which the idea and 
the task have been so visibly and utterly ful- 
filled and accomplished. 

At the age of eighty, Goethe often spoke of 
his death, and of how it might still be deferred. 

him into the steep .ibyss. I likewise greeted the pious 
Purer, and turned myself, without losiiip a word, toward 
tho pMlli hy wiiicli we had come. A little lingering the 
friend followed, and, notwithstandir>g his love and attach- 
ment lo me, lie remained for awliile some distance he- 
hind, until, at last, the glorious waterfall hroimht us to- 
gether a^'ain, kepi us together, and that, which had once 
for all been determined, was also finally accepted as 
wlioiesome and good." — ^us meinem Leben, 



" Yes !" said he, " we can make head against 
him for some time yet. As long as one creates 
there can be no room for dying. But yet the 
night, the great night will come in which no 
man can work." It was about this time that 
he lost his only son. " Here then," he writes 
to Zelter, " can the mighty conception of duty 
alone hold us erect. I have no other care but 
to keep myself in equipoise ; the body musi, the 
spirit will ; and he who sees a necessary path 
prescribed to his will, has no need to ponder 
much." Was Goethe wanting in sensibility, 
because he did not give himself up to the 
lamentation of that loss? "Thus did he shut 
up tlie deepest grief within his breast, and 
hastily seized upon a long postponed labor, in 
order entirely to lose himself in it. In a fortnight 
he had nearly completed the fourth volume of 
his Life, when Nature avenged herself for the 
violence he had done her. The bursting of a 
blood-vessel brought him to the brink of the 
grave."* 

He entirely recovered himself from this at- 
tack, and resumed his task. In the year pre- 
ceding that of his death, he had still to finish 
the second part of Faust. God willing, he would 
not die till that was accomplished. " He laid it 
down as a law to himself, to complete it wor- 
thily; and on the day before his last birth-day 
he was enabled to announce that the highest 
task of his life was completed. He sealed it 
under a ten-fold seal, escaped from the consfra- 
tulations of his friends, and hastened to revisit, 
after many years, the scenes of his earliest 
cares and endeavors, as well as of the richest 
and happiest hours of his life. He went to 
Ilmenau. The deep calm of the woods, the 
fresh breath of the hills, breathed new life into 
him. With refreshed and invigorated mind he 
returned home and felt himself inspired to un- 
dertake new observations of Nature. The 
Theory of Colors was revised, completed and 
confirmed, tlie nature of the rainbow more ac- 
curately examined, and unwearied thought be- 
stowed on the spiral tendency of vegetation."* 

And when, at last, the brief and painless 
sickness which terminated his earthly career 
had laid him prostrate, "faithful to his princi- 
ples he continued to occupy himself that he 
might not give the thinking faculty time to 
grow dull and inactive. Even when he had 

* Chancellor von Miiller, in Mrs. Austin's Characteris- 
tics. 



GOETHE. 



265 



lost the power of speaking, his hand preserved 
the character of his life. His voice was mute, 
but he traced characters in the air. And when 
his hand sank slowly on his knee, the radiant 
star had sunk beneath our horizon."* 

The statesman-poet was inhumed with the 
pomp befitting his illustrious name. Agreeably 
to the wishes of the Grand Duke, who had pre- 
ceded him by a few years, his remains were 
deposited by the side of that Prince and " the 
glorious Schiller." The royal vault of Weimar 
holds henceforth the honored frame in which 
that life was performed; to the living Weimar 
and to us and to all generations belongs " the 
absolute total of that life's vast sum." 

The first thing that strikes us in the life of 
Goethe is the wonderful fortune of the man. 
No Genius was ever more favored from with- 
out. ' Sophocles alone, among the poets of all 
generations, may vie with him in this. We 
look in vain for another instance of so rich a 
nature coupled with so kind a destiny. It 
would seem as if all things had conspired for 
once to make a perfect lot; genius, organiza- 
tion, beauty of person, high culture, riches, 
rank, renown, length of days. Does the work 
performed correspond to the advantages enjoy- 
ed ! Does the result justify tiie partiality of 
Fortune"! — is a question which other ages must 
answer. 

Goethe's genius is distinguished by its versa- 
tility. No other writer has siione with such 
various excellence. The two poles of the hu- 
man intellect, poetry and science, define the 
range of his mind. His writings embrace both 
these extremes, and touch almost every topic 
of interest between the two. To speak only 
of more prominent and unquestioned excel- 
lences ; — as a lyric poet, he has no equal. And 
this will be found, perhaps, in the final judg- 
ment, to constitute his chief merit. The union 
of perfect finish with perfect freedom ; the 
uttermost abandonment of fancy, joined to the 
uttermost self-possession of artistic judgment; 
the wild freshness of poetic feeling — tlie very 
breath and aroma of Nature — accompanied by 
that profound philosophy which, rather felt than 
seen, pervades all his writings; — all this gives 
to Goethe's lyrics the highest relish of which 
that form of poetry is susceptible. The singular 
facility with which these pieces were produced, 
resembling improvisation or inspiration rather 



' Notes to Mra. Austin's Characteristics. 
2l 



than composition, has contributed, in some cases, 
no doubt, to enhance their peculiar charm. " I 
had come," says he, " to regard the poetic talent 
dwelling in me, entirely as nature; the rather 
that I was directed to look upon external Na- 
ture as its proper subject. The exercise of this 
poetic gift might be stimulated and determined 
by occasion; but it flowed forth most joyfully, 
most richly, when it came involuntarily or even 
against my will. » * » * * 

I was so accustomed to say over a song to my- 
self without being able to collect it again, that 
I sometimes rushed to the desk, and, without 
taking time to adjust a sheet that was lying 
crosswise, wrote the poem diagonally from be- 
ginning to end, without stirring from the spot. 
For the same reason, I preferred to use a pencil, 
which gives the characters more willingly. For 
it had sometimes happened that the scratching 
and sputtering of the pen would wake me from 
my somnambulistic poetizing, distract my at- 
tention, and stifle some small product in the 
birth. For such poetry I had a special rever- 
ence. My relation to it was something like 
that of a hen to the chickens, which, being fully 
hatched, she sees cheeping about her. My for- 
mer desire to communicate these things only 
by reading them aloud, renewed itself again. 
To barter them for money seemed to me detest- 
able."* 

Goethe claims our admiration next, as a 
painter of character. Here too, the very highest 
rank, second to Shakspeare only, has been as- 
signed to him. His characters have the Shak- 
spearean merit of being, at the same time, 
universal and individual, impersonations of a 
general type, and veritable men and women, 
such as one might look to meet with, any day 
of the year, in their respective circles. And 
where he transcends the sphere of ordinary 
humanity, as in the case of Mignon, he gives 
us nothing inconceivable or inconsequent, but 
a nature that carries its constitutive law within 
itself, which all its movements obey, by wliich 
they are to be interpreted, and by which tliey 
must be judged. His success is greatest in 
female character, of which almost every variety 
is represented in his works. Running through 
the series of those works, we perceive a moral 
gradation of female character, from Gretchen 
the uncultivated, the unconscious, the betrayed 
but still pure, to Makaria, in whom female 

* Aus meinein liebeii. IV'h part. 
23 



266 



GOETHE. 



virtue reaches its apotheosis, and whose only 
connection with this earth is to counsel and to 
bless. As we follow this ascending scale, we 
divine a moral purpose in the author, who, with 
each new character, has spread before us a dis- 
tinct level of human culture, and by successive 
attractions has indicated the upward path of 
aspiration and self-conquest, by which Humanity 
must reach its destination. 

Another characteristic excellence of Goethe 
is herewith suggested, viz : his veneration for 
women. This sentiment, with him, was not 
chivalry which, in assuming a protective atti- 
tude, assumes and emphasizes a weakness in 
the female nature, and thus degrades where it 
professes to honor; and whose very homage, 
fantastical and patronizing as it is, contains a 
latent irony the more bitter, perhaps, because 
unintentional. Goethe's respect for women was 
a philosophical appreciation of the real dignity 
and unacknowledged riches of the female cha- 
racter, coupled with the reverent homage of 
the heart for what the understanding so clearly 
discerned ; a homage which two such living 
examples as the Grand Duchess and the Duchess 
Mother of Weimar could not fail to keep in 
active exercise. In the extent to which he 
carried this appreciation of female excellence 
he stands alone ; far in the van of opinion as 
yet pronounced. No writer has estimated so 
highly, none so truly, the influence of woman 
on the social and moral destiny of man. The 
raving and benign power of the feminine ele- 
ment in human things is made prominent in all 
his creations. In some of them it is a cardinal 
point. It is the pivot in ' Wilhelm Meister' 
and the climax of 'Faust,' at the close of which 
it is announced with prophetic emphasis, as a 
fit conclusion "tothe swelling tlieme:" — " JDas 
ewig weibllche ziehkuns hinan.^' 

A contemporary remarks in accordance with 
this view, that Goethe "always represents the 
highest principle in a feminine form." "As in 
Faust the purity of Gretchen resisting the de- 
mon always, even after all her faults, is an- 
nounced to have saved her soul to heaven; and, 
in the second part, appears not only redeemed 
herself, but, by her innocence and forgiving 
tenderness, hullowed to redeem the being who 
had injured her ; so, in the Meister, these wo- 
men hover round the narrative, each embodying 
the spirit of the scene. The frail Philina, grace- 
ful though contemptible, represents the degra- 



dation incident to leading an exclusively poetic 
life. Mignon, gift divine as ever the Muse be- 
stowed on the passionate heart of man, with her 
soft, mysterious inspiration, represents the high 
desire that leads to this mistake, as Aurelia the 
desire for excitement, Teresa practical wisdom, 
gentle tranquillity, which seem most oesirable 
after the Aurelia glare. Of the "Beautiful 
Soul" and Natalia we have already spoken. 
The former embodies what was suggested to 
Goethe by the most spiritual person he knew 
in youth, Friiulein von Klettenberg, over whom, 
as he said, in her invalid loneliness, the Holy 
Ghost brooded like a dove. Entering on the 
Wanderjahre, Wilhelm becomes acquainted 
with another woman who seems the comple- 
ment of all the former, and represents the idea 
which is to mould and to guide him in the reali- 
zation of all the past experience. This person, 
long before we see her, is announced in various 
ways as a ruling power. She is the last hope 
in cases of difficulty, and, though an invalid, 
and living in absolute retirement, is consulted 
by her connections and acquaintance as an un- 
erring judge in all their affairs. All things 
tend toward her as a centre; she knows all, 
governs all, but never goes forth from herself 
Wilhelm at last visits her. He finds her infirm 
in body, but equal to all she has to do. Charity 
and counsel to men who need her, are her 
business; astronomy her pleasure." * * 
* * * * " The apparition of the 
celestial Makaria seems to announce the ulti- 
mate destiny of the soul of man."* 

As a writer of German prose, or, to use a 
coinage derived from that language, — as a 
stylist, Goethe's pre-eminence is undisputed 
and, even by his most determined opponents 
and detractors, emphatically affirmed. Menzel, 
whose work on German literature suggests the 
idea of having been written for the express 
purpose of abusing him and one or two others 
of like political sentiments, says: "He could 
make everything, even the smallest and mean- 
est, delightful by the magic of his representa- 
tion." " Goethe possesses in the highest degree 
the talent of making his reader an accomplice 
— of forcing from him a feeling of approbation. 
He carried in his hand the talisman which con- 
trols all hearts. No poet has so completely 
mastered the charm which language possesses. 
We cannot guard ourselves against the secret 

* Dial. Vol. II. No. 1. 



GOETHE. 



267 



enchantment with which he captivates our in- 
most soul and seduces us to the very opposite 
of all that we had previously felt and believed."* 
And yet this author maintains that the writer 
who exercised this magic power was destitute 
of genius. The more pity for genius, if true ! 

Goethe's style is a puzzle. It excites our 
wonder how language can be so colorless, so 
free from mannerism, and, at the same time, so 
impressive, so suggestive, so individual. "It 
seems quite a simple style," says Carlyle, "re- 
markable chiefly for its calmness, its perspicuity, 
in short its commonness; and yet it is the most 
uncommon of all styles. We feel as if every 
one might imitate it, and yet it is inimitable." 

His power, as a moral teacher, is not so ge- 
nerally understood and acknowledged as the 
other qualities which have been mentioned. 
Yet there are some by whom it is more strongly 
asserted and more deeply felt than all the other 
excellences which have been claimed for him. 
There are some who profess to have derived 
from him their strongest moral impressions, and 
A'ho maintain that, as a teacher of moral truth, 
le has been more to them than any other, than 
ill other writers. Nor will this seem strange, 
f we consider what constitutes an effective 
Tioralist, or what it is that gives force to the 
statement of moral truth. It is not enthusiasm, 
3r fine sentiment, or declamation, but the clear 
mtuition, the veritable experience, the unbiassed 
sincerity of a free and commanding mind. A 
cnaracter distinguished for moral worth is not 
necessary for this purpose, nor great activity 
of religious sentiment. The saint may instruct 
js better than all books by his life, but not 
necessarily — because he is a saint — by his 
writings. Tiiere may be great moral worth 
ind a great deal of religious sentiment without 
.hat intellectual sincerity which brings us into 
immediate contact with the truth, and the want 
of which will vitiate the strongest statement. 
This sincerity of the intellect is something 
very different from conscientiousness. It isseen>- 
ingly independent of any moral quality except 
the single one of courage. It is the rarest at- 
tribute in literature. It does not readiiy com- 
bine with natures in which sentiment predomi- 
nates. It indicates rather a predominance of 
the intellectual. Only once in the tide of time, 
was tiie highest degree of it found united with 

* Menzel'8 German Literature translated by C. C. 
Fellon. 



the highest degree of moral purity and reli- 
gious faith. It is the quality most essential in 
ihe communication of moral, as of all other 
truth. 

We are apt to deceive ourselves as to the 
moral value of certain impressions derived from 
books. We mistake the transient excitation of 
the nobler sentiments produced by eloquent 
declamation or by the exhibition of romantic 
excellence in works of fiction, — by such cha- 
racters, for instance, as the Marquis of Posa in 
Don Carlos, — for a genuine renewal of the 
moral man. We think we are burnt clean by 
the temporary glow into which we are thrown. 
The nature of such excitement differs but little 
from that produced by alcoholic stimulants, 
amid animated discussion and congenial friends. 
It is stimulus without nourishment, ebullition 
without growth. It has something maudlin. It 
acts chiefly on the nerves. Its final effect ia 
rather to enervate than to educate the soul. 
He only instructs who gives me light, who 
effects a permanent lodgment, in the mind, of 
some essential truth. The effective moralist is 
not the enthusiast, but the impartial and clear 
seeing witness; not he who declaims most elo- 
quently about the truth, but he who makes me 
see it ; who gives me a clear intuition of a 
moral fact. 

Goethe was peculiarly fitted, by habit and 
endowment, to be a witness of the truth, so fai 
as truth is a matterof intellectual discernment 
Not over-scrupulous in his way of life, he prac 
tised the most scrupulous fidelity to himself, as 
a seeker of the truth. He gave no license tc 
his mind. Where he could not or would not 
perform, he would know. He wanted no' 
courage nor candor to see truly in morals and 
religion as in everything else. He loved sen 
sual indulgence right well, but he loved truth 
more. A man of sincerest intellect, who suf 
fered neither fear nor hope, nor prepossession 
of any kind, to come between him and the 
light ; with whom to see was the first necessity 
of his nature; to state distinctly to himself and 
others what he saw, the next. 

Unquestionably, he was no saint. His wildest 
admirers have sought no place for him in the 
Christian Calendar, though greater sinners than 
he may be found in it and among its most 
honored names. But neither was he a bad 
man in any allowable sense of the word, as 
every one must know who considers the moral 
conditions on which alone true poetry is poss? 



268 



GOETHE. 



ble. Wherein he transgressed the social law 
and the Christian standard, let judgment be 
pronounced without fear or favor. But for 
ever}' count on which verdict is given, let irre- 
fragable testimony be required. Let not the 
hero of his time, a hero of the true sort, — one 
who labored through life, with whatever judg- 
ment or success, to build up and not to destroy, 
to lead Humanity onward to the prize of beauty 
through the knowledge of the truth, — let not 
such a one be surrendered to the scourge of the 
tongue on grounds of hearsay and fallible in- 
ference. Let not a great and illustrious name 
be ruthlessly tossed to the dogs and to all the 
birds. If the good and evil of his life, the 
positive and the negative, were fairly weighed 
in the balance together, the result would pro- 
bably indicate a higher grade of moral excel- 
lence than most of his accusers have attained 
to. It is not, however, on the moral character 
of the man that any safe judgment as to the 
moral character of his writings can be based. 
Grant him immoral; — still his testimony to 
moral truth, if sincere, (and no one versed in 
his writings can doubt his sincerity), may be all 
the more impressive on that account. It is the 
testimony of one who was biassed by no pre- 
possessions in favor of that to which lie testifies, 
who took nothing for granted, believed nothing 
because it was the general conviction, said no- 
thing because it was expected, who would 
neither deceive himself nor be deceived by 
others. It is the testimony of one who had 
seen with his own eyes, and those eyes the 
keenest, the most unprejudiced, that ever sought 
to penetrate the relations of things ; — who had 
experienced with his own heart, and that heart 
one to which all experiences were familiar, 
which gave itself up without reserve to all the 
disciplme of life, which had proved all things 
and knew and confessed what was good. 

In reading Goethe we do not feel, as when 
reading Dante or Milton, that we are conversing 
with a pure and lofty spirit; but we do feel 
that we are conversing with a competent wit- 
ness, or better still, with an incorruptible judge. 
The verdict which he will give is a part of his 
life. It is a fact in Nature. The fault which 
most readers find with his writings is want of 
heat. He betrays no passionate interest in any 
subject, in any cliaracter, and seeks to excite 
none in his readers. To stir the blood is not 
h'.soim. Intense emotion he purposely avoids 



as incompatible with the higher purposes of 
art. There is no gush, no rush, no pouring 
forth of a full soul, excepting in his lyric 
poems. But what he wants in enthusiasm 
he makes up in sincerity and precision. If 
there is no declamation, there is also no 
cant, no straining, nothing said for effect. 
Therefore his words have weight. They 
drop like the oracles of destiny from his 
pen. When he states with characteristic 
calmness that " only with renunciation, can 
life, properly speaking, be said to begin;" 
that saying, though it does but repeat in 
substance what we had always been told, 
has all the freshness of an original discovery. 
This sincere word, wrung from the experience 
of such a mind, carries with it a deeper convic- 
tion than all the arguments and all the decla- 
mation that have ever been employed to enforce 
the duty of self-denial. 

With strong propriety may Goethe be termed 
a moral teacher, and the highest rank assigned 
to him as such. He will be found, on a careful 
study, to have the moral law in view, and to aim 
at enforcing it ; even there, where he has been 
charged with an immoral tendency; — and no- 
where more emphatically, than in the " Elective 
Affinities." The imputation cast upon this work 
is a specimen of the hasty and superficial manner 
in which his writings have been judged. The 
aim of the " Elective Affinities" is to illustrate 
the ethics of married life, to expose the mischief 
of ill-considered and unequal matches, and the 
terrible consequences of even mental infidelity 
to the marriage vow. He who can read the 
book attentively and understandingly, and find 
in it any other meaning than this, might dis- 
cover a plea for jealousy in Othello, or an apo- 
logy for murderous ambition in Macbeth. A 
writer, already quoted, has better understood 
the worth and purport of this finished work. 
"The mental aberrations of the consorts from 
their plighted faith, though, in the one case 
never indulged, and though, in the other, no 
veil of sophistry is cast over the weakness of 
passion, but all that is felt, expressed with the 
openness of one who desires to legitimate what 
he feels, — are punished with terrible griefs and 
a fatal catastrophe. Ottilia, that being of ex- 
quisite purity, with intellect and character so 
harmonized in feminine beauty, as they never 
before were found in any portrait of woman 
painted by the hand of man, perishes on finding 



GOETHE. 



269 



that she has been breathed upon by unhal- 
lowed passion, and led to err, even by her ig- 
norant wishes, against what is held sacred. 
There is indeed a sadness, as of an irresistible 
fatality, brooding over the whole. It seems as 
if only a ray of angelic truth could have enabled 
these beings to walk in this twilight, at first so 
soft and alluring, then deepening into blind 
horror. But if no such ray came to prevent 
their earthly errors, it seems to point heaven- 
ward, in the saintly sweetness of Ottilia. Her 
nature, too fair for vice, too finely wrought 
even for error, comes lonely, intense and pale, 
like the evening star on the cold wintry night. 
It tells of other worlds, where the meaning of 
Buch passages as this must be read to those 
faithful and pure like her, victims perishing in 
the green garlands of youth, to atone for the 
unworthiness of others. An unspeakable pathos 
is felt from the minutest trait in this character, 
and deepens with every new study of it. Not 
even in Shakspeare, have I so felt the organ- 
izing power of Genius. I feel myself familiar- 
ized with all beings of her order. I see not 
only what she was, but what she might have 
been, and live with her in yet untrodden 
realms."* 

Of Goethe's character, as a statesman and a 
citizen, no labored justification will be expected 
in a work like this. That he did not use his 
powers and influence for revolutionary purposes, 
seems to have been the chief cause of the dis- 
esteem into which he has fallen with certain 
revolutionary spirits of Germany, and of those 
aspersions which have acted on public opinion 
with us. True, he was decidedly conservative, 
60 far as State institutions were concerned ; for 
he saw little promise for man from measures, 
of which all that could with certainty be fore- 
seen, was, that they were subversive of present 
order and peace. He believed that all which 
was wanted, or all which was really desirable, 
might be accomplished, with greater certainty, 
by the agency of existing institutions. 

"Narre wenn es brennt so losche, 
HaCs gebrannt bau wieder auf.' 

Heine refers this conduct of Goethe to his pe- 
culiar position. "The giant was minister in a 
German dwarf- state. He could never move 
naturally. They said of the sitting Jupiter of 
Phidias at Olympia, that, if he should suddenly 
stand up, he would burst the vaulted roof of the 

* S. M. Fuller. Dial, ubi supra. 



temple. This was precisely the position of 
Goethe at Weimar. If he had suddenly started 
up from his sitting rest, he would have broken 
through the ceiling of the State, or, what is 
more likely, he would have broken his ovvn 
head against it. The German Jupiter quietly 
kept his seat." But in fact he needs no such 
apology. The question by which he must be 
tried, is not, whether he has adopted this or 
that particular method of advancing the inte- 
rests of Humanity; but whether he has ad- 
vanced the interests of Humanity at all, by any 
method whatsoever? Whether he labored, on 
the whole, to make men wiser, better, happier 1 
The answer to this question must be sought in 
his works. We may demand of a man, that he 
should not be indifferent to certain ends ; but 
the method we must leave to himself. "It 
cannot be too often repeated," says Mrs. Aus- 
tin, " that Goethe was not a partisan. That 
he was indifferent to the progress of human 
improvement and the sum of human happiness, 
as some have maintained, seems to me incre 
dible. Are we justified in accusing him of 
apathy and selfishness, because he had a dread 
of violent political convulsions'? a distrust of 
the efficacy of abrupt changes in the mechanism 
of government ? It was not surely indifference 
to the welfare of mankind, but that he thought 
it a pernicious illusion to look for healing there, 
from whence he was convinced no healing 
could ever come. His labors for the improve- 
ment of the human race were unwearied, calm 
and systematic." 

With regard to his private character, it 
would be easy to accumulate testimony of the 
highest authority in favor of those qualities in 
which he has been supposed to be most de- 
ficient. But for those who have learned to be- 
lieve in him for his works' sake, such testimony 
would be superfluous; and for those who are, 
once for all, determined against him, it would 
be unavailing. "Pity, that so few are ac 
quainted with this excellent man in respect ol 
his heart !" said the meek and pious Stilling, 
who could speak from personal experience of 
Goethe's worth. That he had faults it needs 
no testimony to prove. It may safely be taken 
for granted. That he had uncommon faults, oi 
any which — as things go — might not naturally 
be expected from a man of the world : to prove 
this, requires more testimony than has yet been 
adduced. And so we will dismiss the subject 
with his own words: " Life to all of us is suf- 
23* 



270 



GOETHE. 



fering ; who save God alone shall call us to our 
reckoning 1 By the failings we recognise the 
species, by the excellences the individual. 
Defects we all have in common, virtues belong 
to each severally:" and with these of Wieland, 
which, though they refer rather to his official 
than his private action, are not out of place in 
this connection : " If I had cause to be ever so 
angry with Goethe, or to feel ever so much 
offended and aggrieved by his conduct ; yet, 
when I recollect (what no one can know better 
than I) what incredible services he rendered to 
our Sovereign, during the early years of his 
reign, with what entire self-forgetfulness he 
devoted himself to his service; how much that 
was noble and great that yet slumbered in the 
princely youth he first called forth, I could fall 
on my knees before him, and praise and wor- 
ship our Master Goethe more than for all the 
productions of his genius or his intellect." 

It is time to conclude this essay, already 
drawn out beyond its legitimate bounds. The 
general misunderstanding which prevails among 



us respecting this hero of modern literature has 
caused it to assume a more apologetic character 
than its author could wish, than he feels to be 
consistent with his own respect for the man. 
In a few years, all external testimony as to his 
merits or demerits, will have perished from the 
earth; but his works will bear witness of him 
when there is no other. These have become 
a part of the world. Iphigenia and Tasso are 
indestructible possessions of the human mind, 
and Faust will endure while the Brocken 
stands or the Rhine flows. "In him," says 
Fichte, "the noblest blossom of Humanity, 
which Nature had put forth but once beneath 
the Grecian sky, by one of her miracles was 
repeated here in the North. To him it was 
given to measure two different epochs of hu- 
man culture with all their gradations. And if 
our race are destined to ascend to higher de- 
grees of excellence, it will not be without his 
co-operation."* 

* Fichte, ueber Oeist und Buchstabe in der Philosophie, 
Philosophisches Journal, vol. IX. 



THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 

EXTBACT FROM GOETHE'S ADTOBIOGBAPHY* 

Now Herder came, and together with his 
great learning, he brought with liim many other 
assistances, and the later publications besides. 
Among these he announced to us the Vicar of 
Wakejield as an excellent work, with the German 
translation of which he wished to make us ac- 
quainted by reading it aloud to us himself. 

His method of reading was quite peculiar; 
one who has heard him preach will easily form 
an idea of it for himself He delivered every- 
thing, and this romance as well as the rest, in a 
serious and simple style, perfectly removed from 
all imitative-dramatic representation, and avoid- 
ing even that variety which is not only permit- 
ted, but even required, in an epical delivery; I 
mean that slight change of voice which sets in 
relief what is spoken by the different charac- 
ters, and by means of which the interlocutors 
are distinguished from the narrator. Without 
being monotonous, Herder let everything follow 
along in the same tone, just as if nothing of it 
was present before him, but all was only his- 
torical ; as if the shadows of this poetic crea- 
tion did not affect him in a life-like manner, but 
only glided gently by. Yet ihis manner of de- 
livery had an infinite charm in his mouth : for, 
as he felt it all most deeply, and knew how to 
estimate the variety of such a work, so its whole 

* See No. LXXVI. of Wiley and Putnam's Library of 
Ciioice Reading. 



merit appeared in perfect purity, and the more 
clearly, as you were not disturbed by passages 
sharply spoken out, nor interrupted in the feel 
ing which the whole was meant to produce. 

A Protestant country-clergyman is, perhaps, 
the most beautiful subject for a modern idyl ; he 
appears, like JVIelchizedek, as Priest and King 
in one person. In the most innocent situation 
which can be imagined in the world, that of a 
husbandman, he is, for the most part, united to 
his people by similar occupations, as well as by 
similar family relationships ; he is a father, a 
master of a family, an agriculturist, and thus a 
perfect member of the community. On this 
pure, beautiful, earthly foundation, reposes his 
higher calling; to him is it given to guide men 
through life, to take care for their spiritual edu- 
cation, to bless them at all the leading epochs 
of their existence, to instruct, to strengthen, to 
console them, and, if present consolation is not 
sufficient, he calls up before them the hope and 
firm assurance of a happier future. Imagine to 
yourself such a man, with feelings of pure hu- 
manity, strong enough not to deviate from them 
under any circumstances, and by this already 
elevated above the many, of whom one can ex- 
pect neither purity nor firmness ; give him the 
learning necessary for his office, as well as a 
cheerful, equable activity which is even pas- 
sionate, for he neglects no moment for doing 
good, — and you will have him well endowed. 
But at the same time add the necessary liniited- 
ness, so that he must not only labor on in a small 
circle, but may also, perchance, pass over to a 



GOETHE. 



271 



smaller; grant him good-nature, placability, 
resolution, and everything else praiseworthy 
that springs from so decided a character, and 
over all this a serene condescension and a 
smiling forbearance towards his own failings 
and those of others: so will you have put 
together pretty well the image of our excellent 
Wakefield. 

The delineation of this character on his course 
of life through joys and sorrows, and the ever 
increasing interest of the plot, by the combi- 
nation of what is quite natural with tlie strange 
and the wonderful, make this romance one of 
the best which has ever been written ; besides 
this, it has the great superiority of being quite 
moral, nay, in a pure sense. Christian, for it re- 
presents the reward of good intentions and per- 
severance in the right, it strengthens an uncon- 
ditional confidence in God, and asserts the final 
triumph of good over evil, and all this without 
a trace of cant or pedantry. The author was 
preserved from both of these by an elevation of 
mind that shows itself throughout in the form 
of irony, Vjy reason of which this little work 
must appear to us as wise as it is amiable. The 
author. Dr. Goldsmith, has without question great 
insight into the moral world, into its strength 
and its infirmities ; but at the same time he may 
thankfully acknowledge that he is an English- 
man,* and reckon higlily the advantages which 
his country and his nation afforded him. The 
family, with whose delineation he has here 
busied himseif, stands upon one of the lowest 
steps of citizen-comfort, and yet comes in con- 
tact with the highest; its narrow circle, which 
becomes still more contracted, extends its in- 
fluence into the great world through the natural 
ami common course of things; this little skiff 
floats full on the agitated waves of English life, 
and in weal or wo it lias to expect injury or 
help from the vast fleet which sails around it. 

I may suppose that my readers know this 
work and remember it; whoever hears it named 
for the first time here, as well as he who is in- 
duced to read it again, will thank me. For the 
former I would merely remark, en passant, that 
the Vicar's wife is of that busy, good sort, who 
allows herself and family to want for nothing, 
but who is also somewhat vain of herself and 
family. There are two daughters ; Olivia, hand- 
some an<l more devoted to the exterior, and 
Sophia, charming and more given to her inner 
self; nor will I omit mentioning an industrious 
son, Moses, who is somewhat astringent and 
emulous of his Father. 

If Herder could be accused of any fault in 
his reading aloud, it was impatience; he did 
not wait until the hearer had heard and com- 
prehended a certain part of the details, so as to 
be able to feel and think correctly about them ; 
he would hurry on immediately to see their 

* Goldsmith was an Irishman by birlli, and received his 
education at Dublin, Edinburgh and Leyden, and fpent 
six months at Padua, where he is supposed to have taken 
hia degree.— rroTM. 



effect, and yet he was displeased with this too 
when it manifested itself in us. He blamed the 
excess of feeling which overflowed from me at 
every step in the story. I felt, like a man, like 
a young man ; everything was living, true, and 
present before me. He, considering only the 
artistic keeping and form, saw clearly, indeed, 
that I was overpowered by the subject-matter, 
and this he was unwilling to allow. Peglow's 
reflections, besides, which were not of the most 
refined character, were still worse received; but 
he was especially angry at our want of keenness 
in not seeing beforehand the contrasts which 
the author often makes use of, and in suflering 
ourselves to be moved and carried away by 
them without remarking the oft-returning art. 
Nor would he pardon us for not having seen at 
once, or at least suspected from the first, where 
Burchell is on the point of discovering himself 
by passing over in his narration from tlie third 
to the first person, that he himself was the lord 
whom he was talking about: and when, finally 
we rejoiced like children at the denouement, and 
the transformation of the poor, needy wanderer 
into a rich, powerful lord, he immediately re 
called the passage, which, according to the au 
thor's plan, we had overlooked, and then he 
read lis a powerful lecture on our stupidity. It 
will be seen from this that he regarded the 
work merely as a production of Art, and re 
quired the same of us who were yet wandering 
in that state where it is very allowable to lei 
works of art affect us just as if they were pro 
ductions of Nature. 

I did not suffer myself to be at all confused 
by Herder's invectives; for young people have 
the happiness or unhappiness, that, when any 
thing has produced an effect on them, this effect 
must be wrought out within themselves; from 
which much good, as well as much mischief 
arises. The above work had produced a great 
impression upon me, for which I could not ac 
count. Properly speaking, I felt myself in uni 
son with that ironical tolie of mind whicli ele- 
vates itself above every object, above fortune 
and misfortune, good and evil, death and lit'e 
and thus attains to the possession of a truly 
poetical world. In fact, though I could not be 
come conscious of this until later, it was enough 
that it gave me much to do at the moment; but 
I could by no means have expected to see my 
self so soon transposed from this fictitious world 
into an actual one so similar. 

My fellow-boarder, Weyland, who enlivened 
his quiet, laborious life, by visiting his friends 
and relations in the country, (for he was a na 
tive of Alsace,) did me many services on my 
little excursions, by introducing me to difl'ereni 
localities and individuals, sometimes in person 
sometimes by his recommendatioiis. He had 
often spoken to me about a country clergyman 
who lived near Drusenheim, six leagues from 
Strasburg, in possession of a good benefice, with 
an intelligent wife and a pair of lovely daugh 
ters. The hospitality and agreeableness of this 



272 



GOETHE. 



family were always highly extolled. It scarcely 
needed ail this to draw thither a young rider 
who had already accustomed himself to spend 
all his leisure days and hours on horseback and 
in the open air. We decided upon this trip, too, 
on which my friend had to promise that, on in- 
troducing me, he would say neither good nor ill 
of me, but would treat me with general indif- 
ference, and would also allow me to make my 
appearance clad, if not meanly, yet somewhat 
poorly and slovenly. He consented to this, and 
promised himself some sport from it. 

It is a pardonable whim in men of conse- 
quence to place their exterior advantages in 
concealment now and then, so as to give the 
fairer play to the intrinsic worth of their inner 
man. For this reason the incognito of princes, 
and the adventures resulting therefrom, are al- 
ways highly pleasing; they appear like masked 
divinities, who can nobly reckon at double their 
value all the good offices shown to them as in- 
dividuals, and are able either to make light of 
the disagreeable or to avoid it. That Jupiter 
should be well pleased in his incognito with 
Philemon and Baucis, and Henry the Fourth 
with his peasants after a hunting party, is quite 
conformable to Nature, and we like it well ; but 
that a young man, of no importance or name, 
should take it into his head to derive any plea- 
sure from an incognito, might be construed by 
many as an unpardonable arrogance. Yet since 
the question here is not whether such opinions 
and deeds are praiseworthy or blameable, but 
how they may have shown themselves and been 
put into execution, we will pardon the young- 
ster his self-conceit for this time, for the sake of 
our own amusement; and the more so as I must 
here affirm, in my excuse, that from youth up, a 
love for masquerade had been excited in me 
even by my stern father himself. 

This time too, partly with my own cast-ofF 
clothes, partly with some borrowed garments 
and by the manner of combing my hair, I had, 
if not disfigured myself, yet at least botched up 
my accoutrements so outlandishly that my friend 
could not help laughing along the way, espe- 
cially since I knew how to take off to the life 
the bearing and gesture of the Latin Riders (as 
such-lookirig figures are called) when they sit 
on horseback. The fine road, the most splendid 
weather, and the neighborhood of the Rhine, 
put us in the best humor. We stopped a mo- 
ment in Drusenheim, he to make himself spruce, 
and I to rehearse the part I was to play, for I 
was afraid of speaking now and then out of 
character. The country here has the character- 
istics of all the open, level parts of Alsace. We 
rnde by a pleasant foot-path over the meadows, 
soon reached Sesenheim, left our horses at the 
tavern, and walked leisurely towards the par- 
-onage. ''Do not be put out," said Weyland, 
showing me the house from a distance, "that it 
looks like an old and miserable farm-house; it 
is so much the younger inside." We stepped 
.nto the court-yard ; the wliole pleased me well : 



for it was just what is called picturesque, and 
what had so magically interested me in toe 
Dutch school of art. The effect which time 
produces on all the works of man was strongly 
perceptible. House, barn and stable were just 
at that point of dilapidation where, in doubtful 
hesitation betwixt repairing and rebuilding, men 
often neglect the^ one without being able to ac- 
complish the other. 

As in the village, so in the court-yard of the 
Parsonage, everything was quiet and deserted. 
We found the father quite alone, a little man, 
wrapped up within himself, but friendly not- 
withstanding; the family were then in the field. 
He bade us welcome, and offered us some re- 
freshment, which we declined. My friend hur- 
ried away to look after the ladies, and I remained 
alone with our host. "Perhaps," said he, "you 
are surprised to find me so miserably quartered 
in a wealthy village, and with a lucrative bene- 
fice ; but," continued he, "it proceeds from irre- 
solution. Long since it has been promised me 
by the parish, and even by those in higher 
places, that the house should be rebuilt; many 
plans have been already drawn, examined and 
altered, none of them altogether rejected, and 
none carried into execution. This has lasted so 
many years, that I scarcely know how to com- 
mand my impatience." I answered him what- 
ever I thought likely to cherish his hopes, and 
encourage him to take up the affair more vigor- 
ously. Thereupon he proceeded to describe 
familiarly the personages on whom such matters 
depend, and although he was no great hand at 
the delineation of character, yet I could easily 
comprehend how the whole business must have 
been delayed. The confidentialness of the man 
was something peculiar; he talked to me as if he 
had known me for ten years, though there was 
nothing in his look from which I could have 
suspected that he was directing any particular 
scrutiny to my character. At last my friend 
came in ■with the mother. She seemed to look 
at me with altogether ditferent eyes. Her coini- 
tenance was regular, and its expression intelli- 
gent; she must have been handsome in her 
youth. Her figure was tall and spare, but not 
more so than became her years, and when seen 
from behind she had yet quite a youthful and 
pleasing appearance. The elder daughter then 
came bouncing in briskly; she inquired after 
Frederica, just as both the others had also done. 
The father assured them that he had not seen 
her since all three had gone out together. The 
daughter again went out to the door to look for 
her sister; the mother brought us some refresh- 
ment, and Weyland continued the conversation 
with the old couple, which referred to nothing 
but known persons and circumstances; for it is 
usually the case, when acquaintances meet after 
some length of time, that they make inquiries 
about the members of a large circle, and mutu- 
ally give each other information. I listened, 
and now learned how much I had to promise 
myself from this circle. 



GOETHE. 



273 



The elder daughter again came hastily back 
into the room, anxious at not having found her 
sister. They felt uneasy about her, and scolded 
at this or that bad habit; only the father said, 
very composedly : "Always let her alone ; slie 
is back again already!" At this instant, in fact, 
she entered I he door; and then truly a most 
charming star arose in tliis terrestrial heaven. 
Both daughters still wore nothing but German, as 
tliey used to call it, and this almost obsolete nation- 
al costume became Frederica particularly well. 
A short, white, full skirt, with a furbelow, not so 
long but it left the neatest little foot visible up 
to the ankle; a tight white bodice and a black 
tafl'eta aprou, — there she stood, on the boundary 
between country beauty and city belle. Slender 
and airy, she tripped along as if she had nothing 
to carry, and her neck seemed almost too deli- 
cate for the luxuriant braids of flaxen hair on 
her elegant little head. A free, open glance 
beamed from her calm blue eyes, and her pretty 
little turned-up nose peered inquiringly into the 
air with as much unconcern as if there could he 
nothing like care in the world ; her straw hat 
dangled on her arm, and thus, at the first glance, 
I had the delight of seeing her perfect grace, 
and acknowledging her perfect loveliness. 

I now began to act my character subduedly, 
half ashamed to have played a joke on such 
good people, whom I had leisure enough to ob- 
serve: for the girls continued the previous con- 
versation, and that with feeling and humor. 
All the neighbors and connections were again 
brought upon the tapis, and to my imagination 
there seemed such a swarm of uncles and aunts, 
relations, cousins, comers and goers, gossips and 
guests, that I thought myself lodged in the live- 
liest world possible. All the members of the 
family had spoken some words with me, the 
mother looked at me every time she came in or 
went out, but Frederica first entered into con- 
versation with me, and as 1 took up and glanced 
through the music that was lying around, she 
asked me if I played also"! When I told her 
"Yes," she requested me to perform something; 
but the father would not allow this, ibr he main- 
tained that it was becoming in her to serve her 
guest first, with some piece of music or otlier, 
or a song. 

She played several things with some execu- 
tion, in the style which one usually hears in the 
country, and on a harpsichord, too, that the 
schoolmaster should liave tuned long since, if 
he had only had time. Slie was now to sing a 
song also, .sometlnng of the tender-melancholy; 
but she could not succeed with it. She rose up 
and said, smiling, or rather with that touch of 
serene joy which ever reposed on her counte- 
nance : " If I sing poorly, 1 cannot lay the blame 
on the harpsichord or the schoolmaster; but let 
us go out of doors, then you shall hear my Alsa- 
tain and Swiss songs, they sound much better." 

During tea, an idea which had already struck 
me before, occupied me to such a degree, that I 
became meditative and silent, although the live- 
2k 



liness of the elder sister, and the gracefulness 
of the younger, shook me often enough out of 
my contemplations. My astonishment at find- 
ing myself so actually in the Wakefield lamily 
was beyond all expression. The father, indeed, 
could not be compared with that excellent man ; 
but where will you find his like? On the other 
hand, all the worth which is peculiar to the 
husband there, here appeared in the wife. You 
could not see her without at once reverencing 
and fearing her. In her we saw the fruits of a 
good education; her demeanor was quiet, easy, 
cheerful, and inviting. 

If the elder daughter had not the celebrated 
beauty of Olivia, yet she possessed a fine figure, 
was lively, and rather impetuous; she every- 
where showed herself active, and lent a helping 
hand to her mother in all things. It was not 
hard to put Frederica in the place of Primrose's 
Sophia: for of her there is little said, we take 
it for granted that she is lovely; and this girl 
was lovely indeed. Now as the same occupa- 
tion and the same general situation, wherever 
they can occur, produce similar, if not the same 
effects, so here too many things were talked 
about and happened which had already taken 
place in the Wakefield family. But when a 
younger son, long spoken of and impatiently 
expected by the father, at last sprang into the 
room, and boldly sat himself down by us, taking 
but little notice of the guests, I could scarcely 
help exclaiming: "Moses, are you here too ! ' 

The conversation at table extended my insiglit 
into this country and family circle, as they chat- 
ted about various pleasant incidents which had 
happened here and there. Frederica, who sat 
next to me, took occasion from that circumstance 
to describe to me different localities which it 
might be worth my while to visit. As one little 
story always calls out another, I was able to 
mingle in the conversation the better, and relate 
similar incidents, and as, besides this, a good 
country wine was by no means spared, I stood 
in danger of slipping out of my character, for 
which reason my provident friend took advan- 
tage of the beautiful moonlight, and proposed a 
walk, which was immediately resolved on. He 
gave his arm to the elder, I to the younger, and 
thus we went through the wide plains, paying 
more attention to the heavens above than to the 
earth beneath, which lost icself in extension 
around us. There was nothing of moonshine 
about Frederica's conversation, however; hy 
the clearness with which she spoke she turned 
night into day, and there was nothing in it which 
hinted at or would have excited feeling, only 
her expressions addressed themselves more than 
ever to me, wliile, as I walked by her side, she 
represented to me her own situation, as well as 
the neighborhood and her acquaintances, just as 
I wished to be made acquainted with them ; 
then she added that she hoped I would make 
no exception, and would visit them again, as all 
strangers had willingly done who had on ^•• 
lodged at the Parsonage. 



274 



GOETHE. 



Tt was very pleasant to me to listen silently 
to the descriptions vvliioh she gave of the little 
world in which she moved, and of the persons 
wlioin she particularly valued. She thereby 
imparted to me a clear, and, at the same time, 
such an amiable idea of her situation, that it had 
a very strangle effect on me : for I felt at once a 
deep regret that I had not lived with her sooner, 
and at the same time a right painful jealous 
feeliiis towards all who had hitherto had the 
good fortune to surround her. I also watched 
closely, as if I had had a right to do so, all her 
descriptions of men, whether they appeared 
uniler the names of neighbors, cousins, or fami- 
liar friends, and my conjectures inclined now 
to one, now to another; but how should I have 
discovered anything in my complete ignorance 
of all the circumstances? She at last became 
more and more talkative, and I constantly more 
and more silent. It was so good to listen to her, 
and as I heard only her voice, while the out- 
lines of her countenance, like the rest of the 
world around, floated dimly in the twilight, it 
seemed to me as if I could see into her heart, 
and tliat I could not but find it very pure, since 
it unbosomed itself to me in such unembarrassed 
prattle. 

When my companion and I retired to the 
guest-chamber which was prepared for us, he, 
with self-complacency, immediately broke out 
into pleasant jesting, and took great credit to 
himself for having surprised me so much with 
the likeness of the Primrose family. I chimed 
■in with him, by showing myself thankful. 
■" Truly," cried he, " the story is all here together. 
This family may well be compared to that, and 
the gentleman in disguise here, may assume the 
honor of passing for Mr. Burchell; moreover, 
since scoundrels are not so necessary in every- 
day life as in romances, I will for this time un- 
dertake the role of the Nephew, and will behave 
myself better than he did." However, I imme- 
diately changed this conversation, pleasant as it 
was to me, and first of all asked him, on his 
conscience, if he had not betrayed me ? He 
answered me "No!" and I ventured to believe 
him. They had rather inquired, said he, after 
the jovial table-companion who boarded at the 
same house with him in Strassburg, and of 
whom they had heard all sorts of preposterous 
stuff. I now went to other questions : Had she 
ever been in love? Was she now in love? 
Was she engaged? He said "No" to them all. 
"In truth," replied I, "that such a serenity 
should come by nature is inconceivable to me. 
If she had loved and lost, and again recovered 
herself, o>- if she was betrothed, in both these 
cases I could account for it." 

Thus we chatted together till deep in the 
night, and I was awake again at the dawn. 
My longing to see her once more seemed un- 
conquerable ; but while 7 was dressing I was 
horrified at the confounded wardrobe I had so 
I'apriciously selected. The further I advanced . 
in putting on my clothes, the meaner I seemed 



in my own eyes: for everything was calculated 
for just that etfect. I might perchance have set 
my hair to rights; but when at last I (breed mj 
arms into the borrowed, worn-out grey coat, the 
short sleeves of which gave me the most absurd 
appearance, I fell decidedly into despair, and 
the more so since I could see myself only piece- 
meal, in a little looking-glass, and then each 
part always looked more ridiculous than the rest. 

During this toilette my friend awoke, and 
with the satisfaction of a good conscience, and 
in the feeling of pleasurable hopes for the day, 
he looked out at me from under the quilted silk 
coverlet. I had envied his fine clothes for a 
long time already, as they hung over the chair, 
and had he been of my size, I would have car- 
ried them oft" before his very eyes, dressed my- 
self in them, and hurrying into the garden, left 
my cursed husks for him ; he would have had 
good humor enough to deck himself out in my 
clothes, and our tale would have found a merry 
ending early in the morning. But that was not 
now to be thought of, as little as any other fea- 
sible accommodation. To appear again before 
Frederica in such a figure that my friend could 
give me out as a laborious and accomplished 
but poor student of Theology, — before Frederica, 
who yesterday evening had spoken so friendly 
to my disguised self, — that was altogether im- 
possible. There I stood, vexed and thoughtful, 
and summoned up all my power of invention; 
alas! it deserted me! But now when he, com- 
fortably stretched out in bed, after fixing his 
eyes upon me for a while, all at once burst out 
into a loud laugh, and exclaimed: "Yes! it is 
true, you do look most confoundedly !" I replied 
impetuously: "And I know what I will do. 
Good bye, and make my excuses!" "Are you 
crazy !" cried he, springing out of bed and try- 
ing to detain me. But I was already out of the 
door, down the stairs, out of the house and yard, 
to the tavern; in an instant my horse was sad- 
dled, and I hurried away in mad vexation, gal- 
loping towards Drusenheim, dashed through the 
place, and still onwards! 

As I thought myself by this time in safety, I 
began to ride more leisurely, and now first felt 
how infinitely against my will 1 was going away. 
But I resigned myself to my fate, recalled to 
mind the promenade of yesterday evening with 
the greatest calmness, and cherished the secret 
hope of seeing her soon again. Yet this quiet 
feeling again changed itself into impatience, and 
I now determined to ride rapidly into the city, 
change my dress, take a good fresh horse, and 
then, as my passion made me believe, I could at 
all events return before dinner, or, as was more 
probable, to the dessert or towards evening, and 
beg my forgiveness. 

I was just about to put spurs to my horse to 
execute this resolve, when another, and, as 
seemed to me, a happier thought came into my 
head. In the tavern at Drusenheim, the day 
before, I had noticed a son of the landlord very 
nicely dressed, who, up early to-day and busied 



GOETHE. 



275 



about his rural arrangements, had saluted me 
from his court-yard as I rode by. He was of 
my size, and had sliglitly reminded me of my- 
self. Tliought, done ! My horse was hardly 
turned around, when I found myself in Drusen- 
heim ; I brought him into the stable, and made 
the fellow my proposal in brief: that he should 
lend me his clothes, as I had sometliiug merry 
on foot at Sesenheim. 1 had no need to talk 
long; he agreed to the proposition with joy, 
and praised me for wishing to make some sport 
for the Mamsells j they were so gallant and good, 
especially Mamselle Rica, and the parents, too, 
liked to see everything go on merry and pleasant. 
He considered me attentively, and as from my 
Appearance he might have taken me for a poor 
starveling, he said: "If you wish to insinuate 
yourself into their good graces, this is the right 
way." Meanwhile we had already made 
rapid advances in our toilette; he could not 
indeed trust me with his holiday clothes on the 
strength of mme; but he was honest-hearted, 
and had my horse in his stable. I soon stood 
there right trig, threw back my shoulders, and 
my friend seemed to contemplate his likeness 
with complacency. "Well, Mr. Brother!" said 
he, giving me his hand, which I grasped hearti- 
ly, " don't come too near my gal, she might mis- 
take you !" 

My hair, which now had its full growth again, 
I could part at top pretty mucli like his, and as 
I looked at him repeatedly, 1 found it comical 
to imitate closely his thicker eyebrows, with a 
burnt cork, and bring mine nearer together in 
the middle, so as with my enigmatical inten- 
tions, to make myself an external riddle like- 
wise. "Now have you not," said I, as he 
handed me his be-ribboned hat, "sometliing or 
other to be done at the Parsonage, so that I 
may announce myself there in a natural man- 
ner ?" " Good !" replied he, " but then you 
must wait two hours yet. There is a confine- 
ment at our house; I will offer to take tlie cake 
to the Parson's wife,* and you might carry it 
over there. Pride must be paid for, and so 
must a joke." — I concluded to wait, but these 
two hours were infinitely long, and I was dying 
of impatience when the third hour passed by 
before the cake came out of the oven. I got it 
at last, quite hot, and hastened away with my 
credentials in the most beautiful sunshine, ac- 
companied for a space by my Ditto, who pro- 
mised to come after me in the evening and 
bring me my clothes, which liowever, I briskly 
declined, and reserved to myself the privilege 
of returning him his own when I was done 
with them. 

I had not skipped far with my present, which 
I carried neatly tied up in a napkin, when, in 
the distance, I saw my friend approaching with 
the two ladies. My heart was uneasy, although 
in fact it was unnecessary under this jacket. I 
stood still, took breath, and tried to tliink how I 

* The general cusloin of the country villages in Pro- 
testant Germany on such interesting occasions. — TVans. 



should begin ; and now I first remarked that the 
nature of the ground was very much in my 
favor ; for they were walking on the other side 
of the brook, which, together with the strips of 
meadow through whicli it ran, kept the two 
foot-paths pretty far apart. When they were 
just opposite to me, Frederica, who had already 
perceived me long before, cried : "George, what 
have you got there?"' I was clever enough to 
cover my face with my hat, which I took off, at 
the same time holding up the loaded napkin 
high in the air. " A christening-cake !'' cried she 
at that ; " how does your sister do !" " Gooed," 
said I, for I tried to talk strange, if not exactly 
in the Alsatian dialect. " Carry it to the house !" 
said the elder, "and if you do not find mother, 
give it to the maid ; but wait for us, we will be 
back soon, do you hear?" I hastened along my 
path in the joyous feeling of the best hope that, 
as the beginning was so lucky, all would go off 
well, and I soon reached the Parsonage. I 
found nobody either in the house or the kitchen; 
I did not wish to disturb the old gentleman, 
whom I might have supposed busy in the study; 
I therefore sat me down on the bench before the 
door, placed the cake beside me, and pressed 
my hat upon my face. 

I cannot easily recall more delightfid sensa- 
tions. To sit here again on tliis threshold, over 
which, a short tiine before, I had blundered out 
in despair; to have seen her already, to have 
heard her dear voice again so soon after my 
chagrin had pictured to ine a long separation, to 
be expecting every moment herself, and a dis- 
covery at which my heart throbbed fast, and yet, 
in this ambiguous case, it would be an exposure 
without shame; for from its very beginning it 
was a merrier prank than any of those they had 
laughed at so much yesterday. Love and Ne- 
cessity are yet the best masters; they both 
worked together here, and their pupil was not 
unworthy of them. 

But the niaiil came stepping out of the barn. 
"Now! did the cake turn out well !" cried she 
to me; "how docs your sister do?'' "All 
gooed," said I, and pointed to the cake without 
looking up. She took up the napkin and mut- 
tered : " Now what's the matter with you to-day 
again ? Has little Barbara been looking at some- 
body else once more? Don't let us sulfer foi 
that! A happy couple you will make, if you 
carry on so!" As she spoke pretty loud, the 
Parson came to the window and asked : " What's 
the matter?" She showed liitn; I stood up 
and turned myself towards him, but yet kept 
the hat over my face. As he spoke rather 
kindly to me and had asked me to remain, I 
went towards the garden, and was just goinir in 
when the Parson's wife, who was entering the 
court-yard gate, called to me. As the sun shone 
right in my face, I once more took advantage of 
my hat, and saluted her with a ploughman's 
scrape ; but she went into the house after she 
had bidden me not go away without eatini* 
something. I now walked up and down in tli» 



278 



GOETHE. 



garden ; everythii g had hitherto had the best 
siiocess, yet I drew a deep breath when I re- 
flected that the young people would soon return. 
But the mother unexpectedly stepped up to me, 
and was just going to ask me a question, when 
she looked tne in the face so that I could not 
conceal myself any longer, and the question 
stuck in her mouth. " I was looking for George," 
said she, after a pause, "and whom do I find? 
Is it you, young sir? How many forms have 
you, then?" "In earnest only one," replied I; 
"in sport as many as you like." "Which sport 
I will not spoil, ' smiled she; "go out behind 
the garden and into the meadow until it strikes 
twelve, then come back, and I will already have 
contrived the joke." I did so ; but when I was 
outside of the hedge that bounds the village 
gardens, and was going into the meadow, I saw 
some country people coming along the foot-path 
towards me, who embarrassed me. I therefore 
turned aside into a little grove which crowned 
an elevation near by, in order to conceal myself 
the're till the appointed time. Yet how strangely 
was I surprised when I entered it! for it ap- 
peared to be a neatly trimmed place, with 
benches, from every one of which could be en- 
joyed a fine view of the country. Here was 
the village and the church tower, here Dru- 
senheiin, and behind it the woody islands of the 
Rhine, in the opposite direction was the Vosgian 
inountaiti-range, and at last the Minster of Strass- 
burg. These different heaven-bright pictures 
were surrounded by frames of foliage, so that 
one could imagine nothing more joyous and 
more pleasing. I sat me down upon one of the 
benches, and noticed on the largest tree an ob- 
long little board with the inscription: " Frede- 
ricas Repose.' It never entered into my head 
that I could have come to disturb this repose : 
for a building passion has this beauty about it, 
that, as it is unconscious of its origin, neither 
does it spend any thought upon its end, and as 
it feels itself glad and cheerful, it can have no 
presentiment that it may make mischief too. 

Scarcely had I had time to look about me and 
lose myself in sweet reveries, when I heard 
somebody coming; it was Frederica herself. 
"George, what are you doing here?" she cried 
from a distance. " Not George !" cried I, run- 
ning towards her, " but one who craves forgive- 
ness of you a thousand times." She looked at 
nie with astonishment, but soon collected her- 
self and said, after drawing a deeper breath: 
"You abominable fellow, how you frighten 
me!" "The first disguise has led me into the 
second," exclaimed 1; "the former would have 
been unpardonable if I had only known in any 
manner whom I was going to see, but this one 
you will certainly forgive, for it is the form of 
a man whom you meet in so friendly a man- 
ner." Her pale cheeks had colored up with 
the loveliest rosy-red. " You shall not be treat- 
ed worse than George, at all events! But let 
us sit down! I confess that the fright has 
thrilled through all my limbs. ' I sat down be- 



side her, exceedingly agitated. "We know 
everything already from your friend, up to thi; 
morning," said she, "now do you tell me the 
rest." I did not sufl^er her to ask twice, but de- 
scribed to her iny horror at my yesterday's 
figure, and my rushing out of the house, so 
comically that she laughed heartily and de- 
lightedly; then I went on with what follow- 
ed, with all modesty, indeed, yet passionately 
enough to have well passed for a declaration 
of love in historical form. At last I solemnized 
my pleasure at finding her again, by a kiss upon 
her hand, which she sufl^ered to remain in mine. 
If she had taken upon herself the expense of 
the conversation during yesterday evening's 
moonlight walk, I now, on my part, richly re- 
paid the debt. The pleasure of seeing her 
again, and being able to say to her everything 
that I had kept back yesterday, was so great, 
that, ill my eloquence, I did not remark how 
meditative and silent she was becoming. Once 
more she drew a deep breath, and over and 
over again I begged her forgiveness for the 
fright which I had caused her. How long we 
may have sat there I know not; but all at once 
we heard some one call "Rica! Rica!" It was 
the voice of her sister. "That will be a pretty 
story to tell," said the dear girl, restored to lier 
perfect serenity again ; "she is coming hither 
from the side next to me," added she, bending 
over so as half to conceal me: "turn yourself 
away, so that she will not recognize you at 
once." The sister came up to the spot, but not 
alone; Weyland was with her, and both, as 
soon as they saw us, stood still as if petrified. 

If we should all at once see a powerful flame 
burst out from a quiet roof, or should meet a 
monster whose deformity was at the same time 
revolting and fearful, we should not be struck 
with such massive astonishment as seizes us, 
when, unexpectedly, we see with our own eyes 
something we had believed morally impossihie. 
"What is this?" cried the elder, with the 
rapidity of one who is frightened to death : 
"What is this? you with George! Hand-in- 
hand! How am I to understand this?" — "Dear 
sister," replied Frederica, very doubtfully, "the 
poor fellow is begging something of me; he has 
something to beg of you, too, you must forgive 
hitn beforehand." "I don't understand, — I 
don't comprehend — " said her sister, shaking 
her head and looking at Weyland, who, in his 
quiet way, stood by in perfect tranquillity, and 
contemplated the scene without any kind of ex- 
pression. Frederica arose and drew ine after 
lier. "No hesitating!'' cried she! "Pardon 
begged and granted !"' "Now do!'' said I, step- 
ping pretty near the elder, " I have need of par- 
don !" She drew back, gave a loud shriek, and 
blushed over and over, then threw herself 
down on the grass, burst into a roar of laughter, 
and could not get enough of it. Weyland 
smiled as if pleased, and cried: "You are a 
rare youth !'' Then he shook my hand in his 
He* was not usually liberal with his caresses 



GOETHE. 



277 



but bis sbake of tbe hand bad something beany 
arid enlivening about it; yet be was sparing of 
this also. 

After taking some time to recover and collect 
ourselves, we set out on our return to tbe village. 
On the way I learned bow this singular ren- 
counter had been occasioned. Frederioa bad at 
last parted from the promenaders to rest herself 
in her little nook for a moment before dinner, 
and when tbe other two came back to the house, 
tbe mother had sent tbem to call Frederica in 
the greatest haste, as dinner was ready. 

The elder sister manifested tbe most extrava- 
gant deligbt, and when she learned that the 
mother had already discovered the secret, she 
exclaimed: "All that is left now is that father, 
brother, servant-man and maid, should be cheat- 
ed likewise.'' When we were at tbe garden- 
hedge, Frederica insisted upon going beforehand 
into tbe house with my friend. The maid was 
busy in the kitchen-garden, and Olivia (for so I 
may be allowed to name tbe elder sister here), 
called out to ber : "Here, I have something to 
tell you!'' She left me standing by the hedge, 
and went towards the maid. I saw that she 
was speaking to ber very earnestly. Olivia re- 
presented to ber that George bad quarrelled with 
Barbara, and seemed desirous of marrying her. 
The lass was not displeased at this ; I was now 
called, and was to confirm what bad been said. 
Tbe handsome, stout girl cast down her eyes, 
and remained so till I stood quite near before 
her. But when, all at once, she looked into tbe 
strange face, she too gave a loud scream and 
ran away. Olivia bade me run after ber and 
bold ber fast, so that she should not get into the 
bouse and give tbe alarm; while she herself 
wished to go and see bow it was with her 
father. On tbe way Olivia met tbe servant-boy, 
who was in love with the maid; I had in the 
mean time hurried after 'lie maid, and held her 
fast. "Only tbiuk ! \yliat good luck!"' cried 
Olivia: "it's all overwidi Barbara, and George 
marries Liese." " I have thought he would lor 
a long while,'' said the good fellow, and stood 
there disconsolate. 

I had given the maid to understand, that all 
we had yet to do was to cheat the father. We 
went uj) tu the lad, who turned away and would 
have walked otf; but Liese took him aside, and 
be, too, when be was undeceived, made the 
must extraordinary gestures. We went together 
to the house. Tbe table was covered, and the 
father already in tbe room. Olivia, who kept 
me behind ber, stepped to tbe threshold and 
said : " Father, you have no objections to George's 
dining with us to-day? but you must let. him 
keep bis hat on." "With all my heart!" said 
the old man, "but why such an unusual thing? 
Has he hurt himself?" She led me forward as 
1 stood, with my bat on. "No!" said she, hand- 
ing me into the room, "but be has a bird-cage 
under it, and tbe birds might fly out and make 
a deuce of a fuss ; for there are nothing but loose 
wild birds there." Tbe i'atber was pleased with 



the joke, without precisely knowing what it 
meant. At this instant she took off my hat, 
made a ploughman's scrape, and required me 
to do the same. The old man looked at me, 
recognized me, but was not put out of bis 
priestly self-possession. " Ay, ay, Mr. Candi- 
date !" exclaimed he, raising a threatening finger 
at me : " You have changed saddles very quickly, 
and over-night I have lost an assistant, who 
yesterday promised me so faithfully that be 
would often mount my pulpit on week-days." 
Thereupon he laughed heartily, bade me wel- 
come, and we sat down to table. Moses came 
in much later; for, as the youngest and spoiled 
child, be had accustomed himself not to hear 
the dinner-bell. Besides, he took very little 
notice of the company, scarce even when be 
contradicted tbem. In order to make surer of 
him, they had placed me, not between tbe 
sisters, but at the end of the table, where George 
often used to sit. As he came in at tbe door, 
which was behind me, he slapped me smartly 
on the shoulder, and said: "Good dinner to you, 
George!" " Many thanks, youngster!" replied 
I. The strange voice and tbe strange face 
startled him. "What say you?' cried Olivia: 
"does he not look verylike his brother?" " Yes, 
from behind," replied Moses, who managed to 
recover bis composure immediately, like other 
folk. He did not look at me again, and busied 
himself merely with zealously devouring the 
dishes, in order to make up for lost time. Then, 
too, he thought proper occasionally to find some- 
thing for himself to do in tbe yard and tbe gar- 
den. At tbe dessert the genuine George caine 
in, and made the scene still more lively. They 
rallied him for his jealousy, and would not 
praise him for having gotten himself a rival in 
me; but he was modest and clever enough, 
and, iTi a half-confused manner, he mi.xed up 
himself, bis sweetheart, his ditto, and the Mam- 
sells with each other to such a degree, that at 
last nobody could tell whom be was talking 
about, so that they were glad to give him a 
glass of wine and a piece of his own cake to 
eat, to keep him quiet. 

At table there was some talk about going to 
walk ; which however did not suit me very well 
in my peasant's clothes. But the ladies, early 
on that day already, when they learned who 
had run away in such a desperate hurry, bad 
remembered that a hunting-coat of a cousin of 
theirs, in which he used to go sporting when be 
was here, was hanging in a clothes-press. Yet 
I declined, apparently with all sorts of jokes, 
but with a feeling of secret vanity, not wishing, 
as cousin, to disturb the good impression 1 had 
made in tbe character of jieasant. The father 
had gone to take his afternoon nap ; the mother, 
as always, was busy about her housewifery. 
But my friend proposed that I should tell tbem 
some story, to which I immediately agreed. We 
repaired to a spacious arbor, and 1 gave them a 
tale which I have since written out under the title 
of The New Melusina, (j)ost,324). It bears about thf 
2-1 



278 



GOETHE. 



same relation to The New Paris* as the Youth 
bears to the Boy, and I would insert it here, 
were I not afraid of injuring, by its outlandish 
play of Fancy, the rural reality and simplicity 
which agreeably surround us. Enough : I suc- 
ceeded in that which rewards the inventors and 
narrators of such productions, I succeeded in 
awakening curiosity, in fixinjr die attention, in 
inciting them to give over-hasty solutions of im- 
penetrable riddles, in deceiving their expecta- 
tions, in confusing them by making that wonder- 
ful which was merely strange, in arousing sym- 
pathy and fear, in making them anxious, in 
moving them ; and at last, by the inversion of 
what was apparently sober earnest into an in- 
genious and cheerful jest, this little tale satisfied 
the mind, leaving behind it materials for new 
images to the imagination, and to the under- 
standing for further reflection. 

Should any one hereafter read this tale in 
print, and doubt whether it could have and pro- 
duce such an effect, let him remember that, pro- 
perly speaking, man is only intended to have 
influence while present. Writing is an abuse 
of language, reading silently to one's self is a 
pitiful succedaneum of speech. The strongest 
influence in a man's power is made by his per- 
sonal presence, youth is the most powerful upon 
youth, and hence too arise the purest influences. 
These are they which enliven the world, and 
can perish neither morally nor physically. I 
had inherited from my father a certain loqua- 
cious fondness for teaching; from my mother 
the faculty of representing, clearly and power- 
fully, everything that the imagination can pro- 
duce or grasp, of giving a freshness to known 
stories, of inventing and relating others, and 
even making them up as I M'ent along. By my 
paternal endowment I was for the most part 
rather a bore to the company: for who likes to 
listen to the opinions and sentiments of another, 
especially a youth, whose judgment, on account 
of his fragmentary experience, seems constantly 
insufficient? My mother, on the contrary, had 
thoroughly qualified nie for social conversations. 
For to the imagination even the emptiest tale 
has an elevated charm, and even the smallest 
quantity of solid matter is thankfully received 
by the understanding. 

By such recitals, which cost me nothing, I 
made myself beloved by children, I excited and 
delighted youth, and drew upon me the atten- 
tion of older persons. But in society, such as it 
commotdy is, I was soon obliged to stop these 
practices, and I have thereby lost but too much 
of the enjoyment of the world and of intellec- 
tual improvement ; yet both these parental gifts 
accompanied me throughout my whole life, 
united with a third, namely, the necessity of ex- 
preos.ngmysc I' figuratively and by comparisons. 
In consideration of these peculiarities, Doctor 
Gall, a man of as much profim<lity as acuteness, 
discovering them by his Theory, assured me 

* See Fait First, Book V[.— Trans. 



that I was properly speaking born for a popular 
orator. At this disclosure I was not a little con- 
founded: for as I discovered, in my nation, no 
opportunity to harangue about anything, it would 
follow, if his assertion were well-grounded, that 
everything else I could undertake, would have 
been, alas, but a mistaken vocation ! 



FROM THE "ELECTIVE AFFINITIES."* 

PinT SECOND. CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. 

Ottiha this afternoon had taken a walk to 
the lake. She carried the child and read as 
she walked, according to her custom. In this 
manner she arrived at the oak by the ferry. 
The boy had fallen asleep : she seated herself, 
laid him down beside her, and continued her 
readiTig. The book was one of those that draw 
to them a tender soul and will not let it go. 
She forgot time and the hour, and did not con- 
sider that by land it was a long way back to 
the new building; but she sat absorbed in her 
book, in herself, so lovely to look upon that the 
trees and bnslies around shoidd have been ani- 
mated and gifted with eyes to admire and de- 
light in her. Just then a ruddy gleam of the 
sinking sun fell behind her, and gilded her 
cheeks and shoulders. 

Edward, who had succeeded in making his 
way thus far unobserved, finding his park empty 
and the region solitary, ventured on still farther. 
At last he breaks through the thicket near the 
oak, sees Ottilia and she sees him; he flies to 
her and throws hiinself at her feet. After a 
long silent jiause, in which both seek to collect 
themselves, he explains to her in a few words 
why and how he had come here; that he had 
sent the Major to Charlotte, that their common 
fate was at this moment deciding. That he had 
never doubted her love, she also certainly never 
his — that he now asks her consent. 

Ottilia spoke thus in haste. She recalled at 
once to mind all that iriight occur. She was 
happy in Edward's presence, but felt that she 
must send him away. " I beg, I entreat you, 
dearest," she cried, " return and wait for the 
Major. ' " I obey your command," cried Ed- 
ward, while he first gazed passionately on her 
and then seized her in his arms. She embraced 
him with hers, and pressed him most tenderly 
to her breast. Hope shot, like a star that falls 
from heaven, away over their lieads. They 
imagined, they believed that they now belonged 
to each otlier ; they exchanged, for the first time, 
decided, free kisses, and then, with a violent 
and painful effort, tore themselves apart. — The 
sun had set, it was growing dusk — and a damp 
vapor was rising from the lake. Ottilia stood 
perplexed and excited. She looked over toward 
the house on the hill, and thought she saw Char- 

♦ Translated by Mr. G. P. Bradford. 



GOETHE, 



279 



lotte's wliite dress on the balcony. It was a 
long way round the laUe. and slie knew how 
impatiently Charlotte was waiting for the child. 
She sees the plane trees opposite her; only a 
piece of water separates her from the path that 
leads directly up to the building. In her 
thoughts, as with her eyes, she has already 
crossed. The risk of venturing on the water 
with the child vanishes in this extremity. She 
hastens to the boat, and does not feel that her 
heart beats violently, that her feet totter, and 
that her senses threaten to fail her. She spriisgs 
into the boat, seizes the oar, and pushes off from 
the land. She is obliged to use force, and re- 
peat the effort. The boat rocks and glides a 
little way out into the lake; with the child on 
her left arm, the book in her left hand, and the 
oar in her right, she staggers, loses her foothold, 
and falls into the boat. The oar escapes from 
her hand on one side, and, in lier efforts to re- 
cover herself, child and book fall on the other 
into the water. She still grasps the child's 
clothes; but the helpless position in which she 
lies hinders her from rising herself. Her right 
hand, which remains free, is not sufficietit to 
enable her to turn round and raise herself uj). 
At last, however, she succeeds, draws the child 
out of the water, but its eyes are closed, it has 
ceased to breathe ! 

Jn an instant she recovers entirely her self- 
possession, but so much the greater is her pain. 
The boat has drifted nearly to the middle of tlie 
lake, the oar is floating far away, she sees no 
one on the shore, and indeed what would it 
have availed her to see anyone? Separated 
from all, she floats on the faithless, inaccessible 
element. 

In this emergency she has to look for aid 
within herself Often has she heard of the re- 
suscitation of the drowned. On her very birth- 
day she had experienced this herself. She snips 
the child and dries it with her muslin dress. 
She tears open her bosorn, and bares it for the 
first time to the free heaven; lor the first time 
she presses a living being to her pure naked 
breast, alas! no longer a living being! The 
cold limbs of the unfortunate creature chilled 
lier bo?om to her inmost heart. Endless tears 
gu.-^li from hei eyes, and impart a semblance of 
life and warmth to the surface of the stiflened 

* * * She does not give over her efforts, 
she wraps it in her shawl, and by rubbing, 
pressing, breathing on it, by kisses and tears, 
she thinks to supply the place of those remedies 
that are denied to her. cut off as she is from 
communication witii others. 

All in vain ! Motionless the child lies in her 
arms, motionless stands the boat on the watery 
plain ; but even here her beautiful spirit does 
not leave her helpless. She turns toward hea- 
ven. Kneeling she sinks down in the boat, and 
with both arms raises the stiffened child above 
her innocent breast, marble-like in whiteness, 
*nd alas! in coldness too. With moist eyes she 



loolcs upward and invokes help from thence 
where a tender heart hopes to find the greatest 
fulness when all else fails. 

And not in vain does she turn to the stars, 
which already are beginning one by one to 
twinkle forth. A soft wind rises and drives 
the boat to the plane-trees. 

CHAPTEK FOURTEENTH. 

She hastens to the new building, calls out the 
surgeon and gives him the child. The ever- 
ready man treats the delicate body with suc- 
cessive applications according to the customary 
manner. Ottilia assists him in all; she pro- 
cures, she fetches, she assumes the care, moving, 
indeed, as in another world, for the height of 
misery like the highest happiness changes the 
face of all things ; and only when, after all 
means have been tried, the worthy man shakes 
his head, first to her hopeful questions making 
no answer, then answering with a whispered 
No, she leaves Charlotte's chamber, where all 
this had taken place, and hardly has she enter- 
ed the parlor, when, unable to reach the sofa, 
she falls on her face, exhausted on the floor. 

At this moment they hear Charlotte's carriage 
drive up to the house. The surgeon earnestly 
beseeches tlie bystanders to remain behind. He 
will go to meet her and prepare her for what 
has happened; but already she has entered her 
apartment. She finds Ottilia on the floor, an'< 
one of the maids rushes toward her with cries 
and tears. The surgeon comes in and she 
learns all at once. But how can she, at once, 
give up all hope? The experienced, skilful and 
wise man begs her only not to see the child; 
and goes away to beguile her with new at- 
tempts. She has se^aed herself on her sofa; 
Ottilia still lies o' the floor, but raised a little 
so that her head lies sunk on Charlotte's knees. 
The medical friend goes backward and forward. 
He appears to be busied about the child, while 
his care in reality is directed to the women. In 
this way midnight comes on, the death-stillness 
becoming always deeper. Charlotte no longer 
conceals from herself that the child can never 
be restored to life. She desires to see it. It 
has been wrapt in clean, warm, woollen cloths, 
and laid in a basket which they set by her on 
the sofa, — only the little face is uncovered. 
Calm and beautiful it lies there. 

The news of the melancholy acciilent had 
excited a stir in the village and reached the 
itm. The Major had come np to the house by 
the well-known way: he went round the house, 
and meeting with one of the servants who had 
run out into the out-building to fetch somethiiig, 
he gained more exact information. — and sent 
for the surgeon to come out. The latter came, 
astonished at seeing his old patron, in torn. ed 
him of the present slate of things, ami undei- 
took to prepare Charlotte to see him. He went 
in, and with this intention began a conversa 
tion by which he led her imagination Iron] one 
object to another, until he at last brought before 



280 



GOETHE. 



Charlotte's mind her friend, intimated liis cer- 
tain sympathy, his nearness to her spirit in liis 
modes of thinking, and at last his actual near- 
ness in person. Enough, she learned that her 
friend was at the door, was ajiprized of all that 
had happened, and wished to be admitted. 

The Major entered the room. Charlotte 
saluted him with a painful smile. He stood 
before her. * * * * Charlotte 
pointed to a seat, and thus they sat opposite to 
each other in silence, the night through. Ottilia 
still lay quietly on Charlotte's knees; she 
breatlied softly as she slept or seemed to sleep. 

The morning dawned, the light was extin- 
guished, and both friends seemed to awake as 
from a gloomy dream. Charlotte looked at the 
Major, and said, "Explain to me, my friend, by 
what providence you came liere to take part in 
tliis scene of sorrow 1" 

" This is neither the time nor place," said the 
Major, answering lier as she had spoken in a 
low, subdued voice, as if they did not wish to 
waken Ottilia, " this is neither the time nor place 
for reserve, or delicate management in approach- 
ing the subject I would s|)eak of. The situation 
in which I find you is so awful that the impor- 
tant matter itself, for which I came, loses its 
value by side of it." He then acknowledged 
to her very calmly and simply the object of his 
mission, so lar as Edward had part in sending 
him, the design of his coming so lar as his own 
free will, his own interest was concerned. He 
presented both with much tenderness and yet 
with sincerity. Charlotte listened calmly, and 
appeared to be neither surprised nor displeased 
at it. 

When the Major had ended, Charlotte re- 
plied, and in so low a voice that he was obliged 
to move his seat nearer: "I have never before 
found myself in circumstances like these; but 
in similar cases, I have always said to myself, 
'how will it be on the morrow?' I feel truly 
and deeidy that the fate of several persons lies 
in my haijds; and what I have to do is clear to 
me and soon explained. I consent to the separa- 
tion. I ought to have resolved on it sooner. 
By my delay and opposition I have been the 
death of the child. There are certain things 
which Destiny obstinately determines shall be. 
In vain that Reason and Virtue, Duty and all 
that is holy throw themselves in the way. 
Souietliing shall take place that is right to it, 
though it seems not right to us; and at last it 
carries its point let us demean ourselves as we 
may. Yet what do I say? Rather will Des- 
tiny again bring about my own wish, my own 
pnr]K)se, against which I inconsiderately acted. 
Have I not myself already thought of Ottilia 
and Edward together as a most suitable pair? 
Have I not even myself sought to bring them 
near to each other? Were not you yourself, my 
friend, knowing to Uiis plan? And why could 
I not distinguish the caprice of a man from true 
ove? Why did I accept his hand, when, as a 
friend 1 might have made kirn and another 



wife happy? And consider, too, this unhappy 
slumberer ! I tremble for the moment when 
she awakes from her half-death-sleep to con- 
sciousness. How shall she live, how shall she 
be consoled, if she cannot hope, by her love, to 
make good to Edward, what she, as the instru- 
ment of the strangest destiny, has robbed hini 
of? And she can restore all to hiiii, by the 
fondness, the passion with which she loves 
him. Love can bear all, it can do much more, 
it can restore all. As for myself, I must not be 
considered in the present posture of affairs. 

" Retire quietly, my dear Major ; say to Ed- 
ward that I consent to the separation ; that I 
give up the whole matter to him and you to 
manage in your own way. That I am uncon- 
cerned about iny own future condition, and can 
be so in every sense. I will sign every paper 
which shall be brought to me. Only let it not 
be required of me to co-operate, to consider or 
advise." 

The Major arose. She reached to him her 
hand over Ottilia. He pressed his lips on that 
dear hand. " And for myself, what may I hope?" 
ho whispered gently. 

"Allow me to remain still in your debt for 
the answer to that question," replied Charlotte: 
"we have not deserved to be unhappy; but 
neither have we deserved to be happy together." 
** * ***** 

Charlotte sat only a few minutes, absorbed in 
her reflections after the Major had lelt her ; for 
hardly had he gone when Ottilia raised herself 
up with her eyes fixed intently on her friend. 
First she raised herself from her lap, then from 
the floor, and stood before Charlotte. 

"For the second time," thus began the glo- 
rious child, with an invincible, graceful earnest- 
ness, "for the second time, I experience the 
same thing. You once said to me, 'It often 
happens that, at ditferent times in our lives, we 
meet with like things, occurring in a similar 
way, and always in important moments.' I now 
find your remark to be true, and fee! impelled 
to make a confession to you. Shortly after my 
mother's death, I, then a little child, had moved 
my stool to your side, you were sitting on a sofa 
as now, my head lay on your knees. I was 
neither asleep nor awake, but in a kind of 
slumber. 1 heard, very distinctly, everything 
that went on around me, especially everything 
that was said ; and yet I could not move myself, 
nor speak, nor, even if 1 had wished it, so much 
as signify that I was conscious. At that time 
you spoke with a friend about me : you lamented 
my lot — in being left behind in the worlil, a 
poor orphan ; you painted my dependent condi- 
tion, and liow unhappy it might be with me if 
a special star of good fortune did not rule over 
my destiny. I comprehended well and exactly 
perhaps too strictly, all drat you appeared to wish 
for me, and to demand of me. I made, here- 
upon, laws for myself, according to my limited 
views. By these I have lived for a long time; 
in conformity with these, what 1 did or forbore 



GOETHE. 



2S1 



to do was regulated, at that time when you loved 
me and took care of tne ; when you received 
me into your house, and still for some time alter. 

But I have wandered away from my patli, I 
have broUen my laws, I have even lost the feel- 
ing of them ; and now, after a terrible occur- 
rence, you again give me light on my present 
situation which is iTiore deplorable than the first. 
Resting on your lap, half-lifeless, as from a 
strange world, I hear once more your gentle 
voice over my ear. I learn the aspect of my 
condition; 1 shudder at myself; but, as at that 
time, so now also, in my half-lifeless sleep, I 
have marked out for myself my new path. I 
have resolved as I then did, and what that reso- 
lution is you must learn at once. Eilward shall 
never be mine. In a fearful way has God 
opened my eyes to see in what a crime I am 
entangled. I will atone for it: and let no one 
think to turn me away from my pinpose. Take 
then, dearest, your steps accordingly. Recall 
the Major; write to him that no steps be taken. 
How distressed was I that 1 could not move nor 
stir as he went away. I wished to start up, to 
cry out, that you miaht not allow liim to go 
away with hopes so pernicious." 

Charlotte saw Ottilia's state, she felt it, but 
hoped by time and her representations to make 
some change in her resolutions. Yet when she 
uttered some words that ))ointed to a future, to 
a mitigation of pain, to hope; "No!' cried Ot- 
tilia, with exaltation, "seek not to move me, to 
delude me; the moment 1 learn that you have 
consented to a separation, 1 expiate in that same 
lake my error, my crime." 

CHAPTIin KIFTEENTH. 

While in a liappy, peaceful daily intercourse, 
relation.*, friends, household companions, are 
wont to discuss what happens, or is to happen, 
more than is necessary or reasonable; while 
they repeatedly communicate to each other their 
pNr|)0.->is, undertakings, occupations, and without 
taking nnitual counsel, yet always conduct their 
whole course of life as if by mutual advice; 
we find, on the other hand, that in moments of 
importance — the very occasions in which it 
would seem that the assistance and support of 
others are most needed — the individuals draw 
back into themselves, strive to transact every- 
thing for themselves, to conduct everything in 
their own way, and while they conceal from 
each other their own individual methods, only 
the re.-ult, the object, and what is attained, be- 
come common property once more. 

After so many strange and unhappy events, 
a certain silent seriousness came over the two 
frii-nd.-, which manifested itself in a lovely 
sj)aring ofone another. Quite silently Charlotte 
bad sent the child to the Chapel : there it rested 
ds the first victim of a dark and fearful destiny. 

Charlotte turned back as far as was possible 

toward life, and here she fonml that Ottilia had 

the Hr.',t need of her aid. She occupied herself 

chiefly with her, without, however suffering it to 

2l 



be marked. She knew how much the heavenly 
child loved Edward ; she had grailually inquired 
out the scenes that preceded the fatal accident 
and learned every circmnstance, partly from Ot 
tilia herself, partly through the letters of the 
Major. 

Ottilia, on her part, lightened, to a great ex 
tent, Charlotte's momentary life. She was open 
talkative even, but never was the conversation 
of the present or of what had so lately happen 
ed. She had always noted, observed — she knew 
much — all this now turned to account. She 
entertained and diverted Charlotte, who still 
cherished in secret the hope of seeing so worthy 
a pair united. But it was otherwise with Ottilia 
She had discovered to her friend the secret of 
her life-course; she was emancipated from her 
early narrowness, from servitude. By her re- 
pentance, by her resolution, she also felt herself 
I'reed from the burden of that guilt, that calamity. 
She had no longer need to do violence to her.>elf. 
She had, in the depths of her heart, pardoned 
herself, but only on condition of complete re 
nimciation, and this condition was unalterable 
for all the future. 

Thus passed some time, and Charlotte felt 
how very much the house and park, water, rock 
and tree groups, oidy renewed, daily, painfu. 
feelings in them both. That the scene must be 
changed was but too clear; in what way to do 
this was not so easy to decide. Should the two 
women continue together? Edward's earlier 
wish seemed to enjoin this ; his explanation, his 
threats to make it necessary. But how could it 
fail to be seen that botli women, with all good- 
will, with all reasonableness, found themselves 
in a painful relation to each other? Their con- 
versation was evasive : often there were some 
things they chose but to half understand ; but 
ofiener an expression was misinterpreted, if not 
by the understaiuling, at least by the feelings. 
They feared to wound each other, and this very 
fear was the first thing to be wounded and the 
first to wound. 

Did they wish to change the scene, and, at 
the same time, be separated, at least for a while, 
from each other, then the old question came 
up, where should Ottilia go? That rich and 
distinguished I'amily beforementioned had made 
fruitless attempts to procure for a very promising 
daughter, the heiress of the house, female com- 
panions who should serve to amuse her and 
excite her emulation. Already on the last visit 
of the Baroness, and lately by letters, Charlotte 
had been urged to send Ottilia there, and she 
now proposed it again. But Ottilia decidedly 
refused to go, where she must find what is 
called the great world. "Suffer me, dear aimt," 
said she, "in order that I may not appear nar 
row-minded and wilful, to speak out tijat which, 
in any other case, it would be a duty not *o 
speak of, but rather to conceal. A person dis- 
tinguished by misfortune, even if without any 
fault, is marked in a fearful way. His presence 
excites in all who see and notice him a kind of 
24* 



iS-2 



GOETHE. 



horror. Every one thinks to see in him the 
dread thing which has been laid on him. Every 
one is curious and anxious at the same time. 
In like manner a house, a town in which some- 
thing dreadful has happened, becomes fearful 
to every one who enters it. There the light of 
day shines not so clear, and the stars appear to 
lose their lustre. How great, and yet exc.isable 
perhaps, is the indiscretion of people towards 
such unhappy persons, their foolish obtrusive- 
ness and awkward kindness! Pardon me that 
1 say it; but I suffered incredibly with that poor 
maiden when Luciana dragged her out of the 
secret chambers of the liou^e, kindly occupied 
herself with her, and, with the best intentions, 
wished to force her to play and dance. As the 
poor child, growing ever more frightened, fled 
and sunk away in a swoon, I caught her in my 
arms, the company were terrified and excited, 
and every one then first became really curious 
about the unhappy creature. I little thought 
then that a like fate was in reserve for me; but 
my sympathy, so true and vivid, still survives. 
I can now turn the compassion I felt for her 
upon inyself, and guard myself from giving oc- 
casion to such scenes." 

"But nowhere, dear child,'' replied Charlotte, 
" will you be able to withdraw yourself from 
the eyes of men ; we have no cloisters, in which 
formerly an asylum for such feelings was to be 
found." 

"It is not solitude that constitutes the asylum, 
dear aunt," answered Ottilia. "The refuge most 
to be prized is to be sought there where we can 
be active. All expiations, all renunciations are 
no way adapted to rescue us from a fatal, threat- 
ening <lestiny, if it is determined to pursue us. 
Only when I am forced, in an idle condition, to 
serve as a show to the world, does it disturb 
and pain me. But if I am found, cheerfully 
occupied with labor, unwearied in my duty, 
then can I endure the eyes of all, since I need 
not shrink from those of Heaven." "I am much 
mistaken," replied Charlotte, "if your inclination 
does not draw you again to the boarding-school." 

"Yes," replied Ottilia, "I do not deny it. I 
.magine it to myself a happy destination to 
guide others in the common way, when the 
path in which we ourselves have been led has 
been most uncommon. Do we not in history 
see, that those who, on account of great moral 
calamities, have withdrawn into the deserts, 
have by no means remained concealed and 
buried as they hoped. They have been called 
back to the world in order to guide the wander- 
ing in the right way. And who could do it 
better than those already initiated in the error- 
paths of lifel They have been called to aid the 
unhappy, and who are better fitted for this than 
those whom no earthly woes can any longer 
reach ■?" 

" You choose a singular destination," answer- 
ed Charlotte; "I will not oppose you; let it be 
so, tliouyh only, as I hope, for a short time." 

"How very much I have to thank you," said 



Ottilia, "that you are willing to allow me to 
make this trial, this experience ! If I do not 
flatter myself too much, it shall prove good for 
me. In that place, I shall be reminded how 
many trials I endured there, and how little, 
how utterly insignificant they were, in compari- 
son with those I was afterwards doomed to ex- 
perience. How serenely shall I look upon the 
troubles of the yoimg folks, smile at their childish 
pains, and guide them with gentle hand through 
all their wanderings! The happy are not fitted 
to have charge of the happy; it lies in human 
nature always to require more of one's self and 
others, the more one has received. Only the 
self-recovered uidiappy know how to cherish 
for themselves and others the feeling that even 
a moderate degree of happiness is to be enjoyed 
with rapture." 

"Suffer me," said Charlotte, at last, after more 
consideration, "to bring forward one more ob- 
jection which appears to me the most important. 
It relates not to yourself, but to a third person. 
The sentiments of the good, sensible, pious as- 
sistant are known to you. In the course you 
take, you will becojiie everyday more valuable 
and indispensable to him. As he already feels 
that he would not willingly live without you, 
so certainly, in future, when he has once be- 
come accustomed to your co-operation, he will 
no longer be able, without you, to carry on his 
affairs. You will thus aid him at first, only to 
prove an injury to him afterward." 

"Destiny has not dealt gently with me," re- 
plied Ottilia, " and whoso loves me has, perhaps, 
nothing better to expect. As our friend is so 
good and intelligent, I hope, for this very reason, 
that the feeling of a pure relation to me will be 
developed in him. He will behold in me a 
consecrated person, who, in this way alone, 
perhaps, may hope to counterbalance a fearful 
evil to herself and others, by devoting herself 
to the Holy which, invisibly surrounding us, can 
alone protect us against those terrible powers 
that are ever pressing upon us." 



CONFESSIONS OF A FAIR SAINT.* 

Till my eighth year, I was always a healthy 
child ; but of that period I can recollect no more, 
than of the day when I was born. About the 
beginning of my eighth year, I was seized with 
a hemorrhage; and from that moment my soul 
became all feeling, all memory. The smallest 
circumstances of that accident are yet before 
my eyes, as if they had occurred but yesterday. 

During the nine months, which 1 then spent 
patiently upon a sick bed, it appears to me, the 
ground-work of my whole turn of thought was 
laid ; for the first means were then afforded to 
my spirit of developing itself in its own manner. 

I suffered and I loved; this was the peculiar 
form of my heart. In the most violent fits of 
* Wilhelin Meister. T. Carlyle's translation. 



GOETHE. 



283 



coughing, in the depressing pains of fever, I lay 
quiet, like a snail drawn back within its lioiise: 
the moment I obtained a respite, I wanted to 
enjoy something pleasant; and as every other 
pleasure was denied me, I endeavored to amuse 
myself with the innocent delights of eye and 
ear. The people brought me dolls and picture 
books; and whoever chose to sit beside my bed, 
was forced to tell me something. 

From my mother I rejoiced to hear the Bible 
histories: and my father entertained me with 
natural curiosities. He had a very pretty cabi- 
net, from which he brought me first one drawer 
and then another, as occasion served ; showing 
me the articles, and pointing out their proper- 
ties. Dried plants and insects, with many kinds 
of anatomical preparations, such as human skin, 
bones, nmnmiies and the like, were in succes- 
sion laid upon the sick bed of the little one; the 
birds and animals he killed in hunting were 
shown to me before they passed into the kitchen : 
and that the Prince of the World might also 
have a voice in this assembly, my aunt related 
to me love adventures out of fairy tales. All 
was accepted, all took root. There were hours, 
in which I vividly conversed with the invisible 
Power: I can still repeat some verses, which I 
then dictated, and my mother wrote. 

Frequently I told my lather back again, what 
I had learned from him. I would scarce take 
any physic, without asking where the simples 
grew that it was made of, what look they had, 
Mhat names they bore. Nor had the stories of 
my aunt alighted upon stony ground. I figured 
myself out in pretty clothes; and met ^he most 
delightful princes, who could find no peace or 
rest, till they discovered who the unknown 
Beauty was. One adventure of this kind with 
a charming little angel, dressed in white with 
golden wings, who warmly courte<l me, I dwelt 
upon so long, that my in)agination painted out 
his Ibrjn till it was almost visible. 

After a year, 1 was pretty well restored to 
health ; but nothing of the giildiness of childhood 
remained with me. I could not play with dolls; 
I longed lor beings that were able to return my 
love. Dogs, cats and binls, of which my father 
kept a great variety, atibrded me delight; but 
what would I have given for such a creature as 
my aunt once told me of! It was a lamb, which 
a peasant girl took up and nourished in a wood; 
but in the guise of this pretty beast, an en- 
chanted prince was hid ; whoat length appeared 
in his native shape, a lovely youth, and recom- 
pensed his benelactress by his hand. Such a 
lamb as this I would have given the world for. 

But none was to be had ; and as everything 
about me went along quite naturally and com- 
monly, I by degrees abandoned nearly all my 
hopes of such a precious treasure. Meanwhile 
1 comforted myself by reading books, in v/hich 
the strangest incidents were represented. Among 
them all, my favorite was the Christian German 
Herndes; that devout love history was altogether 
.n my way. Whenever anything befel his dear 



Valiska, and cruel things befel her, he prayed 
before he hastened to her aid, and the prayers 
were standing there verbatim. My longing after 
the Invisible, which I had always dimly felt, 
was strengthened by such means: for, in short, 
it was ordained that God should also be my 
confidant. 

As I grew older I continued reading, Heaven 
knows what, in a chaotic order. The Roman 
Octavia was the book I liked beyond all others. 
The persecutions of the first Christians, deco- 
rated with the charms of a romance, awoke 
the deepest interest in me. 

But my mother now began to murmur at my 
constant reading; and to humor her, my father 
took away my books to-day, but gave them back 
to-morrow. She was wise enough to see that 
nothing could be done in this way; she next 
insisted merely that my Bible should be read 
with equal diligence. To this I was not disin- 
clined: and I accordingly perused the sacred 
volume with a lively interest. Withal my mo 
ther was extremely careful that no books of a 
corruptive tendency should come into my hands : 
immodest writings I would, of my own accord, 
have cast away; for my princes and my prin- 
cesses were all extremely virtuous. 

To my mother, and my zeal for knowledge, 
it was owing that with all my love of books I 
also learned to cook; for much was to be seen 
in cookery. To cut up a hen, a pig, was quite 
a feast for me. I used to bring the entrails to 
my father, and he talked with me about ihem, 
as if I had been a student of anatomy. With 
suppressed joy, he would often call me his mis- 
fashioiied son. 

My twelfth year was now behind me. I 
learned French, dancing and drawing: I re- 
ceived the usual instructions in religion. In the 
latter many thoughts and feelings were awak- 
ened ; but nothing properly relating to my own 
condition. I liked to hear the people si)eak of 
God ; I was prouil that I could speak on these 
points better than my equals. I zealously read 
many books, which put me in a case to talk 
about religion ; but it never once occurred to me 
to think how matters stood with me, whether 
my soul was formed according to these holy pre- 
cefits, whether it was like a glass from which 
the everlasting sun could be reflected in its 
glancing. From the first, I had presupposed all 
this. 

My French I learned with eagerness. My 
teacher was a clever man. He was not a viiin 
empiric, not a dry grammarian : he had learning, 
he had seen the world. Instructing me in lan- 
guage, he satisfied my zeal for knowledge in a 
thousand ways. I loved him so much, that I 
used to wait liis coming with a palpitating heait. 
Drawing was not hard for me: I would have 
made a greater progress, had my teacher been 
possessed of head and science; he had only 
hanils anil practice. 

Dancing was at first my smallest entertain 
ment: my body was too sensitive for this, and I 



^84 



GOETHE. 



.earned it only in the company of my sisters. 
But our (lancing master took a tlioiiglit of gatlier- 
iiifi all liis scholars, male and female, and giving 
them a ball. 'J'liis event gave dancing quite 
another charm for ine. 

Amid a throng of boys and girls, the most re- 
markable were two sons of the Marshal of the 
Court. The youngest was of my age, the other 
two years older; they were children of such 
beauty, that, according to the universal voice, 
no one had seen their equals. For my part, 
scarcely had I noticed them, when I lost sight 
of all the other crowd. From that moment I 
began to dance with care, and to wish that I 
could dance with grace. How came it, on the 
other hand, that these two boys distinguished 
me from all the rest? No matter; ere an liour 
had passed, we had become the warmest friends; 
and our little entertainment diil not end, till we 
had fixed upon the time and place where we 
were next to meet. What a joy for me! And 
how charmed was I next morning, when both 
of them inquired about my health, each in a 
gallant note, accompanied with a nosegay! I 
have never since felt as I then did! Coinpli- 
meiit was met by compliment; letter answered 
letier. The church and the public walks were 
grown a rendezvous; our young acquaintances, 
in all their little parties, now invited us together ; 
while, at the same time, we were sly enough to 
veil the business from our parents, s<i that they 
could see no more of it than we thought good. 

Thus had I at once got a pair of lovers. I 
had yet decided upon neither; they both pleaM'd 
me, ami we did extremely well together. All 
at once, the eldest of the two fell very sick. I 
myself had frequently been sick; and thus I 
was enabled, by despatching to him many little 
dainties and delicacies suited for a sick person, 
to aHbrd some solace to the suiferer. His parents 
tliankfnlly acknowledged my attention : in com- 
pliance with the prayer of their beloved son, 
they invited me, with all my sisters, to their 
house, so soon as he had risen from his sick bail. 
The tenderness, which he ilisplayed on meeting 
me, was not the feeling of a child; from that 
day 1 gave the preference to him. He warned 
me to keep our secret froin his brother; but the 
flame could no longer be concealed ; and the 
jealousy of the yoiujger completed our romance. 
He played us a thousand tricks; eager to anni- 
hilate our joys, he but increased the passion he 
was seeking to destroy. 

At la^t, then, I had actually found the wished- 
for lamb; and this attachment acted on me like 
my sickness; it made me calm, and drew me 
back from noisy pleasures. I was solitary, I 
was moved ; and thoughts of God again occurred 
to nie. He was again my confidant, and I well 
rememher with what tears I often prayed for 
this poor boy, who still continued sickly. 

The more chiklL-hness there was in this ad- 
venture, the more ilid it contribute to the forming 
ni my heart. Our French teacher had now 
turned us from translating, into daily writin" 



him some letter of our own invention. I brought 
my little history to market, shrouded in the 
names of Phyllis and Dainon. The old man 
soon saw through it; and to render me commu- 
nicative, praised my labor very much. I still 
waxed bolder; came openly out with the afl'air, 
adhering even in the minute details to truth. I 
do not now remember what the passage was at 
which he took occasion to remark : '• How pretty, 
how natural it is! But the good Phyllis had 
better have a care ; the thing may soon grow 
serious."' 

It vexed me, that he did not look upon the 
matter as already serious ; and I asked him, with 
an air of pique, what he meant by serious. He 
did not force me to repeat the question: he ex- 
plained himself so clearly, that I scarce could 
hide my terror. Yet, as anger came along with 
it, as I took it ill that he should entertain such 
thoughts, I kept myself composed, 1 tried to jus- 
tify my nymph; and said with glowing cheeks : 
"But, sir, Phyllis is an honorable girl." 

He was rogue enough to banter me about iny 
honorable heroine. While we were speaking 
French, he played upon the word honncte, and 
hunted the honorableness of Phyllis over all its 
meanings. 1 felt the ridicule of this, ami was 
extremely puzzled. He, not to frighten me, 
broke otf; l>ut afterwards he often led the con- 
versation to such topics. Plays and little histo- 
ries, which 1 was reading and translating with 
him, gave him frequent opportunity to show 
how feeble a security our boasted virtue was 
asrainst the rules of inclination. I no longer 
contradicted him ; but I was in secret scanda- 
lized ; and his remarks became a burden to me. 

With my worthy Damon, too, I by degrees fell 
out of all connection. The chicanery of the 
younger boy destroyed our intercourse. Soon 
after, both these blooming creatures died. I 
lamented sore; however, in a short time I 
forgot. 

But Phyllis rapidly increased in stature; was 
altogether healthy, and began to see the world. 
The hereditary Prince now married; and a short 
tiine after, on his father's death, began his rule. 
Court and town were in the liveliest movement : 
my curiosity had copious nourishment. There 
were plays and balls, with all their usual accom- 
paniments; and though my parents kept retired 
as much as jjossible, they were obliged to show 
themselves at court, where I of course was in- 
troduced. Strangers were pouring in from every 
side; high company was in every house: even 
to us some cavaliers were recommended, others 
introduced ; and at my uncle's, men of every 
nation might be met with. 

My honest Mentor still continued, in a modest 
and yet striking way, to warn me; and 1 to take 
it ill of him in secret. With regard to his asser- 
tion, that women under every circumstance were 
weak, I did not feel at all convinced ; and here 
perhaps 1 was in the right, and my Mejitor in 
the wrong ; but he spoke so earnestly, that once 
I grew afraid he might be right, and said to him. 



GOETHE. 



285 



with much vivacity: "Since the danger is so 
great, and the human heart so weak, I will pray 
to God that He may Iceep me." 

Tliis simple answer seemed to please him, 
for he praised my purpose ; but on tny side it 
was anything but seriously meant. It was in 
truth but an empty word; for my feelings to- 
wards the Invisible were almost totally extin- 
guished. The hurry and the crowd with which 
I was surrounded dissipated my attention, and 
carried me along as in a powerful stream. 
These were ihe emptiest years of my life. All 
day long to speak of nothing, to have no solid 
thought ; never to do anything but revel: such 
was my employment. On my beloved books 1 
never once bestowed a thought. The people 
whom I lived among had not the slightest tinge 
of literature or science: they were German 
courtiers; a class of men at that time altogether 
destitute of mental culture. 

inch society, it may be thought, must naturally 
have led me to the brink of ruin. I lived away 
in mere corporeal cheerfulness; I never took 
myself to task, I never prayed, I never thought 
about myself or God. Yet I look ujjon it as a 
providential guidance, that none of these many 
Ijandsome, rich and well-dressed men could take 
my fancy. They were rakes, and did not hide 
it ; this scared me back : their speech was fre- 
quently adorned with double meanings; this 
oU'ended me, and made me act with coldness 
towards them. Many times their improjirieties 
surpassed belief; and I did not prevent myself 
from being rude. 

Besides, my ancient counsellor had once in 
confidence contrived to tell me, that, with the 
greater part of these lewd fellows, health as 
well as virtue was in danger. I now shuddered 
at the sight of them; I was afraid, if one of 
them in any way approached too near me. I 
would not touch their cups or glasses, even the 
chairs they had been sitting on. Thus morally 
and physically I remained apart from them; all 
the compliments they paid nie I haughtily ac- 
ce()ted (if, as incense that was due. 

Among the strangers then resident among us, 
there was one young man peculiarly distin- 
guished, whom in sport we used to call Narciss. 
He had gained a rejiutation in the diplomatic 
line; and among the various changes now oc- 
curring at our court, he was in hopes of meeting 
with some ad vantageous place. He soon became 
acquainted with my ladier: liis acquirements and 
manners opened lor him the way to a select 
society of most accomplished men. My father 
often spoke in praise of him: his figure, which 
was very handsome, would have been more 
pleasing, had it not been for a certain air of self- 
complacency, which breathed from all his car- 
rliige. I had seen him; I thought well of him; 
but we had never spoken. 

At a great ball, where we chanced to be in 
company, I danced a minuet along with him; 
but this too passed without results. The more 
violent dances, in compliance with my father's 



will, who felt anxieties about my health, J was 
accustomed to avoid : in the present case, when 
these came on, I retired to an adjoining room, 
and began to talk with certain of my friends, 
elderly ladies, who had set themselves to cards. 

Narciss, who had jigged it for a while, at last 
came into the room in which I was ; and hav- 
ing got the better of a bleeding at the nose, that 
had overtaken him in dancing, he began to 
speak with tne about a multitude of things. In 
half an hour, the talk had grown so interestiiig, 
that neither of us could endure to think of 
dancing any more. We were rallied by our 
friends for this; but we did not let their banter- 
ing disturb us. Next evening, we recommenced 
our conversation, and were very careful not to 
hurt our health. 

The acquaintance then was made. Narciss 
was often with my sisters and myself; and I 
now once more began to reckon over and con- 
sider what 1 knew, what I thought of, what I 
had felt, and what I could express myself about 
in conversation. My new friend had mingled 
in the best society ; besides the department of 
history and politics, with every part of which 
he was familiar, he had gained extensive lite- 
rary knowledge; there was nothing new that 
issued from the press, especially in France, that 
he was unacquainted with. He brought or sent 
me many a pleasant book ; but this we kept as 
secret as forbidden love. Learned women had 
been made ridiculous, well-informed women 
were widi difficulty tolerated ; apparently, be- 
cause it would have been uncourtly to put so 
many ill-informed gentlemen to shame. Even 
my lather, much as he delighted in this new 
opportunity of cultivating my mind, e.Npressly 
stipulated that our literary commerce should re- 
main a secret. 

Thus our intercourse continued almost for a 
year and a day; and still I could not say that 
in any wise Narciss had ever shown me aught 
of love or tenderness. He was always com- 
plaisant and kind; but manifested nothing like 
attachment: on the contrary, he even seemed to 
be in some degree affected by the charms of my 
youngest sister, who was then extremely beau- 
tiful. In sport, he gave her many little friendly 
names, out of foreign tongues; for he could 
speak two or three of these extremely well : 
and loved to mix their idiomatic phrases with 
his German. Such compliments she did not 
answer very liberally; she was entangled in a 
dirterent noose; and being very sharp, while he 
was very sensitive, the two were often quarrel- 
ling about trifles. With my mother and my 
aunt, he kept himself on very pleasant terms; 
and thus by gradual advances, he was grown 
to be a member of the family. 

Who knows how long we might have lived 
in this way, had a curious accident not altered 
our relations all at once. My sisters and I were 
invited to a certain house, to which we did not 
like to go. The company was too mixed ; and 
persons of the stupidest if not the rudest stainj 



286 



GOETHE. 



were often to be met with there. Narciss, on 
this occasion, was invited also; and on his ac- 
fount I iell inclined to go, for I was sure of find- 
ing one at least with whom I could converse as 
I desired. Even at table, we had many things 
to suffer : for several of the gentlemen had drunk 
too much : and after rising from it, they insisted 
on a game at forfeits. It went on with great 
vivacity and tumult. Narciss had lost a for- 
feit: they ordered him, by way of penalty, to 
whisper something pleasant in the ear of every 
member of the company. It seems, he staid too 
long beside my neighbor, the lady of a Captain. 
The latter on a sudden struck him such a box 
with his fist, that the powder flew about my 
eyes and blinded me. When I had cleared my 
sight, and in some degree recovered from my 
terror, I saw that both of them had drawn their 
swords. Narciss was bleeding; and the other, 
mad with wine and rage and jealousy, could 
scarcely be held back by all the company: I 
seized Narciss, led him by the arm up stairs ; 
and as I did not thitdc my friend even here in 
safety from his frantic enemy, I shut the door 
and bolted it. 

Neither of us looked upon the wound as seri- 
ous; for a slight cut across the hand was all we 
saw. Soon, however, I perceived a stream of 
blood running down his back, and a deep wound 
appeared upon his head. I now began to be 
afraid. I hastened to the lobby, to get help ; 
but I could see no person ; every one had staid 
below to calm the raving captain. At last a 
daughter of the family came skipping up ; her 
mirth annoyed me; she was like to die with 
laughing at the bedlam spectacle. I conjured 
her for the sake of Heaven to get a surgeon ; 
and she, in her wild way, sprang down the 
stair to fetch me one herself. 

Returning to my wounded friend, I bound 
iny handkerchief about his hand ; and a neck- 
kerchief, that was hanging on the door, about 
his head. He was still bleeding copiously : he 
now turned pale, and seemed as if he were 
about to faint. There was none at hand to aid 
me: I very freely put my arm around him; 
patted his cheek, and tried to cheer him up by 
little flatteries. It seemed to act upon him like 
a spiritual remedy; he kept his senses, but he 
sat as pale as death. 

At last the active housewife entered: it is 
easy to conceive her terror when she saw my 
friend in this predicament, lying in my arms, 
und both of us bestreamed with blood. No one 
liad supposed that he was wounded ; all imagin- 
ed I had carried him away in safety. 

Now smelling-bottles, wine, and everything 
diat could support and stimulate, were copi- 
ously produced. The surgeon also came ; and 
I might easily have been dispensed with. Nar- 
ciss, however, held me firmly by the hand; I 
would have staid without holding. During the 
dressing of Iris wounds, I continued wetting his 
lips with wine; I minded not though all the 
lompany were now about us. The surgeon 



having finished, his patient took a mute but 
tender leave of me, and was conducted home. 

The mistress of the house now led me to her 
bed-room : she was forced to strip me alto- 
gether. * * * No portion of my clothes 
coidd be put on again; and as the people of the 
house were all either less or larger than myself, 
I was taken home in a strange disguise. My 
parents were, of course, astonished. They felt 
exceedingly indignant at my fright, at the 
wounds of their friend, at the captain's mad- 
ness, at the whole occurrence. A very little 
would have made my father send a challenge 
to the captain, that he might avenge his friend 
without delay. He blamed the gentlemen that 
had been there, because they had not punished 
such a murderous attempt upon the spot: for it 
was but too clear, that the captain, instantly on 
striking, had pulled out his sword and wounded 
the other from behind. The cut across the hand 
had not been given, until Narciss himself was 
grasping at his sword. I felt unspeakably 
afl'ected and altered : or, how shall I express it? 
The passion, which was sleeping at the deepest 
bottom of my heart, had at once broken loose, 
like a flame on getting air. And if joy and plea- 
sure are well suited, for the first producing and 
the silent nourishing of love, yet this passion, 
bold by nature, is most easily impelled by terror 
to decide and to declare itself. My mother 
gave some physic to her little flurried daughter, 
and made her go to bed. With the earliest 
morrow, my father hastened to Narciss, whom 
he found lying very sick of a wound fever. 

He told me little of what passed between 
them, but tried to quiet me about the probable 
results of this event. They were now consider- 
ing whether an apology should be accepted of, 
whether the afl'air should go before a court of 
justice, and many other points of that descrip- 
tion. I knew my father too well to doubt that 
he would be averse to see the matter end with- 
out a duel: but I held my peace; for I had 
learned from him before, that women should 
not meddle in such things. For the rest, it did 
not strike me as if anything had passed between 
the friends, in which my interests were specially 
concerned: but my father soon communicated to 
my mother the purport of their further conver- 
sation. Narciss, he saiil, appeared to be exceed- 
ingly affected at the help aflbrded by me; had 
embraced him, declared himself my debtor for 
ever, signified that he desired no happiness ex- 
cept what he could share with me, and^concluded 
by entreating that he might presume to ask my 
hand. All this mamma repeated to me, but 
subjoined the safe refiection, that "as for what 
was said in the first agitation of mind in such a 
case, there was little trust to be placed in it." 
"Of course, none,'' I answered with afl'ected 
coldness; though all the while I was feeling 
Heaven knows what and how. 

Narciss continued sick for two months ; owing 
to the wound in his right hand, he could not 
even write. Yet, in the meantime, he showed 



GOETHE. 



287 



me his regard by the most obliging courtesies. 
All these unusual attentions 1 combined with 
what my mother had disclosed to me ; and con- 
stantly my head was full of fancies. The whole 
city talked of the occurrence. With me they 
sjjoke of it in a peculiar tone; they drew infer- 
ences which, greatly as I struggled to avoid 
them, touched me very close. What had for- 
merly been habitude and trifling, was now grown 
seriousness and inclination. The anxiety in which 
I lived was the more violent, the more carefidly 
I studied to conceal it from everyone. The idea 
of losing him affrighted me; the possibility of 
any closer union made me tremble. For a half- 
prudent girl, there is really something awful in 
tlie thought of marriage. 

By such incessant agitations, I was once more 
led 10 recollect myself. The gaudy imagery of 
a thoughtless life, which used to hover day and 
night before my eyes, was at once blown away. 
My soul again began to wake : but the greatly 
interrupted intimacy with my Invisible Friend 
was not so easy to renew. We still coiitinued 
at a frigid distance: it was again something; 
but little to the times of old. 

A duel had been fought, and the captain been 
severely wounded, before I ever heard of it. 
The public feeling was in all senses strong on 
the side of my lover, who at length again ap- 
peared upon the scene. But first of all, he came 
with his head tied up and his arm in a sling, to 
visit us. How my heart beat while he was 
there! The whole family was present; general 
thanks and complijnents were all that passed 
on either side; Narciss, however, found an op- 
portunity to show some secret tokens of his love 
to me, by which means my inquietude was but 
increased. After his recovery, he visited us 
throughout the winter on the former footing; 
and in spite of all the soft private marks of ten- 
derness, which he contrived to give me, the 
whole affair remained unsettled, uniliscussed. 

In this manner was I kept in constant prac- 
tice. I could not trust my thoughts to mortal ; 
and from God I was too iar removed. Him I 
liad quite forgot for four wild years: I now 
again began at times to think of him ; but our 
acquaintance was grown cool; they were visits 
of mere ceremony, which I paid liiin; and as, 
besides, in paying them, I used to dress myself 
in fine apparel, to set before him self-compla- 
cently my virtue, honor and superiorities to 
others, he did not seem to notice me or know 
me in that finery. 

A courtier would have been exceedingly dis- 
tressed, if the prince who held his fortune in 
his haruls had treated him in this way: but for 
nje 1 did not sorrow at it. I had what I re- 
quired, health and conveniences; if God should 
please to think of me, well; if not, I reckoned 
1 bad done my duty. 

This, in truth, I did not think at that period: 
yet it was the true figure of my soul. But, to 
change and purify my feelings, preparations 
Were already made. 



The spring came on : Narciss once visited 
me, unannounced, and at a time when I hap 
pened to be quite alone. He now appeared iu 
the character of lover; and asked me if I could 
bestow on him my heart, and when he should 
obtain some lucrative and honorable place, 
along with it my hand. 

He had been received into our service: but 
at first they kept him back, and would not 
rapidly promote hiin, because they dreaded his 
ambition. Having some little fortune of his 
own, he was left with a slender salary. 

Notwithstanding my regard for him, I knew 
that he was not a man to treat with altogether 
frankly. I drew up, therefore, and referred him 
to my father. About my father's mind he did 
not seem to doubt; but wanted previously to be 
at one with me, upon the spot. I at last said, 
yes; but stipulated as an indispensable condi- 
tion that my parents should concur. He then 
spoke formally with both of them ; they signified 
their satisfaction ; mutual promises were given 
on the faith of his advancement, which it was 
expected would be speeily. Sisters and aunts 
were informed of this arrangement, and the 
strictest secrecy enjoined on them. 

Thus from a lover I had got a bridegroom. 
The difference between the two soon showed 
itself to be considerable. If any one could 
change the lovers of all honorable maidens into 
bridegrooms, it would be a kindness to om' sex, 
even though marriage should not follow the 
connection. The love between two persons 
does not lessen by the change, but it bec(jmes 
more reasonable. Innumerable little follies, all 
coquetries and caprices, disappear. If the bride- 
groom tells us, that we please him better in a 
morning cap than in the finest head-dress, no 
discreet young woman will disturb herself aboitt 
her hair-dressing; and nothing is more natiual 
than that he too should think solidly, and rather 
wish to form a housewife for himself than a 
gaudy doll for others. And thus it is in every 
province of the business. 

Should a young woman of this kind be fortu- 
nate enough to have a bridegroom who possesses 
understanding and acquirements, she learns from 
him more than universities and foreign lands 
can teach. She not only willingly receives in- 
struction, when he offers it, but she endeavors 
to elicit more and more from him. Love inakes 
much that was impossible possible. By degrees 
too that subjection, so necessary and so gracefid 
for the female sex, begins : the bridegroom does 
not govern like the husband; he only asks; but 
his mistress seeks to notice what he wants, and 
to offer it before he asks it. 

So did experience teach me what I would 
not for much have missed. 1 was happy ; truly 
happy, as woman could be in the world; that 
is to say, for a while. 

The Serious of my old French teacher now 
occurred to me ; as well as the defence, which 
I had once stiggested in regard to it. 

With God 1 had again become a little more 



288 



GOETHE. 



acquainted. He had given nrie a bridegroom 
whom I loved ; and for this I felt some thanli- 
fuhie8S. Earthly love itself concentrated my 
soul, and put its powers in motion ; nor did it 
contradict my intercourse with God. I naturally 
coiiiplained to him of what alarmed me: but I 
did not perceive that I myself was wishing and 
desiring it. In my own eyes, I was strong; I 
dill not pray; "Lead us not into temptation!" 
My thoughts were far beyond temptation. In 
this flimsy tinsel-work of virtue I came to God : 
he did not drive me back. On the smallest 
movement towards him, he left a soft impres- 
sion in my soul ; and this impression caused 
me always to return. 

Except Narciss, the world was altogether 
dead to me ; excepting him, there was nothing 
in it that had any charm. Even my love for 
dress was but the wish to please liim: if I knew 
that he was not to see me, I could spend no 
care upon it. I liked to dance; but if he was 
not beside nie, it seemed as if I could not bear 
the motion. At a brilliant festival, if he was 
not invited, I could neither take the trouble of 
providing new things, nor of putting on the old 
according to the mode. To me they were alike 
agreeable, or rather I might say, alike burden- 
some. I used to reckon such an evening very 
fairly spent, when I could join myself to any 
ancient card-party, though formerly I was with- 
out the smallest taste for such things; and if 
some old acquaintance came and rallied me 
about it, I would smile, perhaps for the first 
time all that night. So likewise it was with 
promenades, and every social entertainment 
that can be imagined : 

Him had 1 chosen from all others, 
His would I be, and not another's ; 
To me his love was all in alL 

Thus I was often solitary in the midst of 
company; and real solitude was generally ac- 
ceptable to me. But my busy soul could neither 
sleep nor dream ; I felt and thought, and longed 
lor the ability to speak about my feelings and 
my thoughts with God. From this were feelings 
of another sort unfolded ; but they did not con- 
tradict the former: my affection to Narciss ac- 
corded with the universal scheme of nature ; it 
nowhere hindered the performance of a duty. 
They did not contradict each other, yet they 
were immensely different. Narciss w^as the 
only living fortn which hovered in my mind, 
and to which my love was all dire-ted ; but the 
other feeling was not directed towards any 
form, and yet it was unspeakably agreeable. I 
no longer have it, I no longer can impart it. 

My lover, whom I used to trust with all my 
secrets, did not know of this. I soon discovered 
that he thought far otherwise: he often gave 
nie writings, which opposed with light and 
heavy weapons all that can be called connection 
with the Invisible. I used to read the books, 
because they came from him : but at the end, I 
knew no word of all that had been argued in 
lliem. 



Nor in regard to sciences. and knowledge vi'as 
there any want of contradiction in our conduct 
He did as all men do, he mocked at learned 
women ; and yet he kept continually instructing 
me. He used to speak with me on all subjects, 
law excepted ; and while constantly procuring 
books of every kind for me, he frequently re- 
peated the uncertain precept, " That a lady ought 
to keep the knowledge she might have, more 
secret than the Calvinist his creeil in Catholic 
countries." And while I, by natural conse- 
quence, endeavored not to show myself more 
wise or learned than formerly before the world, 
Narciss himself was commonly the first who 
yielded to the vanity of speaking about me and 
my superiorities. 

A nobleman of high repute, and at that time 
valued for his influence, his talents and accom- 
plishments, was living at our Court with great 
applause. He bestowed especial notice on 
Narciss, whom he kept continually about him. 
They had once an argument about the virtue of 
women. Narciss repeated to me what had 
passed between them; I was not wanting with 
my observations; and my friend required of 
me a written essay on the subject. I could 
write French fluently enough; I laid a good 
foundation with my teacher. My correspond- 
ence with Narciss was likewise carried on in 
French : except in French books, there was then 
no elegant instruction to be had. My essay 
pleased the Count; I was obliged to let him 
have some little songs, which I had lately been 
composing. In short, Narciss appeared to revel 
without stint in the renown of his beloved : and 
the story, to his great contentment, ended with 
a French epistle in heroic verse, which the 
Count transmitted to him on departing; in which 
their argument was mentioned, and my friend 
reminded of his happiness in being destined, 
after all his doubts and errors, to learn most 
certainly what virtue was, in the arms of a vir- 
tuous and charming wife. 

He showed this poem first of all to me, and 
then to almost every one; each thinking on the 
matter what he pleased. Thus did he act in 
several cases ; every stranger, whom he valued, 
must be made acquainted in our house. 

A noble family was staying for a season in 
the place, to profit by the skill of our physician. 
In this house too, Narciss was looked on as a 
son: he introduced me there; we found among 
these worthy persons the most pleasant enter- 
tainment for the mind and heart. Even the 
common pastimesof society appeared less empty 
here than elsewhere. All knew how matters 
stood with us: they treated us as circumstances 
would allow, and left the main relation unal- 
luded to. I mention this one family; because, 
in the after period of my life, it had a powerful 
influence upon me. 

Almost a year of our connection had elapsed; 
and along with it, our spring was over. The 
summer came, and all grew drier and more 
earnest. 



GOETHE. 



289 



By several unexpected deaths, some offices 
were rendered vacant, which Narciss might 
make pretensions to. The instant was at hand, 
in which my whole destiny must be decided; 
and wliile Narciss and all our friends were 
making every effort to efface some impressions, 
which obstructed him at Court, and to obtain 
for him the wished-for situation, I turned with 
my request to my Invisible Friend. I was re- 
ceived so kindly, that I gladly came again. I 
confessed without disguise my wish that Narciss 
might obtain the place: but my prayer was not 
importunate ; and I did not require that it should 
happen for the sake of my petition. 

The place was obtained by a far inferior 
competitor. I was dreadfully troubled at this 
news ; I hastened to my room, the door of which 
I locked behind me. The first fit of grief wenH 
off in a shower of tears ; the next thought was, 
"Yet it was not by chance that it happened;'' 
and instantly I formed the resolution to be well 
contented with it, seeing even this apparent evil 
would be for my true advantage; The softest 
emotions then pressed in upon me, and divided 
all the clouds of sorrow. I felt that, with help 
like this, there was nothing one might not en- 
dure. At dinner I appeared quite cheerful, to 
the great astonishment of all the house. 

Narciss had less internal force than I, and I 
was called upon to comfort him. In his family, 
too, he had many crosses to encounter, some of 
which afflicted him considerably; and, such 
true confidence subsisting between us, he in- 
trusted me with all. His negotiations for en- 
tering on foreign service were not more fortu- 
nate ; the whole of this I deeply felt on his 
account and mine; the whole of it I ultimately 
carried to the place, where my petitions had 
already been so well received. 

The softer these experiences were, the oftener 
did I endeavor to renew them: I hoped conti- 
nually to meet with comfort, where I had so 
often met with it. Yet I did not always meet 
with it: I was as one that goes to warm him 
in the sunshine, while there is something stand- 
ing in the way that makes a shadow. " What 
is this?" I asked myself I traced the matter 
zealously, and soon perceived that it all de- 
pejided on the situation of my soul : if this was 
not turned in the straightest direction towards 
God, I still continued cold; I did not feel his 
counter influence; I coulJ obtain no answer. 
The second question was: ''What hinders this 
direction?" Here I was in a wide field ; I per- 
plexed myself in an inquiry, which lasted nearly 
all the second year of my attachment to Narciss. 
1 might have ended the investigation sooner; 
for it was not long till I had got upon the proper 
trace; but I would not confess it, and I sought 
a thousand outlets. 

I very soon discovered that the straight direc- 
tion of my soul was marred by foolish dissipa- 
tions, and employment with unworthy things. 
The How and the Where were clear enough to 
me. Yet by what means could I help myself, 
2m 



or extricate my mind from the calls of a wortd 
where everything was either cold indifference 
or hot insanity? Gladly would I have left tilings 
standing as they were,, and lived from day to 
day, floating down with the- stream, like other 
people whom I saw quite liappy : but I durst 
not; my inmost feelings contradicted me too 
often. Yet if I determined to renounce society, 
and alter my relations to others, it was not in 
my power. I was hemmed in as by a ritjg 
drawn round me : certain connections I could 
not dissolve; and, in the matter, which lay 
nearest to my heart, fatalities accumulated and 
oppressed me more and more. I often went 
to bed with tears; and, after a sleepless night, 
arose again with tears: I required some strong 
support; and God would not vouchsafe it me, 
while I was running with the cap and bells. 

I proceeded now to estimate my doings, all 
and each ; dancing and play were first put upon 
their trial. Never was there anything spoken, 
thought, or written, for or against these practices, 
which I did not examine, talk of, read, weigh, 
reject, aggravate, and plague myself about. If I 
gave up these habits, I was certain that Narciss 
would be offended ; for he was excessively afraid 
of the ridicule, which any look of straight-laced 
conscientiousness gives one in the eyes of the 
world. And doing what I now looked upon as 
folly, noxious folly, out of no taste of my own, 
but merely to gratify him, it all grew dreadfully 
irksome to me. 

Without disagreeable prolixities and repeti- 
tions, it is not in my power to represent what 
pains I took, in trying so to counteract those oc- 
cupations, which distracted my attention and 
disturbed my peace of mind, that my heart, in 
spite of them, might still be open to the influ- 
ences of the Invisible Being. But at last with 
pain I was compelled to feel, that in this way 
the quarrel could not be composed. For no 
sooner had I clothed myself in the garment of 
folly, than it came to be something more than 
a mask; that foolishness pierced and penetrated 
me through and through. 

May I here overstep the province of a mere 
historical detail, and offer one or two remarks 
on what was then taking place within me? 
What could it be, which so changed my tastes 
and feelings, that, in my twenty-second year, 
nay earlier, I lost all relish for the recreations 
with which people of that age are harmlessly 
delighted? Why were they not harmless for 
me? I may answer. Just because they were 
not harmless; because I was not, like others of 
my years, unacquainted with my soul. No! I 
knew from experiences, which had reached me 
unsought, that there are loftier emotions, which 
afford us a contentment such as it is vain to seek 
in the amusement of the world; and that in 
these higher joys there is also kept a secret trea- 
sure for strengthening the spirit in misfortune. 

But the pleasures of society, the dissipations 
of youth, must needs have had a powerliil 
charm for me, since it was not in my power to 
23 



290 



GOETHE. 



engage in them without participation, to act 
among tliem as if they were not there. How 
many things could I now do, if I liked, with 
eniiie coldness, which then dazzled and con- 
founded me, nay threatened to obtain the mas- 
tery over me! Here there could no medium be 
observed ; either those delicious amusements, or 
my nourishing and quickening internal emotions, 
must be given up. 

But in my soul, the strife had, without my 
own consciousness, already been decided. Even 
i( there siiil w as anything within me that longed 
for eurtbly pleasures, I was now become unfitted 
fur enjoying them. Much as a man might 
hanker alter wine, all desire of drinking would 
f iisake him, if he should be placed among full 
barrels in a cellar, where the foul air was like 
to suriucate him. Free air is more than wine : 
this I fell but too keenly; and from the first, it 
would have cost me little studying to prefer the 
good to the delightful, if the I'ear of losing the 
atl'ection orNari!iss had not restrained me. But 
at last, when after many thousand struggles, 
and thoughts continually renewed, I began to 
cast a steady eye upon the bond which held me 
to liim, I discoveretl that it was but weak, that 
it might be torn asunder. I at once perceived 
it to be only as a glass bell, which shut me up 
in the exhausted airless space : One bold stroke 
to break the bell in pieces, and thou art deli- 
vered ! 

No sooner thought than tried. I drew off the 
mask, and ou all occasions acted as my heart 
directed. Narciss I still cordially loved: but 
the thermometer, which formerly had stood in 
hot water, was now hanging in the natural air; 
it could rise no higher than the warmth of the 
atmosphere directed. 

Unhappily it cooled >very much. Narciss drew 
backhand began to assume a distant air: this 
was at his option ; but my thermometer de- 
scended as he drew back. Our family observed 
this; questioned me, and seemed to be surprised. 
1 explained to them ,with stout defiance, that 
heretofore 1 had made abundant sacrifices; that 
il was ready, still further and to the end of my 
life, to share all crosses, that befell him ; but that 
I reijnired fiUl freedom in my conduct, that my 
doings and avoidings must depend upon my 
own conviction; that indeed I would never 
Ligotedly cleave to, my own opinion, but on the 
other hand would willingly be reasoned with ; 
yet, as it concerned my own happiness, the de- 
cision must proceed from myself, and be liable 
to no manner of constraint. The greatest phy- 
sician could not move me by his reasonings to 
take an article of food, which perhaps was alto- 
gether wholesome and agreeable to many, so 
soon as my experience had shown that on all 
occasions it was noxious to me; as I might pro- 
duce coffee for an instance; and just as little, 
nay still less, would I have any sort of conduct, 
which misled me, preached up and demonstrated 
upon me as morally profitable. 

Having so long prepared myself in silence, 



these debates were rather pleasant than vexa- 
tious to me. I gave vent to my soul ; [ felt the 
whole worth of my determination. I yielded 
not a hair's breadth ; and those to whom I owed 
no filial respect were sharply handled and des- 
patched. In the family I soon prevailed, My 
mother from her youth had entertained these 
sentiments, though in her they had never reached 
maturity ; for no necessity had pressed upon her, 
and exalted her courage to achieve her purpose. 
She rejoiced in beholding her silent wishes ful- 
filled through me. My yoimger sisters seemed 
to join themselves with me; the second was 
attentive and quiet. Our aunt had the most to 
object. The arguments, which she employed 
appeared to her irrefragable, and they were 
irrefragable, being altogether common-place. 
At last I was obliged to show her, that she had 
no voice in the afiair in any sense ; and after 
this, she seldom signified that she persisted in 
her views. She was indeed the only person 
who observed this passage close at hand, with- 
out in some degree experiencing its influence. I 
do not calumniate her, when I say that she had 
no character, and the most limited ideas. 

My father acted altogether in his own way. 
He spoke not much, but often, witli me on the 
matter: his arguments were rational ; and being 
his arguments, they could not be impugned. It 
was only the deep feeling of my right that gave 
me strength to dispute against him. But the 
scenes soon changed; I was forced to make ap- 
peal to his heart. Straitened by his understand- 
ing, I came out with the most pathetic pleadings. 
I gave free course to my tongue and to my tears. 
I showed him how much I loved Narciss ; how 
much constraint I had for two years been en- 
during ; how certain I was of being in the right ; 
that I was ready to testify that certainty by the 
loss of my beloved bridegroom and prospective 
happiness; nay, if it were necessary, by the loss 
of all that I possessed on earth ; that I would 
rather leave my native country, my parents and 
my friends, and beg my bread in foreign lands, 
than act against these dictates of my conscience. 
He concealed his emotion ; he said nothing on 
the subject for a while, and at last he openly 
declared in my favor. 

During all this time Narciss forbore to visit 
us; and my father now gave up the weekly 
club, of which the former was a member. The 
business made a noise at court, and in the town. 
People talked about it, as is common in such 
cases, which the public takes a vehement in- 
terest in, because its sentence has usurped an 
influence on the resolutions of weak minds. 1 
knew enough about the world to understand, 
that one's conduct is often censured by the very 
persons who would have advised it had one 
consulted them : and independently of this, with 
my internal composure, I should have looked on 
all such transitory speculations just as if they 
had not been. 

On the other hand, I hindered not myself from 
yielding to my inclination for Narciss. To mo 



GOETHE. 



291 



he liad become invisible, and to him my feelings 
had not altered. I loved him tenderly; as it 
were anew, and much more steadfastly than 
formerly. If he chose to leave my conscience 
undisturbed, then I was his: wanting this con- 
dition, I would have refused a kingdom with 
him. For several months, I bore these feelings 
and these thoughts about with me; and finding, 
at last, that I was calm and strong enough to go 
peacefully and firmly to work, I wrote him a 
polite but not a tender note, inquiring why he 
never came to see me. 

As I knew his manner of avoiding to explain 
himself in little matters, but of silently doing 
what seemed good to him, I purposely urged 
nim in the present instance. I gut a long, and 
as it seemed to me a pitiful rej^ly, in a vague 
style and unmeaning phrases, stating, that with- 
out a better place, he could not fix himself and 
ofier me his hand ; that I best knew how hardly 
it had fared with him hitherto ; that as he was 
afraid lest a fruitless intercourse, so long con- 
tinued, might prove hurtful to my reputation, I 
would give him leave to continue at his present 
distance ; so soon as it was in his power to 
make me happy, he would look upon the word 
which he had given me as sacred. 

I answered him upon the spot, that as our in- 
tercourse was known to all the world, it might 
perhaps be rather late to spare my reputation ; 
for which, at any rate, my conscience and my 
innocence were the surest pledges: however, 
that I hereby freely gave him back his word, 
and hoped the change would prove a happy one 
for him. The same hour I received a short 
reply, which was, in all essential particulars, 
entirely synonymous with the first. He adhered 
to his former statement, that so soon as he ob- 
tained a situation, he would ask me if I pleased 
to share his fortune with him. 

This I interpreted as meai.ing simply nothing. 
I signified to my relations and acquaintances, 
that the affair was altogether settled ; and it 
was so actually. Having, nine months after- 
wards, obtained the much desired preferment, 
he offered me his hand ; but under the condi- 
tion, that as the wife of a man who must keep 
house like other people, I should alter my opi- 
nions. I returned him many thanks: and hast- 
ened with my heart and mind away from this 
transaction; as one hastens from the play-house 
when the curtain falls. And as he, a short time 
afterwards, found a rich and advantageous 
match, a thing now easy for him ; and as I now 
knew him to be happy in the way he liked, my 
own tranquillity was quite complete. 

I must not pass in silence the fact, that several 
times before he got a place, and after it, there 
were respectable proposals made to me ; which, 
however, I declined without the smallest hesi- 
tation, much as my father and my mother could 
nave wished for more compliance on my part. 

Ai length, after a stormy March and April, 
he loveliest May weather seemed to be allotted 
•ne. With good health, 1 enjoyed an inde- 



scribable composure of mind : look around me 
as I pleased, my loss appeared a gain to me. 
Young and full of sensibility, I thought the uni- 
verse a thousand times more beautiful than for- 
merly, when I required to have society and 
play, that in the fair garden tedium might not 
overtake me. And now% as I did not conceal 
my piety, I likewise took heart to own my love 
for the sciences and arts. I drew, painted, 
read ; and found enow of people to support me : 
instead of the great world which I had left, or 
rather which had left me, a smaller one was 
formed about me, which was infinitely richer 
and more entertaining. I had a turn for social 
life ; and I do not deny that, on giving up my 
old acquaintances, I trembled at the thought of 
solitude. I now found myself abundantly, per- 
haps excessively, indemnified. My acquaint- 
ances ere long were very numerous; not at 
home only, but likewise among people at a dis- 
tance. My story had been noised abroad ; and 
many persons felt a curiosity to see the woman 
who had valued God above her bridegroom. 
There was a cerutin pious tone to be observed 
at that time generally over Germany. In the 
families of several counts and princes, a care 
for the welfare of the soul had been awakened. 
Nor were there wanting noblemen who showed 
alike attention; while in the inferior classes, 
sentiments of this kind were diffused on every 
side. 

The noble family, whom I made mention of 
above, now drew me nearer to them. They 
had, in the meanwhile, gathered strength ; 
several of their relations having settled in the 
town. These estimable persons courted my 
familiarity, as I did theirs. They had high con- 
nections; I became acquainted, in their house, 
with a great part of the princes, counts, and 
lords of the Empire. My sentiments were not 
concealed from any one ; they might be honored 
or be tolerated ; I obtained my object ; none at- 
tacked me. 

There was yet another way, by which I was 
again led back into the world. About this 
period, a step-biother of my father, who till now 
had never visited the house except in passing, 
staid with us for a considerable time. He had 
left the service of his court, where he enjoyed 
great influence and honor, simply because all 
matters were not managed quite according to 
his mind. His intellect was just, his character 
was rigid. In these points he was very like my 
father ; only the latter had withal a certain touch 
of softness, which enabled him with greater ease 
to yield a little in affairs, and though not to do, 
yet to permit, some things against his own con- 
viction ; and then to evaporate his anger at them, 
either in silence by himself, or in confidence 
amid his family. My uncle was a great deal 
younger; and his independence of spirit had 
been favored by his outwanl circumstances. 
His mother had been very rich ; and he still 
had large possessions to expect from her near 
and distant relatives: so he needed no ibreign 



292 



GOETHE. 



increase ; whereas my father, with his moderate 
fortune, was bound to his place by the considera- 
tion of his salary. 

My uncle had become still more unbending 
from domestic sufferings. He had early lost an 
amiable wife and a hopeful son ; and from that 
time, he appeared to wish to push away from 
him everything that did not hang upon his in- 
dividual will. 

In our family, it was whispered now and then 
with some complacency, that probably he would 
not wed again, and so we children might antici- 
pate inheriting his fortune. I paid small regard 
to this ; but the demeanor of the rest was not a 
little modified by their hopes. In his own im- 
pertuibable firmness of character, my uncle had 
grown into the habit of never contradicting any 
one in conversation. On the other hand, he lis- 
tened with a friendly air to everyone's opinion; 
and would himself elucidate and strengthen it 
by instances and reasons of his own. All who 
did not know him fancied that he thought as 
they did : for he was possessed of a preponde- 
rating intellect; and could tran&port himself into 
the mental state of any man, and imitate his 
manner of conceiving. With me he did not 
prosper quite so well : for here the question was 
aboutemotions, of which he had not any glimpse; 
and with whatever tolerance, and sympathy, 
and rationality, he spoke about my sentiments, 
It was palpable to me that he had not the slight- 
est notion of what formed the ground of all my 
conduct. 

With all his secrecy, we by and by found out 
the aim of his unusual stay with us. He had, 
as we at length discovered, cast his eyes upon 
our youngest sister, with tlie view of giving her 
in marriage, and rendering her happy as he 
pleased; and certainly considering her personal 
and mental attractions, particularly when a 
handsome fortune was laid into the scale along 
with them, she might i)retend to the first matches. 
His feelings towards me he likewise showed us 
pantomimically, by procuring me a post of Cano- 
ness, the income of which I very soon began to 
draw. 

My sister was not so contented with his care 
as I. She now disclosed to me a tender secret, 
which hitherto she very wisely had kept back; 
fearing, as in truth it happened, that I would by 
all means counsel her against connection with 
a man who was not suited to her. I did my 
utmost, and succeeded. The purpose of my 
uncle was too serious and too distinct; the pros- 
pect for my sister, with her worldly views, was 
too delightful to be thwarted by a passion which 
her own understanding disapproved; she mus- 
tered force enough to give it up. 

On her ceasing to resist the gentle guidance 
of my tincle, the foundation of his plan was 
quickly laid. She v,'as appointed Maid of Honor 
at a neighboring court, where he could commit 
her .to the oversight and the instructions of a 
lady, hie friend, who presided there as Gover- 
ness with great applause. 1 accompanied her 



to the place of her new abode. Bothof us had 
reason to be satisfied with the reception which 
we met with ; and frequently I could not help 
in secret smiling at the character, which now 
as Canoness, as young and pious Canoness, I 
was enacting in the world. 

In earlier times, a situation such as this would 
have confused me dreadfully; perhaps have 
turned my head ; but now, in midst of all the 
splendors that surrounded me, I felt extremely 
cool. With great quietness, I let tltem frizzle 
me, and deck me out for hours ; and thought no 
more of it than that my place required me to 
wear that gala livery. In the thronged saloons, 
I spoke with all and each, though no shape or 
character among them made impression on me. 
On returning to my house, nearly all the feeling 
I brought back with me was that of tired limbs. 
Yet my understanding drew advantage from the 
multitude of persons whom I saw; and I grew 
acquainted with some ladies, patterns of every 
virtue, of a noble and good demeanor; par- 
ticularly with the Governess, under whom my 
sister was to have the happiness of being 
formed. 

At my return, hower, the consequences of 
this journey, in regard to health, were found to 
be less favorable. With the greatest temper- 
ance, the strictest diet, I had not been as I used 
to be, completely mistress of my time and 
strength. Food, motion, rising and going to 
sleep, dressing and visiting, had not depended, 
as at home, on my own conveniency and will. 
In the circle of social life, you cannot stop with- 
out a breach of courtesy : all that was needful I 
had willingly performed ; because I looked upon 
it as my duty, because I knew that it would 
soon be over, and because I felt myself com- 
pletely healthy. Yet this unusual restless life 
must have affected me more strongly than I was 
aware of. Scarcely had I reached our house, 
and cheered my parents with a comfortable 
narrative, when a hemorrhage attacked me, 
which, although it was not dangerous or lasting, 
yet left a weakness after it perceptible for many 
a day. 

Here, then, I had another lesson to repeat. I 
did it joyfully. Nothing bound me to the world; 
and I was to be convinced that here the true 
good was never to be found : so I waited in the 
cheerfullest and meekesUstate ; and after having 
abdicated life, I was retained in it. 

A new trial was awaiting me: my mother 
took a painful and oppressive ailment, which 
she bad to bear five years, before she paid the 
debt of nature. All this time we were sharply 
proved. Often when her terror grew too strong, 
she would make us all be summoned in the 
night before her bed, that so at least she might 
be busied if not bettered by our presence. The 
load grew heavier, nay scarcely to be borne, 
when my father too became unwell. From his 
youth, he frequently had violent headaches 
whicVi, however, at the longest, never used to 
last beyond six-and-thirty hours. But now they 



GOETHE. 



293 



were continual ; and when they mounted to a 
high degree of pain, his moanings tore my very 
heart. It was in these tempestuous seasons 
that I chiefly felt my bodily weakness; because 
it kept me from my holiest and dearest duties, 
or rendered the performance of them hard to an 
extreme degree. 

It was now that I could try whether the path, 
which I had chosen, was the path of fantasy or 
truth ; whether I had merely thought as others 
showed me, or the object of my trust had a 
reality. To my imspeakable support, I always 
found the latter. The straight direction of my 
heart to God, the fellowship of the "Beloved 
Ones"* I had sought and found; and this was 
wliat made all things light to me. As a traveller 
in the dark, my soul, when all was pressing on 
me from without, hastened to the place of re- 
fuge, and never did it return empty. 

In later times, some champions of religion, 
who seem to be animated more by zeal than 
feeling for it, have required of their brethren to 
produce examples of prayers actually heard; 
ai)parently, because they wished for seal and 
writing, that they might proceed against their 
adversaries diplomatically and juridically. How 
unknown must the true feeling of the matter be 
to these persons! how few real experiences can 
they themselves have made! 

1 can say that I never returned empty, when 
in straits and oppression I called on God. This 
is saying infinitely much ; more I must not and 
cannot say. Important as each experience was 
at the critical moment for myself, the recital of 
them would be flat, improbable and insignifi- 
cant, were I to specify the separate cases. Happy 
was I, that a thousand little incidents in combi- 
nation proved, as clearly as the drawing of my 
breath proved me to be living, that I was not 
without God in the world. He was near to me, 
I was before him. This is what, with a diligent 
avoidance of all theological systematic terms, I 
can with the greatest truth declare. 

Much do I wish that in those times too I had 
been entirely without system. But whicli of us 
arrives early at the happiness of being conscious 
of his individual self in its own f)ure combina- 
tioi], without extraneous forms ? I was in earnest 
with religion. I timidly trusted in the judgments 
of others; I entirely gave in to the Hallean sys- 
tem of conversion ; but my nature would by no 
means tally with it. 

According to this scheme of doctrine, the 
alteration of the heart must begin with a deep 
terror on account of sin ; the heart in this agony 
must recognise in a less or greater degree the 
punishment which it has merited, must get a 
foretaste of Hell, and so embitter the delight of 
'ein. At last it feels a very palpable assurance 
of grace; which, however, in its progress often 
fa<les away, and must again be sought with 
•jarnest prayer. 

Of all this no jot occurred with me. When I 



* So in the original.— £(2. 



sought God sincerely, he let himself be found 
of me, and did not reproach me about bygone 
things. On looking back, I saw well enough 
where I had been unworthy, where I still was 
so; but the confession of my faults was altoge- 
ther without terror. Not for a moment did the 
fear of Hell occur to me: nay, the very notion 
of a wicked Spirit, and a place of punishment 
and torment after death, could nowise gain ad- 
mission to the circle of my thoughts. I looked 
upon the men, who lived without God, whose 
hearts were shut against the trust in and the 
love of the Invisible, as already so unhappy that 
a hell and external pains appeared to promise 
rather an alleviation than an aggravation of 
their misery. I had but to turn my eyes upon 
the persons in this world, who in their breasts 
gave scope to hateful feelings; who hardened 
their hearts against the Good of whatever kind, 
and strove to force the Evil on themselves and 
others; who shut their eyes by day, that so they 
might deny the shining of the sun : How unut- 
terably wretched did these persons seem to me! 
Who could Viave formed a Hell to make their 
situation worse ? 

This mood of mind continued in me, without 
change, for half a score of years. It maintained 
itself through many trials; even at the moving 
death-bed of my beloved mother. I was frank 
enough on this occasion not to hide my com 
fortable frame of mind from certain pious but 
rigorously orthodox people ; and I had to suffer 
many a friendly admonition on that score, They 
reckoned they were just in season for explain- 
ing with what earnestness one ought to strive 
to lay a right Ibundation in the days of health 
and youth. 

In earnestness I too determined not to fail. 
For the moment, I allowed myself to be con- 
vinced ; and fain would I have grown for life, 
distressed and full of fears. But what was my 
surprise on finding absolutely that I could not! 
When I thought of God, I was cheerful and con- 
tented: even at the painful end of my dear mo- 
ther, I did not shudder at the thought of death. 
Yet I I'-iriied many and far other things than 
my uncalled teachers thought of, in these solemn 
hours. 

By degrees I grew to doubt the dictates of so 
many famous people, and retained my senti- 
ments in silence. A certain lady of my friends, 
to whom I had at first disclosed too much, in- 
sisted still on interfering with my business. 
Of her too I was forced to rid myself; at last I 
firmly told her, that she might spare herself this 
labor, as I did not need her counsel ; that I knew 
my God, and would have no guide but hiin. 
She felt exceedingly offended; I believe she 
never quite forgave me. 

This determination to withdraw from the ad- 
vices and the influence of my friends, in spiritual 
matters, produced the consequence, that also in 
my temporal affairs I gained sufficient courago 
to obey my own persuasions. But for the assist- 
ance of my iaithful invisible Leader, 1 could 
25* 



not have prospered here. I am still gratefully- 
astonished at his wise and happy guidance. No 
one knew liow matters stood with me; everx I 
myself did not know. 

The thing, tlie wicked and inexplicable thing, 
which separates us from the Being to whom we 
owe our life, and in whom all that deserves the 
name of life must find its nourishment; the 
thing, which we call Sin, I yet knew nothing of 

In njy intercourse with my invisible Friend, 
I felt the sweetest enjoyment of all my powers. 
My desire of constantly enjoying this felicity 
was so predominant, that 1 abandoned without 
hesitation whatever marred our intercourse ; and 
here experience was rny surest teacher. But it 
was with me as with sick persons, who have 
no medicine, and try to help themselves by 
diet. Something is accomplished, but far from 
enough. 

I could not always live in solitude; though in 
it I found the best preservative against the dis- 
sipation of my thoughts. On returning to the 
tumult, the impression it produced upon me 
was the deeper for my previous loneliness. 
My most peculiar advantage lay in this, that 
love for quiet was my ruling passion, and that 
in the end I still drew back to it. I perceived, 
as in a kind of twilight, my weakness and my 
misery; and tried to save myself by avoiding 
danger and exposure. 

For seven years I had used my dietetic 
scheme. I held myself not wicked, and I 
thought my state desirable. But for some pecu- 
liar circumstances and occurrences, I had re- 
mained in this position: it was by a curious 
path that I got further. Contrary to the advice 
of all my friends, I entered on a new connection. 
Their objections made me pause at first. I 
turned to my invisible Leader, and, as he per- 
mitted me, I went forward without fear. 

A man of spirit, heart and talents, had bought 
a property beside us. Among the strangers 
whom I grew acquainted with, were this per- 
son and his family. In our manners, domestic 
economy and habits, we accorded well ; and 
thus we soon approximated to each other. 

Pliilo, as I propose to call him, was already 
middle aged: in certain matters he was highly 
serviceable to my father, whose strength was 
now decaying. He soon became the friend of 
the family ; and finding in me, as he was pleased 
to say, a person free alike from the extravagance 
atid emptiness of the great world, and from the 
narrowness and aridness of the still world in 
the country, he courted intimacy with me, and 
ere long we were in one another's confidence. 
To me he was very pleasing and useful. 

Though I did not feel the smallest inclination 
or cajjacity for mingling in public business, or 
seeking any iiiHiiPnce on it, yet I liked to hear 
about such malt rs, liked to know whatever 
happened far aiul near. Of worldly things, I 
loved to get a clear though unconcerned percep- 
tion : feeling, sympathy, afi'ection, I reserved for 
Ixod, for my people and my friends. 



The latter were, if I may say so, jealous of 
Philo, in my new connection with him. In 
more than one sense, they were right in warning 
me about it. I suffered much in secret; for 
even I could not consider their remonstrances 
as altogether empty or selfish. I had been ac- 
customed, from of old, to give a reason for my 
views and conduct; but in this case my convic- 
tion would not follow. I prayed to God, that 
here as elsewhere he would warn, restrain and 
guide me; and as my heart on this did not dis- 
suade me, 1 went forward on my way with 
comfort. 

Philo on the whole had a remote resemblance 
to Narciss ; only a pious education had more 
enlivened and concentrated his feelings. He 
had less vanity, inore character: and, in busi- 
ness, if Narciss was delicate, exact, persevering, 
indefatigable, the other was clear, sharp, quick 
and capable of working with incredible ease. 
By means of him, I learned the secret history 
of almost every noble personage with whose 
exterior I had grown acquainted in society. It 
was pleasant for me to behold the tumult, otf 
my watch-tower, from afar. Philo could now 
hide nothing from me: he confided to me by 
degrees his own concerns both inward and out- 
ward. I was in fear because of him ; for I 
foresaw certain circumstances and entangle- 
ments ; and the mischief came more speedily 
than I had looked for. There were some con- 
fessions he had still kept back ; and even at last 
he told me only what enabled me to guess the 
worst. 

What an effect had this upon my heart! I 
attained experiences, which to me were alto- 
gether new. With infinite sorrow I beheld an 
Agathon, who, being educated in the groves of 
Delphi, yet owed his school fee, which he was 
now obliged to pay with its accumulated in- 
terest; and this Agathon was tny especial friend. 
My sympathy was lively and complete; I suf- 
fered with him ; both of us were in the strangest 
state. 

After having long occupied myself with the 
temper of his mind, I at last turned round to 
contemplate my own. The thought: 'Thou art 
no better than he,' rose like a little cloud before 
me, and gradually expanded till it darkened all 
my soul. 

I now not only thought myself no better than 
he ; I felt this, and felt it as I should not wish to 
do again. Nor was it any transitory mood. For 
more than a year, I was constrained to feel that, 
if an unseen hand had not restrained me, 1 
might have become a Girard, a Cartouche, a 
Damiens, or any wretch you can suppose. The 
tendencies to this I traced too clearly in my 
heart. Heavens! what a discovery ! 

If hitherto I never had been able, in the 
faintest degree, to recognise in myself the reality 
of sin by experience, its possibility was now 
become apparent to me by anticipation, in the 
most tremendous manner. And yet I knew not 
evil; I but feared it: I felt that I might be 



GOETHE. 



2'J5 



guilty, and could not accuse myself of being 
so. 

Deeply as I was convinced that such a tem- 
perament of soul, as I now saw mine to be, 
could never be adapted for that union with the 
invisible Being, which I hoped for after death ; 
I ilid not, in the smallest, fear that I should 
finally be separated from him. With all the 
wickedness, which I discovered in my heart, I 
still loved Him ; I hated what I felt, nay, wished 
to liate it still more earnestly; my whole desire 
was to be delivered from this sickness, and this 
tendency to sickness ; and I was persuaded that 
the great Physician would at length vouchsafe 
his help. 

The sole question was : What medicine will 
cure this malady? The practice of virtue? 
This I could not for a moment think. For ten 
years, I had already practised more than mere 
virtue; and the horrors now first discovered 
liad, all tlie while, lain hidden at the bottom of 
my soul. Might they not have broken out with 
me, as they did with David when he looked on 
Bathslieba ? Yet was not he a friend of God ; 
and was not I assured in my inmost heart that 
God was my friend? 

Was it then an unavoidable infirmity of hu- 
man nature? Must we just content ourselves 
in feeling and acknowledging the sovereignty 
of inclination ? And, with the best will, is there 
nothing left for us but to abhor the fault we have 
committed, and on the like occasion to commit 
it again ? 

From systems of morality I could obtain no 
comfort. Neither their severity, by which they 
try to bend our inclinations, nor their attractive- 
ness, by which they try to place our inclinations 
on the side of virtue, gave tne any satisfaction. 
The fundamental notions, which I had imbibed 
from intercourse with my invisible Friend, were 
of far higher value to me. 

Once, while I was studying the songs com- 
posed by David after that tremendous fall, it 
struck me very much that he traced his indwell- 
ing corruption even in the substance out of 
which be had been shaped ; yet that he wished 
to be freed Irom sin, and that he earnestly en- 
treated for a pure heart. 

But how was this to be attained ? The answer 
from the Scripture I was well aware of: 'That 
the blood of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin' was 
a Bible truth, which I had long known. But 
now lijr the first time, I observed that as yet I 
had never understood this olt-repeated saying. 
The rpiestions : What does it mean? How is it 
to be ! were day and night working out their 
answers in me. At last I thought 1 saw as by 
a gleam of light, that what I sought was to be 
foujid in the incarnation of the everlasting Word, 
by whom all things, even we ourselves, were 
made. That the Eternal descended as aa in- 
habitant to the depths in which we dwell, which 
he surveys and comprehends; that be passed 
through our lot from stage to stage, from concep- 
tion and birth to the grave ; that by this mar- 



vellous circuit he again mounted to those shining 
Heights, whither we too must rise in ordei tc 
be happy: all this was revealed to me, as in a 
dawning remoteness. 

Oh ! Why must we, in speaking of such things, 
make use of figures, which can only indicate 
external situations! Where is there in His eyes 
aught high or deep, aught dark or clear? It is 
we only that have an Under and Above, a night 
and day. And even for this did He become like 
us, since otherwise we could have had no part 
in him. 

But how shall we obtain a share in this price- 
less benefit? 'By faith,' the Scripture says. 
And what is faith? To consider the account of 
an event as true — what help can this afford me ? 
I inust be enabled to appropriate its effects, its 
consequences. This appropriating faith must 
be a state of mind peculiar, and to the natural 
man, unknown. 

' Now, gracious Father, grant me faith !' so 
prayed I once in the deepest heaviness of heart. 
I was leaning on a little table, where I sat; my 
tear-stained countenance was hidden in my 
hands. I was now in the condition, in which 
we seldom are, but in which we ate required to 
be, if God is to regard our prayers. 

O that I could but paint what I felt then ! A 
sudden force drew my soul to the cross where 
Jesus once expired: it was a sudden force, a 
pull, I cannot name it otherwise, such as leads 
our soul to an absent loved one: an approxima 
tion, which perhaps is far more real and true 
than we imagine. So did my soul approach 
the Son of Man, who died upon the cross; and 
that instant did I know what faith was. 

' This is faith !' said I ; and started up as half 
affrighted. I now endeavored to get certain 
of my feeling, of my view ; and shortly I be 
came convinced that my spirit had acquired a 
power of soaring' upwards, which was altogether 
new to it. 

Words fail us in describing such emotions. I 
could most distinctly separate them from all 
fantasy: they were entirely without fantasy 
without image ; yet they gave us just the cer- 
tainty of their relt?rring to some object, which 
our imagination gives us when it paints for us 
the features of an absent lover. 

When the first rapture was over, I observed 
that my present state of soul had formerly been 
known to me; only 1 had never felt it in such 
strength ; I had never held it fast, never made 
it mine. I believe, indeed, that every human 
soul at intervals feels something of it. Doubt- 
less it is this which teaches every mortal that 
there is a God. 

With this power, which used to visit me from 
time to time, I had hitherto been well content, 
and had not, by a singular arrangement of events, 
that unexpected sorrow weighed upon me for a 
twelvemonth; had not my own ability and 
strength on this occasion altogether lost its credit 
with me; I perhaps might have been satisfied 
with this condition all my days. 



296 



GOETHE. 



But now, since that great moment, I had as it 
were got wirigs. I could mount aloft above 
what used to threaten me; as the bird can fly 
singing and with ease across the fiercest stream, 
while the little dog stands anxiously baying on 
the bank. 

My joy was indescribable ; and though I did 
not tnentioh it to any one, my people soon ob- 
served an unaccustomed cheerfulness in me, and 
could not understand the reason of my joy. Had 
I but forever held my peace, and tried to nourish 
this serene temper in my soul ! Had I not al- 
lowed myself to be misled by circumstances, so 
as to reveal my secret! Then might I again 
have saved myself a long and tedious circuit. 

As in the previous ten years of my Christian 
course, this necessary force had not existed in 
my soul, 1 had just been in the case of other 
worthy people; had helped myself by keeping 
my fancy always lull of images, which had 
some reference to God : a practice so far truly 
useful ; for noxious images and their baneful 
consequences are by that means kept away. 
Often too our spirit seizes one or other of these 
spiritual images, and mounts with it a little way 
upwards; like a young bird fluttering from twig 
to twig. 

Images and impressions pointing towards God 
are presented to us by the institutions of the 
Church, by organs, bells, singing, and particu- 
larly by the preaching of our pastors. Of these 
I used to be unspeakably desirous: no weather, 
no botlily weakness could keep me back from 
cliuroh ; the sound of the Sunday bells was the 
only thing that rendered me impatient on a sick 
bed. Our head Court chaplain, a gifted man, I 
heard with great delight: his colleagues too I 
liked ; anil I could pick the golden apple of the 
word from the common fruit, with which on 
earthen platters it was mingled. With public 
ordinances, all sorts of private exercises were 
combined ; and these too but nourished fancy 
and a finer kind of sense. I was so accustomed 
to this track, I reverenced it so much, that even 
now no higher one occurred to me. For my 
soul has only feelers, and not eyes; it gropes, 
but does not see : Ah ! that it could get eyes and 
look ! 

On this occasion, therefore, I again went with 
a longing mind to sermon ; but alas, what hap- 
pened ! I no longer found what I was wont to 
find. These preachers were blunting their teeth 
upon tlie shell, while I enjoyed the kernel. I 
soon grew weary of them ; and I had already 
been so spoiled, that I could not be content with 
the little they afibrded me. I required images, 
I wanted impressions from without; and reck- 
oned it a pure spiritual desire that I felt. 

Philo's parents had been in connection with 
the Herrnhuther community : in his library were 
many writings of Count Zinzendorf's. He had 
spoken with me very candidly and clearly on 
the subject more than once ; inviting me to turn 
over one or two of these treatises, if it were but 
iiiir the sake of studying a psychological pheno- 



menon. I looked upon the Count, and those 
that followed him, as very heterodox: and so 
the Ebersdorf hymn-book, which my friend had 
pressed upon me, lay unread. 

However, in my total destitution of external ' 
excitements for my soul, I opened up the hymn- 
book as it were by chance ; and found in it, to 
my astonishment, some songs which actually 
though under a fantastic form, appeared to sha- 
dow what I felt. The originality and the sim- 
plicity of their expression drew ine on. It 
seemed to be peculiar emotions expressed in a 
peculiar way; no school technology suggested 
any notion of formality or common-place. ,1 
was persuaded that these people fell as I did : I 
was very happy to lay hold of here and there 
a stanza in their songs, to fix it in my memory, 
and carry it about with me for days. 

Since the moment, when the truth had been 
revealed to me, some three months had in this 
way passed along. At last I came to the deter- 
mination of disclosing everything to Philo, and 
asking him to let nie have those writiiigs, about 
which I was now become immoderately curious. 
Accordingly I did so, notwithstanding there was 
something in my heart, which earnestly dis- 
suaded me. 

I circumstantially related to him all the story; 
and, as he was a leading person in it, and my 
narrative conveyed the sharpest reprimand on 
him, he felt surprised and moved to an extreme 
degree. He melted into tears. I rejoiced at 
this; believing that in his mind also a full and 
fundamental change had taken place. 

He provided me with all the writings that I 
could require; an<l now I had excess of nour- 
ishment for my imagination. I made rapid pro- 
gress in the Zinzeiidorhc mode of thought and 
speech. And be it not supposed that I am yet 
incapable of prizing the peculiar turn and man 
ner of the Coimt. 1 willingly do justice to him ; 
he is no empty fantast; he speaks of mighty 
truths, and mostly in a bold figurative style ; tlie 
people who despise him know not either how 
to value or discriminate his qualities. 

At that time I became exceedingly attached 
to him. Had I been mistress of myself, I would 
certainly have left my friends and country, and 
gone to join him. We should infallibly have 
understood each other, and should hardly have 
agreed together long. 

Thanks to my better genius that now kept 
me so confined by my domestic duties! I reck- 
oned it a distant journey if I visited the garden. 
The charge of my aged weakly father aflbrded 
me employment enough, and in hours of recre- 
ation I had Fancy to procure me pastime. The 
only mortal whom I saw was Philo; he was 
highly valued by my father; but with me, his 
intimacy had been cooled a little by the late 
explanation. Its influence on him had not pene- 
trated deep; and as some attempts to talk in 
my dialect had not succeeded with hmi, he 
avoided touching on this subject; and the more 
readily, as his extensive knowledge put it always 



GOETHE. 



297 



in his power to introduce new topics in his con- 
versation. 

I was thus a Herrnhuth sister on my own 
footing. I had especially to hide this new turn 
of my temper and my inclinations from the 
head Court chaplain, whom, as my father con- 
fessor, I had much cause to honor; and whose 
high merits, his extreme aversion to the Herrn- 
huth community did not diminish in my eyes 
even then. Unhappily this worthy person had 
to sutfer many troubles on account of me and 
others. 

Several years before he had become acquaint- 
ed with an upright pious gentleman, residing in 
a distant quarter; and had long continued in 
uribroken correspondence with him as with one 
who truly sought God. How painful was it to 
the spiritual leader, when this gentleman sub- 
sequently joined himself to the community of 
Herrnhuth, where he lived for a long wiiile! 
How delightful, on the other hand, when at 
length he quarrelled with the brethren; deter- 
mined to settle in our neighborhood ; and seemed 
once more to yield himself completely to the 
guidance of his ancient friend ! 

The stranger was presented, as in triumph, 
by the upper Pastor to all the chosen lambs of 
his fold. To our house alone he was not intro- 
duced, because my father did not now see com- 
pany. 'I'lie gentleman obtained no little ap|)ro- 
bation : he combined the polish of the court 
with the winning manner of the Brethren; and 
having also many fine qualities -by nature, he 
soon became the favorite saint with all who 
knew him; a result at vi'hich the chaplain was 
exceeilingly contented. But, alas! it was merely 
in externals that the gentleman had split with 
the community ; in his heart he was yet entirely 
a Herrnhuther. He was, in truth, concerned 
for the reality of the matter: but yet the gim- 
ciacks, which the Count had stuck around it, 
were at the same time quite adapted to his 
taste. Besides he had now become accustomed 
to this mode of speaking arid conceiving; and 
if he had to hide it carefully from his ancient 
friend, it but became the more necessary for 
him, whenever he could get a knot of trusty 
persons round him, to come forth with his cou- 
plets, litanies, and little figures; in which, as 
might have been supposed, he met with great 
ai>plause. 

1 knew nothing of the whole affair, and daw- 
dled forward in my separate path. For a long 
ti-nie, we continued mutually unknown. 

At a leisure hour, 1 happened once to visit a 
lady who was sick. I found several acquaint- 
ances along with her; and soon perceived that 
my aiipearance had cut sliort their conversation. 
I affected not to notice anything; but saw ere 
long, with great surprise, some Herrnhuth figures 
stuck upon the wall in elegant frames. Quickly 
comprehending what had passed before my en- 
trance, I expressed my pleasure at the sight in 
a law suitable verses. 

Conceive the wonder of my friends! We 
2 N 



explained ourselves; instantly we were agreed, 
and in each other's confidence. 

I henceforth often sought for opportunities of 
going out. Unliappily 1 found them only once 
in three or four weeks: yet I grew acquainted 
with our gentleman apostle, and by degrees 
with all the body. I visited their meetings, 
when I could: with my social disposition, it 
was quite delightful for me to communicate to 
others, and to hear from diem, the feelings 
which till now I had conceived and harbored 
by myself 

But I was not so completely taken with my 
friends, as not to see that few of them could 
really feel the sense of those affecting words 
and emblems; and that from these they drew 
as little benefit, as formerly they did from the 
symbolic language of the Church. Yet, notwith- 
s'anding, I went on with them, not letting tliis 
disturb me. I thought I was not called to search 
and try the hearts of others; even although by 
long-continued guiltless exercisings, I had been 
prepared for something better. 1 had my share 
of profit from our meetings: in speaking, 1 in- 
sisted on attending to the sense and spirit, which, 
in things so delicate, is rather apt to he disguised 
by words than indicated by them; and for the 
rest I left with silent toleration each to act ac- 
cording to his own conviction. 

These quiet times of secret social joy were 
shortly followed by storms of open bickering 
and contradiction ; contentions which excited 
great commotion, I might almost say occasioned 
not a little scandal, in the Court and town. 
The period was now arrived when our Chap- 
lain, that stout gainsayer of the Herrnhuth Bre- 
thren, must discover, to liis deep, but I trust, 
sanctified liumiliation, that his best and once 
most zealous hearers were now all leaning to 
the side of that Community. He was exces- 
sively provoked: in the first moments, he forgot 
all moderation; and could not, even if he had 
inclined it, afterwards retract. Violent debates 
took place; in which most happily I was not 
mentioned ; both as I was but an accidental 
member of that hated body; and as our zealous 
preacher could not spare my father and my 
friend, in certain civic matters. With silent 
satisfaction, I continued neutral. It was irksome 
to me to converse about such feelings and ob- 
jects, even with well affected people, if they 
could not penetrate the deepest sense, and lin 
gered merely on the surface. But to strive with 
adversaries about things on which even friends 
could scarcely understand each other seemed 
to me unprofitable, nay pernicious. For I could 
soon perceive that many amiable noblemen, 
who on this occurrence could not shut their 
hearts to enmity and hatred, had very soon 
passed over to injustice ; and, in order to defend 
an outward form, had almost sacrificed their 
most substantial duties. 

Greatly as the worthy clergyman might, in 
the present case, be wrong; much as others 
tried to irritate me at him, I could never heii 



298 



GOETHE. 



tate to give him my sincere respect. I knew 
him well : I could candidly transport myself 
into his way of looking at these matters. I have 
never seen a man without his weaknesses ; only, 
in distinguished men tliey strike us more. We 
wish, and will at all rates have it, that persons 
privileged as they are should at the same time 
pay no tribute, no tax whatever. I honored him 
as a superior man: and hoped to use the influ- 
ence of my calm neutrality to bring about, if not 
a peace, at least a truce. I know not wliat my 
efforts might have done; but God concluded the 
affair more briefly, and took the Chaplain to 
Himself On his coffin, all wept who lately had 
been striving with him about words. His up- 
rightness, Iiis fear of God, no one ever had 
doubted. 

I too was ere long forced to lay aside this 
Herrnhuth doll work, which, by means of these 
contentions, now appeared before me in a rather 
different light. Our uncle had in silence exe- 
cuted his intentions with my sister. He offered 
her a young man of rank and fortune as a bride- 
groom ; and showed, by a rich dowry, what 
might be expected of himself. My father joy- 
fully consented: my sister was free and fore- 
warned, she did not hesitate to change her state. 
The bridal was appointed at my uncle's castle : 
family and friends were all invited ; and we 
came in the highest spirits. 

For the first time in my life, the aspect of a 
house excited admiration in me. I had often 
heard of my uncle's taste, of his Italian archi- 
tect, of his collections and his library; but, com- 
paring this with what I had already seen, I had 
formed a very vague and fluctuating picture of 
it ill my ihoiights. Great, accordingly, was my 
surprise at the earnest and harmonious impres- 
sion which I felt on entering the house, and 
which every hall and chamber deepened. If 
elsewhere pomp and decoration had but dissi- 
pated my attention, I felt here concentrated and 
drawn back upon myself. In like manner, the 
preparatives for these solemnities and festivals 
produced a silent pleasure, by their air of dig- 
nity and splendor; and to me it seemed as in- 
conceivable, that one man could have invented 
and arranged the whole of this as that more 
than one could have combined to labor in so 
high a sjjirit. Yet withal the landlord and his 
people were entirely natural; not a trace of 
stiffness or of empty form was to be seen. 

The wedding itself was managed in a striking 
way : an exquisite strain of vocal music came 
upon us by surprise; and the clergyman went 
through the ceremony with a singular solemnity. 
I M'as standing by Philo at the time ; and instead 
of a congratulation, he whispered in my ear: 
"When I saw your sister give away her hand, 
I felt as if a stream of boiling water had been 
poured upon me." "Why so?" I inquired. "It 
is always the way with me," said he, "when I 
behold two people joined." I laughed at him ; 
but I have often since had cause to recollect his 
words. 



The revel of the party, among whom were 
many young people, looked particularly glitter 
ing and airy, as everything around us was dig- 
nified and serious. The furniture, plate, table 
ware, and table ornaments, accorded with the 
general whole; and if in ptVier houses, the fur- 
nisher and architect seemed to have proceeded 
from the same school, it here appeared that both 
furnisher and butler had taken lessons from the 
architect. 

We staid together several days; and our in- 
telligent and gifted landlord had variedly pro- 
vided for the entertainment of his guests. I did 
not in the present case repeat the melancholy 
proof, which has so often in my life been forced 
upon me, how unhappily a large mixed com- 
pany are situated, when, altogether left to them- 
selves, they must select the most getjeral and 
vapid pastimes, that the blockheads of the party 
may not want amusement, however it may fare 
with those that are not such. 

My uncle had arranged it altogether differ- 
ently. Two or three Marshals, if I may call them 
so, had been appointed by him : one of them 
had charge of provi<ling entertainment for the 
young. Dances, excursions, little games, were 
of his invention, and under his direction ; and 
as young people take delight in being out of 
doors, and do not fear the influences of the air, 
the garden and the garden hall had been as- 
signed to them ; while some additional pavilions 
and galleries had been erected and appended 
to the latter, formed of boards and canvas 
merely, but in such proportions, so elegant and 
noble, they reminded one of nothing else but 
stone and marble. 

How rare is a festivity, in which the person 
who invites the guests feels also that it is his 
duty to provide for their conveniences and wants 
of every kind ! 

Hunting and card parties, short promenades, 
opportunities for trustful private conversations, 
were afforded to the elder persons: and who- 
ever wished to go earliest to bed was certain to 
be lodged the most remote from noise. 

By this happy order, the space in which we 
lived appeared to be a little world; and yet, 
considered narrowly, the castle was not large: 
without an accurate knowledge of it, and with- 
out the spirit of its owner, it would have been 
impossible to keep so many people in it, and to 
quarter each according to his humor. 

As the aspect of a well-formed person pleases 
us, so also does a fair establishment, by means 
of which the presence of a rational intelligent 
mind is made apparent tons. We feel a joy in 
entering even a cleanly house, though it may be 
tasteless in its structure and its decorations; be- 
cause it shows us the presence of a person cul- 
tivated in at least one sense. Doubly pleasing 
is it, therefore, when, from a human dwelling, 
the spirit of a higher though merely sensual cul- 
ture speaks to us. 

All this was vividly impressed upon my ob- 
servation at my uncle's castle. I had heard 



and read much of art; Philo, too, was a lover 
of pictures, and had a fine collection ; I myself 
had often practised drawing; but I had been 
too deeply occupied with my emotions for tast- 
ing auglit that did not bear upon the one tiling 
needful, which alone I was bent on carrying to 
perfection ; and besides, such objects of art as 
I liad seen appeared, like all other worldly ob- 
jects, to distract my thoughts. But now for the 
first time, outward things liad led me back upon 
myself: I now first perceived the difference 
between the natural charm of the nightingale's 
song, and that of a four-voice anthem pealed 
from the expressive organs of men. 

I did not hide my joy at this discovery from 
my uncle; who, when all the rest were settled 
at their posts, was wont to come and talk with 
me ill private. He spoke wiili great modesty 
of what he had produced and made his own; 
with great decision, of the views in which it 
had been gathered and arranged : and I could 
easily observe that he spoke with a forbearance 
towards me; seeming, in his usual way, to rate 
the excellence, Cif which he was himself pos- 
sessed, below the excellence, which, in my 
opinion, was the best and pioperest. 

" if we can conceive it possible," he once ob- 
served, "that tlie Creator of the world himself 
assumed the form of his creature, and lived in 
that manner for a time upon the earth, this crea- 
ture must appear to us of infinite perfection, be- 
cause susceptible of such a combination with 
its Maker. Hence, in onr idea of man there 
can be no inconsistency with our idea of God ; 
and if we often feel a certain disagreement with 
Hiin, and remoteness from Him, it is but the 
more on tliat account our duty, not like advo- 
cates of tlie wicked bpirit, to keep our eyes con- 
tinually upon the nakedness and weakness of 
our nature; but ratlier to seek out every pro- 
perty and beauty, by which our pretension to 
a similarity with the Divinity may be made 
good." 

I smiled and answered: " Do not make me 
blush, dear uncle, by your complaisance in talk- 
ing in my language! What you have to say is 
of such importance to me, that I wish to hear 
it in your own most peculiar style; and then 
what parts ol' it 1 cannot quite appropriate, I 
will endeavor to translate." 

"I may continue,'' lie replied, "in my own 
most peculiar way. without any alteration of 
my tone. JVlan s highest merit always is as 
much as possible to rule external circumstan- 
ces, and as little as possible to let himself be 
ruled by them. Life lies before us, as a huae 
quarry lies before the architect ; he deserves not 
the name of architect, except when, out of tliis 
fortuitous mass, he can combine, with the great- 
est economy, suitableness and durability, some 
Ibrm, the pattern of which originated in his 
spirit. All things without us, nay, I may add, 
all tilings on us, are mere elements; but deep 
wiilim lis, lies the creative Ibrce, which out of 
he»e can produce what they were meant to be; 



and which leaves us neither sleep nor rest, till 
in one way or another, without us or on us, this 
has been produced. You, my dear niece, have, 
it may be, chosen the better part: you have 
striven to bring your moral being, your earnest 
lovely nature to accordance with itself and with 
the Highest ; but neither ouglit we to be blamed, 
when we strive to get acquainted with the sen- 
tient man in all his comprehensiveness, and to 
bring about an active harmony among his pow- 
ers." 

By such discoursing, we in time grew more 
familiar; and I begged of him to speak with 
me as with himself, omitting every sort of con- 
descension. "Do not think," replied my uncle, 
" that 1 flatter you, when I commend your mode 
of thinking and of acting. I reverence the in- 
dividual who understands distinctly what he 
wishes ; who unweariedly advances, who knows 
the means conducive to his object, and can seize 
and use tliein. How far his object may be great 
or little, may merit praise or censure, is the next 
consideration with me. Believe me, love, most 
part of all the misery and mischief, of all that 
is denominated evil, in the world, arises from 
the fact that men are too remiss to get a proper 
knowledge of their aims, and when they do 
know them to work intensely in attaining them. 
They seem to me like people who have taken 
up a notion, that they must and will erect a 
tower, and who yet expend on the foundation 
no more stones and labor than would be suf- 
ficient for a hut. If you, my friend, whose 
higliest want it was to perfect and unfold your 
moral nature, had, instead of those bold and 
noble sacrifices, merely trimmed between your 
duties to yourself and to your family, your bride- 
groom, or perhaps your husband, you must have 
lived in constant contradiction with your feel- 
ings, and never could have had a peaceful mo- 
ment." 

" You employ the word sacrifice," I answered 
here ; ''and I have often thought that to a higher 
purpose, as to a divinity, we ofler up, by way 
of sacrifice, a thing of smaller value; feeling, 
like persons who should willhigly and gladly 
bring a favorite lamb to the altar, for the healtli 
of a beloved iiither." 

" Whatever it may be," said he, " reason or 
feeling that commands us to give up the one 
thing for the other, to choose the one before the 
other, decision and perseverance are, in my 
opinion, the most noble qualities of man. You 
cannot have the ware and the money both at 
once: and he who always hankers lor the ware 
without having heart enough to give the money 
for it, is no better off than he who repents him 
of the purchase when the ware is in his hands. 
But I am iar from blaming men on this account: 
it is not they who are to blame: it is the ditH- 
cult entangled situation they are in ; they know 
not how to guide themselves in its perplexities. 
Thus, for instance, you will on the average find 
fewer bad economists in the country 'liaii in 
towns, and fewer again in small towns ;haii ii; 



300 



GOETHE. 



great; and why'? Man is intended for a limited 
condition; objects that are simple, near, deter- 
minate, he comprehends, and he becomes ac- 
customed to employ such means as are at hand ; 
but on entering a wider field, he now knows 
neither what he would nor what he should ; 
and it amounts to quite the same, whether his 
attention is distracted by the multitude of ob- 
jects, or is overpowered by their magnitude and 
dignity. It is always a misfortune for him, 
when he is induced to struggle after anything, 
with which he cannot join himself by some 
regular exertion of his powers. 

"Certainly," pursued he, "without earnest- 
ness there is nothing to be done in life: yet 
among the people whom we name cultivated 
men, but little earnestness is to be found : in 
labors and employments, in arts, nay, even in 
recreations, they proceed, if I may say so, with 
a sort of self-defence; they live, as they read a 
heap of newspapers, only to be done with it; 
they remind one of that young Englishman at 
Rome, who told, with a contented air, one even- 
ing in some company, that 'to-day he had des- 
patched six churches and two galleries.' They 
wish to know and learn a multitude of things, 
and exactly those with which they have the 
least concern ; and they never see that hunger 
is not stilled by snapping at the air. When I 
become acquainted with a man, my first inquiry 
is: With what does he employ himself, and how, 
and with what degree of perseverance ? The 
answer regulates the interest which I shall take 
in him for life." 

" My dear uncle," I replied, " you are per- 
haps too rigorous; you perhaps withdraw your 
helping hand from here and there a worthy man 
to whom you might be useful." 

"Can it be imputed as a fault," said he, "to 
one who has so long and vainly labored on them 
and about them? How much we have to suffer 
in our youth from men, who think they are in- 
viting us to a delightful pleasure party, when 
they undertake to introduce us to the Danai;les 
or bysiphus! Heaven be praised! 1 have rid 
myself of these people : if one of them unfor- 
tunately comes within my sphere, instantly, 
in the politest maimer, I compliment him out 
again. It is from these people that you hear 
the bitterest complaints about the miserable 
course of things, the aridity of science, the levity 
of artists, the emptiness of poets, and much 
more of that sort. They do not recollect that 
they, and the many like them, are the very per- 
sons who would never read a book, which had 
been written just as they require it; that true 
poetry is alien to them; that even an excellent 
work of art can never gain dieir approbation 
save by means of prejudice. But let us now 
break otf; for this is not the time to rail or to 
complain. ' 

He directed my attention to the different pic- 
tures, which were fixed upon the wall : my eye 
dwelt on those whose look was beautiful or sub- 
ject striking. This he permitted for a while; 



at last he said : "Bestow a little notice on the 
spirit, which is manifested in these other works. 
Good minds delight to trace the finger of the 
Deity in nature: why not likewise pay some 
small regard to the hand of his imitator?" He 
then led my observation to some unobtrusive 
figures; endeavoring to make me understand, 
that it was the history of art alone, which could 
give us an idea of the worth and dignity of any 
work of art: that we should know the weary 
steps of mere handicraft and mechanism, over 
which the man of talents has arisen in the 
course of centuries, before we can conceive how 
it is possible for the man of genius to move with 
airy freedom, on the pinnacle whose very aspect 
makes us giddy. 

With this view^, he had formed a beautiful 
series of works ; and whilst he explained it, I 
could not help conceivitig that I saw before me 
a similitude of moral culture. When I expressed 
my thoughts to him, he answered: "You are 
altogether in the right; and we see from this, 
that those do not act properly, who follow moral 
cultivation by itself exclusively. On the con- 
trary, it will be found that he whose spirit 
strives for a developinent of this kind, has like- 
wise every reason, at the same time, to improve 
his finer sentient powers, that so he may not 
run the risk of sinking from his moral height, 
by giving way to the enticements of a lawless 
fancy, and degrading his moral nature by allow- 
ing it to take delight in tasteless baubles, if not 
in something worse." 

I did not in the least suspect him of levelling 
at me; but I felt myself struck, when I thought 
how many insipidities had been among the 
songs that used to edify trie; and how little 
favor the figures, which had joined themselves 
to my religious ideas, would have found in the 
eyes of my uncle. 

Philo, in the mean time, had frequently been 
busied in the library: he now took me along 
with him. We admired the selection as well 
as the multitude of books. They had been col- 
lected on my uncle's general principle ; there 
were none among them to be found but such 
as either lead us to correct knowledge, or teach 
us right nianageinent; such as either give us fit 
materials, or further the concordance of our 
spirit. 

In the course of my life, I had read very 
largely; in certain branches, there was scarce 
a work unknown to me: the more pleasant 
was it for me here, to speak about the general 
survey of the whole, and to observe deficien- 
cies, where I had formerly seen nothing but a 
hampered confusion or a boundless expansion. 

Here too we became acquainted with a very 
interesting, quiet man. He was a physician 
and a naturalist: he seeined rather one of the 
Penates than of the inmates. He showed us 
the museum, which like the library was fixed 
in glass cases to the walls of the chamber, 
adorning and ennobling the space which it did 
not crowd. On this occasion, I recalled with 



GOETHE. 



301 



joy the days of youth, and showed my father 
niany objects, which he formerly had laid upon 
tl'.e sick bed of his little child, that had yet 
scarcely looked into the world. At the same 
time, the Physician, in our present and follow- 
ing conversations, did not scruple to avow how 
nearly he approximated to tne in respect of my 
religious sentiments: he warmly praised my 
tmcle for his tolerance, and his esteem of all 
that testified or forwarded the worth and unity 
of human nature; admitting also, that he called 
for a similar return from others, and was wont 
to shun and to condeinn nothing else so heartily 
as individual darkness and narrowness of mind. 

Since the nuptials of my sister, joy had sparkled 
in the eyes of our uncle: he often spoke with 
me of what he meant to do for her and for her 
children. He had several fine estates; he ma- 
naged them himself, and hoped to leave them 
in the best condition to his nephews. Regarding 
the small estate, on which we were at present 
living, he appeared to entertain peculiar thoughts. 
" [ will leave it to none," said he, " but to a per- 
son who can understand, and value and enjoy 
what it contains, and who feels how loudly every 
man of wealth and quality, especially in Ger- 
many, is called on to exhibit something like a 
model to others." 

Mo:<t part of his guests were now gone; we 
too were n)aking ready for departure, thinking 
we had seen the final scene of this solemnity; 
when his attention in affording us some digni- 
fied enjoyment produced a new surprise. We 
had mentioned to liim the deliglit which the 
chorus of voices, that suddenly commenced with- 
out accompaniment of any instrument, had given 
us, at my sister's marriage. We hinted, at the 
same time, how pleasant it would be were such 
a thing repeated ; but he seemed to pay no heed 
to us. I'he livelier, on this account, was our 
surprise, when he said one evening : " The music 
of the dance has died away; our transitory, 
youthful friends have left us; the happy pair 
themselves have a more serious look than they 
had some days ago : to part at such a time, when 
we perhaps shall never meet again, certainly 
never without changes, exalts us to a solemn 
mood, which I know not how to entertain more 
nobly than by the music that some of you were 
lately signifying a desire to have repeated." 

The chorus, which had in the meanwhile 
gathered strengtli, and by secret practice more 
ex[)ertness, was accordingly made to sing us a 
series of four and of eight voiced melodies, 
wliicli, if I may say so, gave a real foretaste of 
bliss. Till then, I had only known the pious 
trioile of singing, as good souls practise it, fre- 
quently with hoarse pipes, itnagiiiing, like wild 
birds, that they are praising God, while they 
procure a pleasant feeling to themselves. Or 
perhaps I had hearkened to the vain music of 
concerts, in which one is at best invited to ad- 
mire the talent of the singer, and very seldom 
even to a transient feeling of enjoyment. Now, 
Dowever, I was listening to music, which, as it 



originated in the deepest principles of the most 
accomplished human beings, was by suitable 
and practised organs in harmonious unity made 
again to address the deepest and best princi[)le3 
of man, and to impress him at that moment 
with a lively sense of his likeness to the Deity. 
They were all devotional songs, in the Latin 
language: they sat like jewels in the golden 
ring of a polished intellectual conversation; and 
without pretending to edify, they elevated me 
and made me happy in the inost spiritual man- 
ner. 

At our departure, he presented all of us with 
handsome gifts. To me he gave the cross of 
my order, more beautifully and artfully worked 
and enamelled than I had seen it before. It 
was hung upon a large brilliant, by which it was 
likewise fastened to the chain, and to which it 
gave the aspect of the noblest stone in the cabi- 
net of some collector. 

My sister with her husband went to their 
estates ; the rest of us to our abodes ; appearing 
to ourselves, so far as outward circumstances 
were concerned, to have returned to quite an 
every-day existence. We had been, as it were, 
dropped from a palace of the fairies down upoji 
the common earth ; and were again obliged to 
help ourselves as best we could. 

The singular experiences, which this new 
circle had afforded, left a fine impression on my 
mind. This, however, did not long continue in 
its first vivacity ; although my uncle tried to 
nourish and renew it, by sending to me certain 
of his best and most pleasing works of art; 
changing them, from time to time, with others 
which I had not seen. 

I had been so much accustomed to be busied 
with myself, in regulating the concerns of my 
heart and temper, and conversing on these 
matters with persons of a like mind, that I 
could not long study any work of art attentively 
without being turned by it back upon myself. I 
was used to look upon a picture or a copperplate 
merely as upon the letters of a book. Fine print- 
ing pleases well: but who would read a book 
f'oi the beauty of its printing? In like manner, 
I required of each pictorial form that it should 
tell me something, should instruct, affect, im- 
prove me : and after all my uncle's letters to 
expound his works of art, say what he would, I 
continued in my former humor. 

Yet not only my peculiar disposition, external 
incidents and changes in our family still further 
drew trie back from conteinplations of that na- 
ture, nay for some time even from myself I 
had to suffer and to do, more than my slender 
strength seemed fit for. 

My maiden sister had till now been as a 
right arm to me. Healthy, vigorous, unspeakably 
good-natured, she had managed all the house- 
keeping, I inyself being busied with the personal 
nursing of our aged father. She was seized with 
a catarrh, which changed to a disorder in tho 
lungs: in three weeks she was lying in her 
coffin. Her death inflicted wounds on me, tho 
26 



302 



GOETHE. 



scars of which I am not yet willing to exa- 
mine. 

I was lying sick before they buried her: the 
old ailment in my breast appeared to be awaken- 
ing ; I coughed with violence, and was so hoarse 
I could not speak beyond a whisper. 

My married sister, out of fright and grief, was 
brought to bed before her time. Our old father 
thought himself at once about to lose his children 
and the hope of their posterity : his natural tears 
increased my sorrow ; I prayed to God that he 
would give me back a sufferable state of health. 
I asked him but to spare my life until my father 
should be dead. I recovered ; I was what I 
reckoned well ; being able to discharge my du- 
ties, though with pain. 

My sister was again with child. Many cares, 
which in such cases are conmiitted to the mo- 
ther, in the present instance fell to me. She 
was not altogether happy with her husband; 
this was to be hidden from our father: I was 
frequently made judge of their disputes; in 
which I could decide with greater safety, as 
my brother trusted in me, and the two were 
really worthy persons, only each of them, in- 
stead of humoring, endeavored to convince the 
other; and out of eagerness to live in constant 
harmony, they never could agree. I now learn- 
ed to mingle seriously in worldly matters, and 
to practise what of old I had but sung. 

My sister bore a son : the feebleness of my 
father did not hinder him from travelling to her. 
The sight of the child exceedingly enlivened and 
cheered him ; at the christening, contrary to his 
custom, he seemed as if inspired ; nay, 1 might 
say like a Genius with two faces. With the one 
he looked joyfully forward to those regions 
which he soon hoped to enter; with the other, 
to the new, hopeful, earthly life, which had 
arisen in the boy that was descended from him. 
On our journey home, he never tireil with talk- 
ing to me of the child, its form, its health, and 
his wish that the endowments of this new de- 
nizen of earth might be cultivated rightly. His 
reflections on the subject lasted when we had 
arrived at home: it was not till some days 
afterwards, that I observed a kind of fever in 
him ; which displayed itself, without shivering, 
in a sort of languid heat commencing after din- 
ner. He did not yield, however ; he went out 
as usual in the mornings, faithfully attending to 
the duties of his office, till at last continuous 
serious symptoms kept him in the house. 

I never shall forget with what distinctness, 
clearness, and rejjose of mind, he settled in the 
greatest order the concerns of his house, the ar- 
rangements of his funeral, as if these had been 
the business of some other person. 

With a cheerfulness, which he never used to 
shov/, and which now mounted to a lively joy, 
he said to me, " Where is the fear of death 
which once 1 felt? Shall I shrink at departing? 
1 have a gracious God ; the grave awakes no 
Terror in me; 1 have an eternal life." 

To recall the circumstances of his death, 



which shortly followed, forms one of the most 
pleasing entertainrnents of my solitude : thu 
visible workings of a higher Power in that so 
lemn time, no one shall argue from my memory 
and my belief. 

The death of my beloved father altogether 
changed my mode of life. From the strictest 
obedience, the narrowest confinement, I passed 
at once into the greatest freedom ; I enjoyed il 
like a sort of food from which one has long ab 
stained. Formerly I very seldom spent two 
hours from home; now I very seldom lived a 
day there. My friends, Vr-hom I had been allow- 
ed to visit but by hurried snatches, wished to 
have my company uninterruptedly, as I did to 
have theirs. I was often asked to dinner: at 
walks and pleasure jaunts I never failed. But 
when once the circle had been fairly run, I saw 
that the invaluable happiness of liberty consist- 
ed, not in doing what one pleases and what 
circumstances may invite to, but in being able, 
without hindrance or restraint, to do in the 
direct way what one regards as right and pro- 
per: and in this case, I was old enough to reach 
a precious truth, without having smarted for my 
ignorance. 

One pleasure I could not deny myself: it 
was, as soon as might be, to renew and strengthen 
my connection with the Herrnhuth Brethren. I 
made haste accordingly to visit one of their 
establishments at no great distance : but here I 
by no means found what I had been anticipating. 
I was frank enough to signify my disappoint- 
ment, which they tried to soften by alleging that 
the present settlement was nothing to a full and 
fitly organized cominunity. This I did not take 
upon me to deny ; yet in my thought, the genuine 
spirit of the matter should have been displayed 
in a small body as well as in a great one. 

One of their Bishops who was present, a per- 
sonal disciple of the Count, took considerable 
pains with me. He spoke English perfectly, 
and as I too understood a little of it, he reckoned 
this a token that we both belonged to one class : 
I however reckoned nothing of the kind; his 
conversation did not in the smallest satisfy me. 
He had been a cutler ; was a native of Moravia : 
his mode of thought still savored of the artisan. 
With Herr Von L — , who had been a Major in 
the French service, I got upon a better footing ; 
yet I never could reduce myself to the submis- 
siveness, which he displayed to his superiors; 
nay, I felt as if one had given me a box on the 
ear, when I saw the Major's wife, and other 
women more or less like ladies, take the Bishop's 
hand and kiss it. Meanwhile a journey into 
Holland was proposed; which, however, doubt- 
less for my good, did not take place. 

About this time, my sister was delivered of 
a daughter; and now it was the turn of us 
women to exult, and to consider how the little 
creature should be bred like one of us. The 
husband, on the other hand, was not so satisfied 
when in the following year another danglitei 
saw the light : with his large estates, he wanted 



GOETHE. 



303 



to have boys about him, who ia future might 
assist hiin in his management. 

My health was feeble; I kept myself in 
peace; and observing a quiet mode of life, I 
enjoyed a tolerable equability. I was not afraid 
of death; nay, I wished to die; yet I secretly 
perceived that God was gratiting time for me 
to prove my soul, and to advance still nearer to 
liiiiiself. In my many sleepless nights espe- 
cially, I liave at times felt something, which I 
cannot undertake to describe. 

It was as if my soul were thinking separately 
from the body ; she looked upon the body as a 
foreign substance, as we look upon a garment. 
She pictured with extreme vivacity events and 
times long past, and felt by means of this, events 
that were to follow. Those times are all gone 
by; what follows likewise will go by; the body 
too will fall to pieces like a vesture ; but I, tlie 
well-known I, I am. 

The thought is great, exalted and consoling ; 
yet an excellent friend, witVi whom I every day 
became more intimate, instructed me to dwell 
on it as little as 1 could. This was the Phy- 
sician whom I met with in my uncle's house, 
and who since then liad accurately informed 
himself about the temper of my body and iny 
spirit. He showed me how much these feel- 
ings, when we cherish them within us inde- 
pendently of outward objects, tend as it were to 
excavate us, and to undermine the whole foun- 
dation of our being. "To be active," he would 
say, "is the primary vocation of man; all the 
intervals, in which he is obliged to rest, he 
should employ in gaining clearer knowledge of 
external things, lor this will in its turn facilitate 
activity." 

This friend was acquainted with my custom 
of looking on my body as an outward object; he 
knew also that 1 pretty well understood my con- 
stitution, my disorder, and the medicines of use 
for it; nay, that by continual sutferings of my 
own or oilier people, 1 had really grown a kind 
of half doctor ; he now carried foruard my at- 
tention from the human body, and the drugs 
which act upon it, to llie kindred objects of crea- 
tion : he led me up and down as in the Paradise 
of the first man ; only, if I may continue iny 
comparison, allowing me to trace in dim re- 
nioteness the Creator walking in the Garden in 
the cool of the evening. 

How gladly did I now see God in nature, 
when I bore him with such certainty within my 
liearl! How interesting to me was his handy- 
\v ork ; how thankful did 1 feel that he had 
pleased to quicken me with the breath of his 
njouili ! 

We again had hopes that my sister would 
present its with a boy; her husband waited 
anxiously for that event, but did not live to see 
it. He died in consequence of an unlucky fall 
from horseback; and my sister followed him, 
soon alter she had brought into the world a 
lovely boy. The four orphans they had left I 
wjuld not look at but with sadness. So many 



healthy people had been called away before 
poor sickly me ; might I not also have to witness 
blights among these fair and hopeful blossoms'? 
1 knew the world sufficiently to understand 
what dangers threaten the precarious breeding 
of a child, especially a child of rank ; and it 
seemed to me that since the period of my youth 
these dangers had increased. I felt that weakly 
as I was. I could not be of much, perhaps of 
any service to the little ones; and I rejoiced the 
more on finding that my uncle, as indeed miglit 
have been looked for, had determined to devote 
his whole attention to the education of these 
amiable creatures. And this they doubtless 
merited in every sense : they were handsome ; 
and with great diversities, all promised to be 
well conditioned, reasonable persons. 

Since my worthy Doctor had suggested it, I 
loved to trace out family likenesses among our 
relatives and children. My father had carefully 
preserved tlie portraits of his ancestors, and got 
his own and those of his descendants drawn by 
tolerable masters; nor had my mother and her 
people been forgotten. We accurately knew tho 
characters of all the family: and as we had 
frequently compared them with each other, we 
now endeavored to discover in the children the 
same peculiarities outward or inward. My 
sister's eldest son, we thought, resembled his 
paternal grandfather, of whom there was a fine 
youthful picture in my uncle's collection: he 
had been a brave soldier; and in this point too 
the boy took after him, liking arms above all 
other things, and busying himself with them 
whenever he had opportunity. In paying me a 
visit this was constantly remarkable: my father 
had possessed a very pretty armory ; and the 
boy got neither peace nor rest till I had given 
him a pair of pistols and a foM' ling-piece out of 
it, and he had learned the proper way of using 
them. At the same time, in his conduct or his 
bearing, there was nothing which approached 
to rudeness: on the other hand, he was always 
meek and sensible. 

The eldest daughter had attracted my espe- 
cial love; of which perhaps the reason was 
that she resembled me, and of all the four held 
closest to me. But I may well admit that the 
more closely I observed lier as she grew, the 
more she shamed me; I could not look on her 
without a sentiment of admiration ; nay, I may 
almost say, of reverence. You would scarce 
have seen a nobler form, a more peaceful spirit, 
an activity so equable and universal. No mo- 
ment of her life was she unoccupied ; and eveiy 
occupation in her hands grew dignified. All 
seemed indiiferent to her, so that she could but 
accomplish what was proper in the place and 
time; and in the same manner, she could pa- 
tiently continue unemployed, when there was 
nothing to be done. 'J'his activity without the 
need of occupation I have never elsewhere met 
with. In particular her conduct to the sufl'ering 
and destitute was from her earliest youth inimi- 
table. For my part, I freely confess that 1 never 



304 



GOETHE. 



had the gift myself to make a business of bene- 
firence: I was not niggaidly to the poor; nay, 
I olten gave too largely for my means; yet this 
was little more than buying myself off; and a 
person needed to be made for me, if I was to 
bestow attention on him. Directly the reverse 
was the conduct of my niece. I never saw her 
give a poor man money; whatever she obtained 
from me for this purpose, she failed not in the 
first place to change for some necessary article. 
Never did she seem more lovely in my eyes, 
than when rummaging my clothes-presses: she 
was always sure to light on something which I 
did not wear and did not need : and to sew 
these old cast articles together, and put them on 
some ragged child, she thought her highest hap- 
piness. 

Her sister's turn of mind appeared already 
different: she had much of her mother; she 
promised to be soon very elegant and beautiful, 
and she now bids fair to keep her promise. She 
is greatly taken up with her exterior; from her 
earliest years, she could deck herself and bear 
herself in a way that struck you. I still remem- 
ber with what ecstasy, when quite a little crea- 
ture, she beheld her figure in a mirror, after I 
had been obliged to bind on her some precious 
pearls, once my mother's, which she had by 
chance discovered near me. 

In reflecting on these diverse inclinations, it 
was pleasant for me to consider how my pro- 
perty would, after my decease, be shared among 
them, and again called into use by them. I saw 
the fowling-pieces of my father once more tra- 
velling round the fields upon my nephew's 
shoulder, and birds once more falling out from 
his hunting-pouch: I saw my whole wardrobe 
issuing from the church at the Easter Confirma- 
tion, on the persons of tidy little girls; while 
the best pieces of it were employed to decorate 
some virtuous burgher maiden on her marriage 
day. In furnishing such children and poor little 
girls, Natalia had a singular delight; although, 
as I must here remark, she did not show the 
smallest love, or if I may say it, smallest need 
of a dependence upon any visible or invisible 
Being, such as I had manifested in my youth so 
strongly. 

When I further thought that her younger sis- 
ter, on that very day, would wear my jewels 
and my pearls at court, I could view with peace 
my possessions like my body given back to the 
elements. 

The children waxed apace: to my comfort, 
they are healthy, handsome, clever creatures. 
That my uncle keeps them from me I endure 
withottt repining: when staying in the neighbor- 
hood, or even in the town, they seldom see me. 

A singular personage, regarded as a French 
clergyman, though no one rightly knows his 
history, has been intrusted with the oversight 
"f all the children. He has them taught in va- 
rious places; they are put to board now here 
now there. 

At first I could perceive no plan whatever in 



this tnode of education ; till at last the Doctoi 
told me that the Abbe had convinced my uncle, 
that in order to accomplish anything by educa- 
tion, we must first become acquainted with the 
pupil's tendencies and wishes: that when these 
are ascertained, he ought to be transported to a 
situation where he may, as speedily as possible, 
content the former and attain the latter; and so 
if we have been mistaken, may still in time 
perceive his error; and at last having found 
what suits him, may hold the faster by it, may 
the more diligently fashion himself according to 
it. I wish this strange experiment may pros- 
per : with such excellent natures it perhaps is 
possible. 

But there is one peculiarity in these instruct- 
ers, which I never can approve of: they study 
to seclude the children from whatever might 
awaUen them to an acquaintance with them- 
selves and with the invisible, sole, faithful Friend. 
I often take it badly of my uncle that, on this 
account, he looks on me as dangerous for the 
little ones. Thus in practice there is no man 
tolerant ! Many assure us that they willingly 
leave each to take his way; yet all of them en- 
deavor to exclude from action' every one that 
does not think as they do. 

This removal of the children troubles me the 
more, the more I am convinced of the reality 
of my belief. How can it fail to have a heavenly 
origin, an actual object, when in practice it is so 
effectual? Is it not by practice only that we 
prove our own existence? Why then, by a like 
mode, may we not demonstrate to ourselves the 
influence of that Power who gives us all good 
things? 

That I am still advancing, never retrograding; 
that my conduct is approximating more and 
more to the image I have formed of perfection ; 
that I every day feel more facility in doing what 
I reckon proper, even while the weakness of 
my body hinders me so much: can all this be 
accounted for upon the principles of human na 
■ture, whose corruption I have seen so clearly? 
For me, at least, it cannot. 

I scarce remember a command; to me there 
is nothing that assumes the aspect of a law : it 
is an impulse, which leads me, and guides me 
always rightly. I freely follow my emotions, 
and know as little of constraint as of repentance. 
God be praised that I know to whom I owe 
this happiness, and that I cannot think of these 
advantages without humility! Never shall I 
run the risk of growing proud of my own abi- 
lity and power, having seen so clearly what a 
monster might be formed and nursed in every 
human bosom, did not higher influence restrain 
us. 



INDENTURE. 

FROM THE SAME. 

Art is long, life short; judgment difRcitlt, 
occasion transient. To act is easy, to think is 



GOETHE. 



305 



hard; to act according to our thought is trouble- 
Bome. Every beginning is cheerful ; the thres- 
hold is the place of expectation. The boy stands 
aslonislied, liis impressions guide him ; he learns 
sportfully, seriousness coiTies on him by sur- 
prise. Imitation is born with us; what should 
be imitated is not easy to discover. The excel- 
lent is rarely found, more rarely valued. The 
height charms us, the steps to it do not; with 
the summit in our eye, we love to walk along 
the plain. It is but a part of art that can be 
taught; the artist needs it all. Who knows it 
half, speaks much and is always wrong; who 
knows it wholly, inclines to act and speaks sel- 
dom or late. The former have no secrets and 
no force; the instruction they can give is like 
baked bread, savory and satisfying for a single 
day; but flour cannot be sown, and seed corn 
ought not to be groimd. Words are good, but 
they are not the best. The best is not to be ex- 
plained by words. The spirit in which we act 
is the highest matter. Action can be understood 
and again represented by the spirit alone. No 
one knows what he is doing, while he acts 
rightly; but of what is wrong we are always 
conscious. Whoever works with symbols only 
is a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There 
are many such, and they like to be together. 
Their babbling detains the scholar; their obsti- 
nate mediocrity vexes even the best. The in- 
struction, which the true artist gives us, opens 
up the tnind; for where words fail him, deeds 
speak. The true scholar learns from the known 
to unfold the unknown, and approaches more 
and more to being a master. 



THE EXEQUIES OF MIGNON. 

FBOH THE SilMX. 

The Abbe called them in the evening to at- 
tend the exequies of Mignon. The company 
proceeded to the Hall of the Past; they found 
it magnificently ornamented and illuminated. 
The walls were hung with azure tapestry al- 
most from the ceiling to the floor, so that nothing 
but the cornices and friezes above and below 
were visible. On the four candilabras in the 
corners, large wax lights were burning; smaller 
lights were in the four smaller candilabras 
placed by the sarcophagus in the middle. Near 
this stood four Boys, dressed in azure with 
silver; they had broad fans of ostrich feathers, 
which they waved above a figure that was 
resting upon tiie sarcophagus. The company 
sat down : two invisible Choruses began in a 
soft musical recitative to ask : "Whom bring ye 
us to the still dwelling ■?" The four Boys replied 
with lovely voices: "'Tis a tired playmate 
whom we bring you; let her rest in your still 
dwelling, till the songs of her heavenly sisters 
•nee more awaken her." 
2o 



CHORUS. 

"Firstling of youth in our circle, w^e welcome 
thee I With sadness welcome thee! May no 
boy, no maiden follow! Let age only, willing 
and composed, approach the silent Hall, and in 
the solemn company, repose this one dear 
child ! 

BUTS. 

Ah ! reluctantly we brought her hither ! Ah I 
and she is to remain liere ! Let us too remain ; 
let us weep, let us weep upon her bier! 

CHORUS. 

Yet look at the strong wings ; look at the 
light clear robe! how glitters the golden band 
upon her head ! Look at the beautiful, the noble 
repose ! 

BQTS. 

Ah ! the wings do not raise her ; in the frolic 
game, her robe flutters to and fro no more ; 
when we bound her head with roses, her looks 
on us were kind and friendly. 

CHORUS. 

Cast forward the eyes of your spirits! Awake 
in your souls the imaginative power, which 
carries Life, the fairest, the highest of earthly 
endowments, away beyond the stars. 



But ah ! We find her not here ; in the garden 
she wanders not; the flowers of the meadow 
she plucks no longer. Let us weep, we are 
leaving her here ! Let us weep and remain 
with her! 

CHORUS. 

Children, turn back into life! Your tears let 
the fresh air dry which plays upon the rushing 
water. Fly from Night! Day and Pleasure and 
Continuance are the lot of the living. 



Up! Turn back into life! Let the day give 
us labor and [ileasiire, till the evening brings 
us rest, and the nightly sleep refreshes us. 



Children! Hasten into life ! In the pure gar- 
ments of beauty, may Love meet you wiih 
heavenly looks and with the wreath of im- 
mortality !" 

The Boys had retired ; the Abbe rose from 
his seat, and went behind the bier. "It is the 
appointment," said he, " of the Man who pre- 
pared this silent abode, that each new tenant 
of it shall be introduced with a solemnity. 
After him, the builder of this mansion, the 
founder of this establishment, we have next 
brought a young stranger hither ; and thus al- 
ready does this little space contain two altogether 
different victims of the rigorous, arbitrary ajid 
inexorable goddess of Death. By appointed 
laws we enter into life; the days are num- 
bered, which make us ripe to see the light; but 
26* 



306 



GOETHE. 



for the duration of our life there is no law. 
The weakest thread will spin itself to unex- 
pected length; and the strongest is cut suddenly 
asunder by the scissors of the Fates, delighting, 
as it seems, in contradictions. Of the child, 
whom we have here committed to her final 
rest, we can say but little. It is still uncertain 
whence she came; her parents we know not; 
the years of her life we can only conjecture. 
Her deep and closely shrouded soul allowed us 
scarce to guess at its interior movements; there 
was nothing clear in her, nothing open but her 
affection for the man, who had snatched her 
from the hands of a barbarian. This impas- 
sioned tenderness, this vivid gratitude, appeared 
to be the flame, which consumed the oil of her 
life: the skill of the physician could not save 
that fair life, the most anxious friendship could 
not lengthen it. But if art could not stay the 
departing spirit, it has done its utmost to pre- 
serve the body, and withdraw it from decay. A 
balsamic substance has been forced through all 
the veins, and now tinges, in the place of blood, 
these cheeks too early faded. Come near, my 
friends, and view this wonder of art and care!" 

He raised the veil : the child was lying in 
her angel's dress, as if asleep, in the most soft 
and graceful posture. They approached it, and 
admired this show of life. Wilhelm alone con- 
tinued sitting in his place; he was not able to 
compose himself: what he felt, he durst not 
think; and every thought seemed ready to 
destroy his feeling. 

For the sake of the Marchese, the speech had 
been pronounced in French. That nobleman 
came forward with the rest, and viewed the 
figure with attention. The Abbe thus pro- 
■ceeded. " With a holy confidence, this kind 
heart, shut up to men, was continually turned 
to its God. Humility, nay an inclination to 
abase herself externally, seemed natural to her. 
She clave with zeal to the catholic religion, in 
which she had been born and educated. Often 
she expressed a still wish to sleep on conse- 
crated ground: and according to the usage of 
the church we have therefore consecrated this 
marble coflin, and the little earth, which is 
hidden in the cushion that supports her head. 
With what ardor did she in her last moments 
kiss the image of the Crucified, which stood 
beautifully figured, on her tender arm, with 
many hundred points !" So saying, he stripped 
up her right sleeve ; and a crucifix, with marks 
and letters round it, showed itself in blue upon 
the white skin. 

The Marchese looked at this with eagerness, 
stooping down to view it more intensely. " 
God !" cried he, as he stood upright, and raised 
his hands to Heaven; "Poor child! Unhappy 
niece! Do I meet tbee here! What a painful 
joy to find thee, whom we had long lost hope 
of; to find this dear frame, which we had long 
believed the prey of fishes in the ocean, here 
preserved, though lifeless! I assist at thy funeral, 
splendid in its external circumstances, still more 



splendid from the noble persons who attend 
thee to thy place of rest. And to these,'' added 
he with a faltering voice, "so soo'n as I can 
speak, I will express my thanks." 

Tears hindered him from saying more. By 
the pressure of a spring, the Abbe sank the 
body into the cavity of the marble. Four Youths, 
dressed as the Boys had been, came out from 
behind the tapestry; and lifting the heavy, 
beautifully ornamented lid upon the coffin, thus 
began their song. 

THE TOUTHS. 

"Well is the treasure now laid up; the fair 
image of the Past! Here sleeps it in the marble, 
undecaying ; in your hearts too it lives, it works. 
Travel, travel back into life ! Take along with 
you this holy Earnestness; for Earnestness alone 
makes life eternity." 

The invisible Chorus joined in with the last 
words : but no one heard the strengthening 
sentiment; all were too much busied with them- 
selves, and the emotions, which these wonder- 
ful disclosures had excited. The Abbe and 
Natalia conducted the Marchese out ; Theresa 
and Lothario walked by Wilhelm. It was not 
till the music had altogether died away, that 
their sorrows, thoughts, meditations, curiosity 
again fell on them with all their force, and 
made them long to be transported back into 
that exalting scene. 



EXTRACTS 

FROM WILHEL.H MEISTEK'S TRAVELS.* 

Bt a short and pleasant road, Wilhelm had 
reached the town, to which his letter was di- 
rected. He found it gay and well built ; but its 
new aspect showed too clearly that not long 
before it must have suffered by a conflagration 
The address of his letter led hiin into the last 
small uninjured portion of the place, to a house 
of ancient, earnest architecture, yet well kept, 
and of a tidy look. Dim windows, strangely 
fashioned, indicated an exhilarating pomp of 
colours from within. Nor, in fact, did the inte- 
rior fail to correspond with the exterior. In 
clean apartments, everywhere stood furniture 
which must have served several generations, 
intermixed with very little that was new. The 
master of the house received our traveller 
kindly, in a little chamber similarly fitted up. 
These clocks had already struck the hour of 
many a birth and many a death ; everything 
which met the eye reminded one that the past 
might, as it were, be protracted into the present. 

The stranger delivered his letter ; but the 
landlord, without opening it, laid it aside, and 
endeavored, in a cheerful conversation, imme- 
diately to get acquainted with his guest. They 
soon grew confidential; and as Wilhelm, con 
trary to his usual habit, let his eye wander in 
* See Vol. IV. German Romance, by T. Oarlyle. 



GOETHE. 



307 



quisitively over the room, the good old man said 
to him: " My domestic equipment excites your 
attention. You here see how long a thing may 
last; and one should make such observations 
now and then, by way of counterbalance to so 
much in the world that rapidly changes and 
passes away. This same tea-kettle served my 
parents, and was a witness of our evening fa- 
mily assemblages ; this copper fire-screen still 
guards me from the fire, which these stout old 
tongs still help me to mend; and so it is with 
all throughout. I had it in my power to bestow 
my care and industry on many other things, as 
I did not occupy myself with changing these 
external necessaries, a task which consumes so 
many people's lime and resources. An affec- 
tionate attention to what we possess makes us 
rich, for thereby we accumulate a treasure of 
remembrances connected with indifferent things. 
I knew a young man who got a common pin 
from his love, while taking leave of her; daily 
fastened his breast- frill with it, and brought 
back this guarded and not unemployed treasure 
from a long journeying of several years. In us 
little men, such little things are to be reckoned 
virtue." 

"Many a one too,'' answered Wilhelm, "brings 
back, from such long and far travellings, a sharp 
pricker in his heart, which he would fain be 
quit of" 

The old man seemed to know nothing of Le- 
nardo's situation, though in the meanwhile he 
had opened the letter and read it; for he re- 
turned to his former topics. 

"Tenacity of our possessions," continued he, 
"in many cases gives us the greatest energy. 
To this obstinacy in myself I owe the saving of 
my house. When the town was on fire, some 
people wished to snatch out their goods, and 
lodge them here. I forbade this; bolted my 
doors and windows; and turned out, with seve- 
ral neighbors, to oppose the flames. Our effoits 
succeeded in preserving this summit of the 
town. Next morning all was standing here as 
you now see it, and as it has stood for almost a 
hundred years." 

"Yet you will confess," said Wilhelm, "that 
no man withstands the change which Time 
produces." 

"That, in truth!" said the other: "but he 
who holds out longest has still done something. 

"Yes! even beyond the limits of our being 
we are able to maintain and secure; we trans- 
mit discoveries, we hand down sentiments, as 
well as property : and as the latter was my 
chief province, I have for a long time exercised 
the strictest foresight, invented the most pecu- 
liar precautions; yet not till lately have I suc- 
ceeded in seeing my wish fulfilled. 

" Commonly the son disperses what the father 
has collected, collects something different, or in 
a different way. Yet if we can wait for the 
grandson, for the new generation, we find the 
same tendencies, the same tastes, again making 
their appearance. And so at last, by the care 



of our Pedagogic friends, I have found an active 
youth, who, if possible, pays more regard to old 
possession than even I, and has withal a vehe- 
ment attachment to every sort of curiosities. 
My decided confidence he gained by the violent 
exertions with which he struggled to keep oflf 
the fire from our dwelling. Doubly and trebly 
has he merited the treasure which I mean to 
leave him : nay, it is already given into his 
hands ; and ever since that time our store is in- 
creasing in a wonderful way. 

"Not all, however, that you see here is ours. 
On the contrary, as in the hands of pawnbrokers 
you find many a foreign jewel, so with us I can 
show you precious articles, which people, under 
the most various circumstances, have deposited 
with us, for the sake of better keeping." 

Wilhelm recollected the beautiful Box, which, 
at any rate, he did not like to carry with him 
in his wanderings; and showed it to his land- 
lord. The old man viewed it with attention; 
gave the date when it was probably made ; and 
showed some similar things. Wilhelm asked 
him if he thought it should be opened. The old 
man thought not. "I believe, indeed." said he, 
"it could be done without special harm to the 
casket; but as you found it in so singular a way, 
you must try your luck on it. For if you are 
born lucky, and this little box is of any conse- 
quence, the key will doubtless by and by be 
found, and in the very place where you are 
least expecting it." 

"There have been such occurrences," said 
Wilhelm. 

"I have myself experienced such," replied 
the old man ; " and here you behold the strangest 
of them. Of this ivory crucifix I have had for 
thirty years, the body with the head and feet, 
in one place. For its own nature, as well as 
for the glorious art displayed in it, I kept the 
figure laid up in my most private drawer : nearly 
ten years ago I got the cross belonging to it, with 
the inscription ; and was then induced to liave 
the arms supplied by the best carver of our day. 
Far, indeed, was this expert artist from equal- 
ling his predecessor ; yet I let his work pass, 
more for devout purposes, than for any admira- 
tion of its excellence. 

" Now, conceive my delight! A little while 
ago the original, genuine arms, were sent me, 
as you see them here united in the loveliest 
harmony ; and I, charmed at so happy a coin- 
cidence, cannot help recognising in this crucifix 
the fortunes of the Christian religion, which, 
often enough dismembered and scattered abroad, 
will ever in the end again gather itself togethei 
at the foot of the Cross." 

Wilhelm admired the figure, and its strange 
combination. "I will follow yolir counsel," 
added he; "let the casket continue locked till 
the key of it be found, though it should lie till 
the end of my liie." 

"One who lives long," said the o/d man, 
"sees much collected and much cast asunder." 

The young partner in the house now chanced 



308 



GOETHE. 



to enter, and Wilhelm signified liis purpose of 
intrusting the Box to their keeping. A large 
book was thereupon produced, the deposit in- 
scribed in it, with many ceremonies and stipu- 
lations; a receipt granted, which applied in 
words to any bearer, but was only to be honored 
on the giving of a certain token agreed upon 
with the owner. 

So passed their hours in instructive and en- 
tertaining conversation, till at last Felix, mounted 
on a gay pony, arrived in safety. A groom had 
accompanied him, and was now for some time 
to attend and serve Wilhelm. A letter from 
Lenardo, delivered at the same time, complained 
that he could find no vestige of the Nut-brown 
Maid ; and Wilhelm was anew conjured to do 
his utmost in searching her out. Wilhelm im- 
parted the matter to his landlord. The latter 
smiled, and said : " We must certainly make 
every exertion, for our friend's sake ; perhaps I 
may succeed in learning something of her. As 
I keep these old primitive household goods, so 
likewise have I kept some old primitive friends. 
You tell me that this maiden's father was dis- 
tinguished by his piety. The pious have a more 
intimate connection with each other than the 
wicked; though externally it may not always 
prosper so well. By this means I hope to obtain 
some traces of what you are sent to seek. But, 
as a preparative, do you now pursue the resolu- 
tion of placing your Felix among his equals, and 
turning him to some fixed department of acti- 
vity. Hasten wilh him to the great Institution. 
I will point out the way you must follow in 
order to find the Chief, who resides now in one, 
now in another division of his Province. You 
shall have a letter, with my best advice and 
direction." 



Thepilgriins pursuing the way pointed out to 
them, hat), without difficulty, reached the limits 
of the Province, where they were to see so 
many singularities. At the very entrance, they 
found themselves in a district of extreme fer- 
tility; in its soft knolls, favorable to crops; in 
its higher hills, to sheep-husbandry; in its wide 
bottoms, to grazing. Harvest was near at hand, 
and all was in the richest luxuriance: yet what 
most surprised our travellers was, that they ob- 
serveil neither men nor women; but in all 
quarters, boys and youths engaged in preparing 
for a happy harvest, nay alreatly making ar- 
rangements for a merry harvest-home. Our tra- 
vellers saluted several of them, and inquired 
for the Chief, of whose abode, however, they 
could gain no intelligence. The address of their 
letter was: To the Chief, or the Three. Of this 
also the boys could make nothing; however, 
they referred the strangers to an Overseer, who 
was just about mounting his horse to ride otf. 
Our friends disclosed their object to this man; 
the frank liveliness of Felix seemed to please 
lim, and so they all rode along together. 

Wilhelm had already noticed, that in the cut 



and color of the young people's clothes, a variety 
prevailed, which gave the whole tiny popula- 
tion a peculiar aspect : he was just about to 
question his attendant on this point, when a 
still stranger observation forced itself upon him ; 
all the children, how employed soever, laid 
down their work, and turned with singular, yet 
diverse gestures, towards the party riding past 
them ; or rather, as it was easy to infer, towards 
the Overseer, who was in it. The youngest laid 
their arms crosswise over their breasts, and 
looked cheerfully up to the sky; those of middle 
size held their hands on their backs, and looked 
smiling on the ground ; the eldest stood with a 
frank and spirited air ; their arms stretched 
down, they turned their heads to the right, and 
formed themselves into a line; whereas the 
others kept separate, each where he chanced 
to be. 

The riders having stopped and dismounted 
here, as several children, in their various modes, 
were standing forth to be inspected by the Over- 
seer, Wilhelm asked the meaning of these ges- 
tures; but Felix struck in, and cried gaily: 
" What posture am I to take, then ?" 

"Without doubt,'' said the Overseer, "as the 
first posture : The arms over the breast, the face 
earnest and cheerful towards the sky." 

Felix obeyed, but soon cried: "This is not 
much to my taste; I see nothing up there: does 
it last long? But yes!' exclaimed he joyfully, 
"yonder are a pair of falcons flying from the 
west to the east: that is a good sign too?" 

" As thou takest it, as thou behavest," said the 
other; "now mingle among them, as they min- 
gle.*' He gave a signal, and the children left 
their postures, and again betook them to work, 
or sport, as before. 

" Are you at liberty," said Wilhelm then, "to 
explain this sight which surprises me? I easily 
perceive that these positions, these gestures, are 
salutations directed to you." 

"Just so," replied the Overseer; "salutations 
which at once indicate in what degree of cul- 
ture each of these boys is standing." 

"But, can you explain to me the meaning of 
this gradation?" inquired Wilhelm; "for that 
there is one, is clear enough." 

"This belongs to a higher quarter," said the 
other: "so much, however, I iTiay tell you, that 
these ceremonies are not mere grimaces; that 
on the contrary, the iinport of them, not the 
highest, but still a directing, intelligible import, 
is communicated to the children ; while, at the 
same time, each is enjoined to retain and con- 
sider for himself whatever explanation it has 
been thought meet to give him; they are not 
allowed to talk of these things, either to strangers 
or among themselves; and thus their instruc- 
tion is modified in many ways. Besides, se 
crecy itself has many advantages; for when 
you tell a man at once and straight forward, the 
purpose of any object, he fancies there is nothing 
in it. Certain secrets, even if known to every 
one, men find that they must still reverence by 



GOETHE. 



309 



concealment and silence, for this works on mo- 
desty and good morals." 

"I understand you,'" answered Wilhelm: 
'wliy stiould not the principle which is so ne- 
cessary in material things, be applied to spiritual 
also? But perhaps, in another point, you can 
satisfy my curiosity. The great variety of sliape 
and color in these children's clothes attracts my 
notice; and yet I do not see all sorts of colors, 
but a few in all their shades, from the lightest 
to the deepest. At the same time, I observe that 
by this no designation of degrees in age or merit 
can be intended; for the oldest and the youngest 
boys may be alike both in cut and color, while 
those of similar gestures are not similar iti 
dress." 

"On this matter also," said the other, "silence 
is prescribed to me: but I am much mistaken, 
or you will not leave us without receiving all 
the information you desire." 

Our party continued following the trace of the 
Chief, which they believed themselves to be 
upon. But now the strangers could not fail to 
notice, with new surprise, that the farther they 
advanced into the district, a vocal melody more 
and more frequently sounded towards them 
from the fields. Whatever the boys mii^ht be 
engaged with, whatever labor they were carry- 
ing on, they accompanied it with singing; and 
it seemed as if the songs were specially adapted 
to their various sorts of occupation, and in simi- 
lar cases, everywhere the same. If there chanced 
to be several children in company, they sang 
together in alternating parts. Towards evening, 
appeared dancers likewise, whose steps were 
enlivened and directed by choruses. Felix 
struck in with them, not altogether unsuccess- 
fully, from horseback, as he passed; and Wil- 
helm felt gratified in this amusement, which 
gave new life to the scene. 

"Apparently," he said to his companion, 
"yon devote considerable care to this branch 
o/' instruction ; the accomplishment, otherwise, 
couhl not be so widely diffused, and so com- 
pletely practised." 

"We do," replied the other: "on our plan. 
Song is the first step in education; all the rest 
are connected with it, and attaine.l by means 
of it. The simplest enjoyment, as well as the 
simplest instruction, we enliven and impress by 
Song; nay, even what religious and moral 
principles we lay before our children, are com- 
municated in the way of Song. Other ad- 
vantages for the excitement of activity, spon- 
taneously arise from this practice; for, in ac- 
customing the children to write the tones they 
are to utter, in musical characters, and as oc- 
casion serves, again to seek these characters in 
the utterance of their own voice ; and besiiles 
this, to subjoin the text below the notes, they 
are forced to practise hand, ear, and eye at 
once, whereby they acquire the art of penman- 
ship sooner than you would expect; and as all 
this in the long run is to be effected by copying 
precise measurements and accurately settled 



numbers, they come to conceive the high value 
of Mensuration and Arithmetic much sooner 
than in any other way. Among all imaginable 
things, accordingly, we have selected music as 
the element of our teaching; for level roads run 
out from music towards every side." 

Wilhelm endeavored to obtain still farther 
information, and expressed his surprise at hear- 
ing no instrumental music: "This is by no means 
neglected, here," said the other ; " but practised 
in a peculiar district, one of the most pleasant 
valleys among the Mountains; and there again 
we have arranged it so that the different instru- 
ments shall be taught in separate places. The 
discords of beginners, in particular, are banished 
into certain solitudes, where they can drive no 
one to despair; for you will confess that in 
well-regulated civil society, there is scarcely a 
more melancholy suffering to be undergone, 
than what is forced on us by the neighbourhood 
of an incipient player on the flute or violin. 

" Our learners, out of a laudable desire to be 
troublesome to no one, go forth of their accord, 
for a longer or a shorter time, into the wastes; 
and strive, in their seclusion, to attain the merit 
which shall again admit them into the inhabited 
world. Each of them, from time to time, is 
allowed to venture an attempt for admission, 
and the trial seldom fails of success ; for bash- 
fulness and modesty, in this, as in all other 
parts of our system, we strongly endeavor to 
maintain and cherish. That your son has a 
good voice, I am glad to observe: all the rest is 
managed with so much the greater ease." 

They had now reached a place where Felix 
was to stop and make trial of its arrangements, 
till a formal reception should be granted him. 
From a distance, they had been saluted by a 
jocund sound of music; it was a game in which 
the boys were, for the present, amusing them- 
selves in their hour of play. A general chorus 
mounted up; each individual of a wide circle 
striking in at his time, with a joyful, clear, firm 
tone, as the sign was given him by the Over- 
seer. The latter more than once took the 
singers by surprise, when at a signal he sus- 
pended the choral song, and called on any 
single boy, touching him with his rod, to catch 
by himself the expiring tone, and adapt to it a 
suitable song, fitted also to the spirit of what 
had preceded. Most part showed great dex- 
terity; a few, who failed in this feat, willingly 
gave in their pledges, without altogether being 
lauglied'at for their ill success. Felix was child 
enough to mix among them instantly; and in 
his new task lie acquitted himself tolerably 
well. The First Salutation was then enjoined 
on liim : he directly laid his hands on his breast, 
looked upwards, and truly with so roguish a 
countenance, that it was easy to observe no 
secret meaning had yet in his mind attached 
itself to this posture. 

The delightful spot, his kind reception, the 
merry playmates, all pleased the boy so well, 
that he felt no very deep sorrow as his lather 



310 



GOETHE. 



moved away: the departure of the pony was 
perhaps a heavier matter; but he yielded here 
also, on learning that in this circle it could not 
possibly be kept; and the Overseer promised 
him, in compensation, that he should find an- 
other horse, as smart and well-broken, at a 
time when. he was not expecting it. 

As the Chief, it appeared, was not to be come 
at, the Overseer turned to Wilhelm and said: 
"I must now leave you, to pursue my occupa- 
tions; but first I will bring you to the Three, 
who preside over our sacred things. Your letter 
is addressed to them likewise, and they together 
represent the Chief" Wilhelm could have 
wished to gain some previous knowledge of 
these sacred things, but his companion answered : 
"The Three will doubtless, in return for the 
confidence you show in leaving us your son, 
disclose to you in their wisdom and fairness 
what is most needful for you to learn. The 
visible objects of reverence, which I named 
sacred things, are collected in this separate 
circle ; are mixed with nothing, interfered with 
by nothing: at certain seasons of the year only 
are our pupils admitted here, to be taught in 
their various degrees of culture, by historical 
and sensible means ; and in these short inter- 
vals they carry off a deep enough impression to 
suffice them for a time, during the performance 
of their other duties." 

Wilhelm had now reached the gate of a 
wooded vale, surrounded with high walls : on 
a certain sign the little door opened, and a man 
of earnest and imposing look received our tra- 
veller. The latter found himself in a large 
beautifully umbrageous space, decked with the 
richest foliage, shaded with trees and bushes of 
all sorts; while stately walls and magnificent 
buildings were discerned only in glimpses 
through this thick natural boscage. A friendly 
reception from the Three, who by and by ap- 
peared, at last turned into a general conversa- 
tion, the substance of which we now present in 
an abbreviated shape. 

"Since you intrust your son to us," said they, 
"it is fair that we admit you to a closer view 
of our procedure. Of what is external you have 
seen much, that does not bear its meaning on 
its front. What part of this do you chiefly wish 
to have explained?" 

"Dignified, yet singular gestures of salutation 
I have noticed, the import of which I would 
gladly learn: with you, doubtless, the exterior 
has a reference to the interior, and inversely; 
let me know what this reference is." 

"Well-formed, healthy children," replied the 
Three, "bring much into the world along with 
them: Nature has given to each whatever he 
requires for time and duration; to unfold this 
is our duty; often it unfolds itself better of its 
own accord. One thing there is, however, which 
no child bring.-, i,,to the world with him; and 
yet it is on this one thing that all depends for 
making man in every point a man. If you 
san discover it yourself, speak it out." Wil- 



helm thought a little while, then shook his 
head. 

The Three, after a suitable pause, exclaimed : 
"Reverence!" Wilhelm seemed to hesitate. 
"Reverence!" cried they a second time. "All 
want it, perhaps you yourself 

"Three kinds of gestures you have seen; and 
we inculcate a threefold Reverence, which, 
when commingled and formed into one whole, 
attains its highest force and efiect. The first is 
Reverence for what is above us. That posture, 
the arms crossed over the breast, the look turned 
joyfully towards Heaven ; that is what we have 
enjoined on young children ; requiring from them 
•hereby a testimony that there is a God above, 
who images and reveals himself in parents, 
teachers, superiors. Then comes the second, 
Reverence for what is under us. Those hands 
folded over the back, and, as it were, tied to- 
gether, that down-turned, smiling look, announce 
that we are to regard the Earth with attention 
and cheerfulness: from the bounty of the Earth 
we are nourished : the Earth affords unutterable 
joys; but disproportionate sorrows she also 
brings us. Should one of our children do him- 
self external hurt, blameably or blamelessly; 
should others hurt hitn accidentally or purpose- 
ly ; should dead involuntary matter do him 
hurt; then let him well consider it; for such 
dangers will attend him all his days. But from 
this posture we delay not to free our pupil, the 
instant we become convinced that the instruc- 
tion connected with it has produced sufficient 
influence on him. Then, on the contrary, we 
bid him gather courage, and turning to his com- 
rades, range himself along with them. Now 
at last, he stands forth, frank and bold; not self 
ishly isolated; only in combination with his 
equals does he front the world. Farther we 
have nothing to add." 

"I see a glimpse of it!" said Wilhelm. "Are 
not the mass of men so marred and stinted, be 
cause they take pleasure only in the element ot 
evil-wishing and evil-speaking? Whoever gives 
himself to this, soon comes to be indifferent to 
wards God, contemptuous towards the world 
spiteful towards his equals ; and the true, genu- 
ine, indispensable sentiment of self-estimation 
corrupts into self-conceit and presumption. Al- 
low me, however," continued he, " to state one 
difficulty. You say that reverence is not natural 
to man : now, has not the reverence or fear of 
rude people for violent convulsions of Nature 
or other inexplicable, mysteriously -foreboding 
occurrences, been heretofore regarded as the 
germ out of which a higher feeling, a purer sen- 
tiiTient, was by degrees to be developed?" 

" Nature is indeed adequate to fear," replied 
they; "but to reverence not adequate. Men 
fear a known or unknown powerful being; the 
strong seeks to conquer it, the weak to avoid it; 
both endeavor to get quit of it, and feel them- 
selves happy when for a short season they have 
put it aside, and their nature has in some de- 
gree restored itself to freedom and independence. 



GOETHE. 



311 



The natural man repeats this operation millions 
of times in the course of his life; from fear he 
struggles to freedom ; from freedom he is driven 
back to fear, and so makes no advancement. 
To fear is easy, but grievous ; to reverence is 
difficult, but satisfactory. Man does not will- 
ingly submit himself to reverence ; or rather he 
never so submits himself: it is a higher sense, 
which must be communicated to his nature; 
which only in some peculiarly favored indivi- 
duals unfolds itself spontaneously, who on this 
account too have of old been looked upon as 
saints and gods. Here lies the worth, here lies 
the business of all true Religions; whereof there 
are likewise only three, according to the objects 
towards which they direct our devotion." 

The men paused; Wilhelm reflected for a 
time in silence; but feeling in himself no pre- 
tension to unfold the meaning of these strange 
words, he requested tlie Sages to proceed with 
their exposition. They immediately complied. 
"No religion that grounds itself on fear,'' said 
they, " is regarded among us. With the reve- 
rence, to which a man should give dominion in 
his mind, he can, in paying honor, keep his own 
honor; he is not disunited with himself, as in 
the former case. The Religion which depends 
on reverence for what is above us, we denomi- 
nate tlie Ethnic; it is the religion of the nations, 
and the first happy deliverance from a degrad- 
ing fear : all Heathen religions, as we cab them, 
are of this sort, whatsoever names they may 
bear. The Second Religion, which founds it- 
self on reverence for what is around us, we de- 
nominate the Philosophical ; for the philosopher 
stations himself in the middle, and must draw 
down to him all that is higher, and up to him 
all that is lower, and only in this medium con- 
dition does he merit the title of Wise. Here, 
as he surveys with clear sight his relation to his 
equals, and therefore to the whole human race; 
his relatioti likewise to all other earthly circum- 
stances and arrangements necessary or acci- 
dental, he alone, in a cosmic sense, lives in 
Truth. But now we have to speak of the Third 
Religion, groumled on reverence for what is be- 
neath us: this we name the Christian, as in the 
Clirislian religion such a temper is with most 
distinctness manifested : it is a last step to which 
mankind were fitted and destined to attain. 
But what a task was it, not only to be patient 
with the Earth, and let it lie beneath us, we 
appealing to a higher birthplace; but also to 
recognise humility and poverty, mockery and 
despite, disgrace and wretchedness, sutfering 
and death, to recognise these things as divine; 
nay, even on sin and crime to look not as hin- 
drances, but to honor and love them as further- 
ances, of what is holy. Of this, indeed, we find 
some traces in all ages: but the trace is not the 
goal ; and this being now attained, the human 
species cannot retrograde ; and we may say, that 
the Christian religion having once appeared 
cannot again vanish ; having once assumed its 
divine shape, can be subject to no dissolution." 



"To which of these religions do you specially 
adhere?" inquired Wilhelm. 
- "To all the three," replied they: "for in their 
union they produce what may properly be called 
the true religion. Out of those Three Reve- 
rences springs the highest reverence, reverence 
for one's self, and those again unfold themselves 
from this; so that man attains the highest ele- 
vation of which he is capable, that of being jus- 
tified in reckoning himself the Best that God 
and Nature have produced ; nay, of being able 
to continue on this lofty eminence, without being 
again by self-conceit and presumption drawn 
down from it into the vulgar level." 

" Such a confession of faith, developed in this 
manner, does not repulse me," answered Wil- 
helm ; " it agrees with much that one hears now 
and then in the course of life ; only, you unite 
what others separate.'" 

To this they replied : "Our confession has al 
ready been adopted, though unconsciously, by a 
great part of the world." 

"How, then, and where?" said Wilhelm. 

"In the Creed!" exclaimed they: "for the 
first Article is Ethnic, and belongs to all na- 
tions ; the second, Christian, for those struggling 
with affliction and glorified in affliction ; the 
third, in fine, teaches an inspired Communion 
of Saints, that is, of men in the highest degree 
good and wise. And should not therefore the 
Three Divine Persons, under the similitudes 
and names of which these threefold doctrines 
and commands are promulgated, justly be con- 
sidered as in the highest sense One!" 

"I thank you,'' said Wilhelm, "for having 
pleased to lay all this be/ore me in such clear- 
ness and combination, as before a grown-up 
person, to whom your three modes of feeling 
are not altogether foreign. And now, when I 
reflect that you communicate this high doctrine 
to your children, in the first place as a sensible 
sign, then, with some symbolical accompani- 
ment attached to it, and at last unfold to them 
its deepest meaning, I cannot but warmly ap- 
prove of your method." 

"Right," answered they: "but now we must 
show you more, and so convince you the better 
that your son is in no bad hands. This, how- 
ever, may remain for the morrow: rest and 
refresh yourself, that you tnay attend us in the 
morning, as a man satisfied and unimpeded, 
into the interior of our Sanctuary." 



At the hand of the Eldest, our friend now 
proceeded through a stately portal, into a round, 
or rather octagonal hall, so richly decked with 
pictures, that it struck him witli astonishment 
as he entered. All this, he easily conceived, 
must have a significant import, though at the 
moment he saw not so clearly what it was. 
While about to question his guide on this sub 
ject, the latter invited him to step forward into 
a gallery, open on the one side, and stretching 
round a spacious gay flowery garden. Th<* 



312 



GOETHE. 



wall, however, not the flowers, attracted the 
eyes of the stranger ; it was covered with 
paintins;s, and Willielm could not walk far 
without observing that the Sacred Books of the 
Israelites had furnished the materials for these 
fijjuri's. 

"If is here," said the Eldest, "that we teach 
onr First Religion, the religion which, for the 
sake of brevity, I named the Ethnic. The spirit 
of it is to be sought for in the history of tlje 
world ; its outward form, in the events of that 
history. Only in the return of similar destinies 
on whole nations, can it properly be appre- 
hended.' 

"I observe," said Wilhelm, "you have done 
the Ij-vaelites the honor to select their history as 
the groundwork of this delineation, or rather, 
you have made it the leading object there." 

"As you see," replied the Eldest; "for you 
will remark, that on the socles and friezes we 
have introduced another series of transactions 
and occurrences, not so much of a synchronisti •, 
as of a .-^yinphonistic kind ; since, among all na- 
tions, we discover records of a similar import, 
and grounded on the saine facts. Thus you 
perceive here, while in the main field of the 
picture, Abraham receives a visit from his goils 
in the form of fair youths, Apollo, among the 
herdsmen of Admetus, is painted above on the 
frieze. From which we may learn, that the 
gods, when they appear to men, are cominonly 
unrecoiinised of them." 

The friends walked on. Wilhelm, for the 
most part, met with well-known objects, but 
they were here exhibited in a livelier and more 
expressive manner than he had been used to 
see them. On soine few matters he requested 
explanation, and at last could not help returning 
to his former question: Why the Israelitish his- 
tory had been chosen in prellerence to all others? 

The Eldest answered: " Among all Heathen 
religions, for such also is the Israelitish, this has 
the most distinguished advantages; of which I 
shall mention only a few. At the Ethnic judg- 
nieiit-seiit, at the judgment-seat of the God of 
Nations, it is not asked Whether this is the 
best, the most excellent nation, but whether it 
lasts whether it has continued. The Israelitish 
people never was good for much, as its own 
leaders, judges, rulers, prophets, have a thou- 
sand limes reproachfully declared ; it possesses 
few virtues, and most of the faults of other na- 
tions: but in cohesion, steadfastness, valor, and 
when all this would not serve, in obstinate 
toughness, it has no match. It is the most per- 
Sfverant nation in the world: it is, it was, and 
it will be; to glorify the name of Jehovah, 
through all ages. We have set it up, therefore, 
as tlie pattern figure; as the main figure, to 
■which the others only serve as a frame." 

" It becomes not me to dispute with yon," 
said V\ illiehn, "since you have instruction to 
impart. Open to me, therefore, the other ad- 
vantages of this people, or rather of its history, 
of its religion." 



"One chief advantage," said the other, is its 
excellent collection of Sacred Books. These 
stand so happily combined together, that even 
out of the most diverse elements, the feeling of 
a whole still rises before us. They are cotn- 
plete enough to satisfy ; fragmentary enough to 
excite ; barbarous enough to rouse ; teniler 
enough to appease: and for how many other 
contradicting merits might not these Books, 
might not this one Book, be praised!'" 

The series of main figures, as well as their 
relations to the smaller which above and below 
accompanied thein, gave the guest so much to 
think of, that he scarcely heard the pertinent 
remarks of his guide; who, by what he said, 
seemed desirous rather to divert our friend s at- 
tention, than to fix it on the paintings. Once, 
however, the old man said, on sotne occasion: 
"Another advantage of the Israelitish religion, 
I must here mention ; it has not embodied its 
god in any form ; and so has left us at liberty 
to represent him in a worthy human shape, and 
likewise, by way of contrast, to designate Idola- 
try by forms of beasts and monsters '' 

Our friend had now, in his short wandering 
through this hall, again brought the spirit of 
universal history before his mind; in regard to 
the events, he had not failed to meet with 
soinelhing new. So likewise, by the simultane- 
ous presentment of the pictures, by the reflec- 
tions of his guide, many new views had risen 
on him ; and he could not but rejoice in think- 
ing that his Felix was, by so dignihed a visible 
representation, to seize and appropriate for his 
whole life those great, significant, ar.d exem- 
plary events, as if they had actually been pre- 
sent, and transacted beside him. He came at 
length to regard the exhibition altogether with 
the eyes of the child, and in this point of view 
it perfectly contented him. Thus wandering 
on, they had now reached the gloomy and per- 
plexed periods of the history, the destruction of 
the City and the Temple, the murder, exile, 
slavery of whole masses of this stitl'-necked 
people. Its subsequent fortunes were delineated 
in a cunning allegorical way; a real historical 
delineation of them would have lain without 
the limits of true Art. 

At this point, the gallery abruptly terminated 
in a closed door, an<l Wilhelm was surprised to 
see himself already at the end. " In your his- 
torical series," said he, "I find a chasm. You 
have destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem, and 
dispersed the people; yet you have not intro- 
duced the divine Man who taught there shortly 
before; to whom, shortly before, they would 
give no ear." 

"To have done this, as you require it, would 
have been an error. The life of that divine 
Man, whom you allude to. stands in no connec- 
tion with the general history of the world in 
his time. It was a private life; his teaching 
was a teaching for individuals. What has 
publicly befallen vast masses of people, and 
the minor parts which compose them, belongs 



GOETHE. 



313 



to tlie general history of the world, to the gene- 
ral relij;ion of the world; the religion we have 
nnined the First. What inwardly befalls in- 
dividuals, belongs to the Second religion, the 
Pliilnsophical : such a religion was it that Christ 
taught and practised, so long as he went about 
on P^artli. For this reason, the external here 
cigses, and I now open to you the internal.'' 

A door went back, and they entered a similar 
gallery; where Wilhelni soon recognised a cor- 
responding series of pictures from the New 
'IVstaineiit. They seemed as if by another hand 
than tiie first: all was softer; forms, move- 
ments, ac ompaninients. light, and coloring. 

" Here,'' said the guide, after they had looked 
over a few pictures, "you behold neither actions 
nor events, but Miracles and Similitudes. There 
is here a new world, a new exterior, different 
from the former; and an interior, which was 
atldgeiher wanting there. By Miracles and 
Sinu.iiudes, a new world is opened up. Those 
make t.'ie common extraordinary, these the ex- 
traordinary common." 

" Yon will have the goodness," said Wilhelm, 
'■to explain these few words more minutely; 
ior, by my own light, I cannot." 

"'J'liey have a natural meaning," said the 
other, " though a deep one. Examples will 
bring it out most easily and soonest. There is 
nothing more common and customary than eat- 
iiig and drinking; but it is extraordinary to 
tiaiisllinn a drink into another of more noble 
sort; to niidtiply a portion of food that it su(li<-e 
a midtitude. Nothing is more catnmon than 
si kness and corporeal diseases; but to remove, 
to mitigate these by spiritual, or spiritual-like 
means, is extraordinary ; and even in this lies 
the wonder of the Miracle, that the common and 
the extraordinary, the possible and the impossi- 
ble, become one. With the Similitu<le again, 
with the I'arable, the converse is the case: here 
it is the sense, the view, the idea, that forms 
the high, the unattainable, the extraordinary. 
When this embodies itself in a common, cus- 
tomary, comprehensible figure, so that it ineets 
us as if alive, present, actual; so that we can 
seize it, appropriate, retain it. live with it as 
with our ecpial ; this is a second sort of miracle, 
and is justly placed beside the first sort; nay, 
perhaps preierreil to it. Here a living doctrine 
is pronounced, a doctrine which can cause no 
argimieiit: it is not an opinion about what is 
right and wrong; it is Right and Wrong them- 
selves, and inilisputably.'' 

This part of the gallery was shorter; indeed 
it formed but the fourth pari of the circuit en- 
closing the interior court. Yet if in the former 
jiart yon merely walked along, you here liked 
til linger, yon here waikeil to and fro. The ob- 
jects were not so striking, not so varied: yet 
they invited you the more to penetrate their 
deep still meaning. Our two friends, accord- 
ingly, turned round at the end of the space, 
VV'illieliu, at the same time, expressing some 
surprise that these delineations went no farther 
2p 



than the Supper, than the scene where the Maa 
ter and his Disciples part. He inquired for the 
remaining portion of the history 

"In all sorts of instruction," said the Eldest, 
"in all sorts of communication, we are fond of 
separating whatever it is possible to separate; 
for by this means alone can the notion of im- 
portance and peculiar significance arise in the 
young mind. Actual experience of itself min- 
gles and mixes all things together: here, accord- 
ingly, we have entirely disjoined that sublime 
Mans life from its termination. In life, he ap- 
pears as a true Philosopher — let not the expres- 
sion stagger you — as a wise man in the highest 
sense. He stands firm to his point; he goes on 
his way inflexibly; and while he exalts the 
lower to himself, while he makes the ignorant, 
the poor, the sick, partakers of his wisdom, of 
his riches, of his strength, he, on the other lian<l, 
in no wise conceals his divine origin; he dares 
to equal himself with God, nay, to declare that 
he himself is God. In this manner is he wont, 
from youth upwards, to astound his familiar 
friends; of these he gains a part to his own 
cause; irritates the rest against liiin ; and shows 
to all men, who are aiming at a certain eleva- 
tion in doctrine and life, what they have to look 
lor from the world. And thus, for the noble 
portion of mankind, his walk and conversation 
are even more instructive and profitable than 
his death : for to those trials every one is called, 
to this trial but a few. Now, omitting all that 
results from this consideration, do but look at 
the touching scene of the Last Supper. Here 
the Wise Man, as it ever is, leaves those that 
are his own utterly orphaned behind him; and 
while he is careful for the Good, he feeds along 
with them a traitor by whom he and the Better 
are to be ilestroyed." 

With these words the Eldest opened a door; 
and Wilhelm faltered in surprise, as he found 
himself again in the first hall at the entrance. 
They had, in the meanwhile, as he now saw, 
passed round the whole circuit of the court. " I 
hoped," said Wilhelm, "you were leading me 
to the conclusion, and you take me back to the 
beginning." 

"For the present," said the Eldest, "I can 
show you nothing farther: more we do not lay 
before our pupils, more we do not explain to 
thein, than what you have now gone through. 
All that is external, worldly, universal, we com- 
municate to each from youth upwards; what is 
more particularly spiritual and conversant with 
the heart, to those only who grow up with some 
thouglitl'ulness of temper; and the rest, which 
is opened only once a-year, cannot be imparted 
save to those whom we are sending forth as 
finished. That last Religion which arises from 
the Reverence of what is beneath us; that vene- 
ration of the contradictory, the hated, the avoid- 
ed, we give each of our pupils, in small portions 
by way of outfit, along with him into the world, 
merely that he may know where more is to be 
had, should such a want spring UD within htrii 
27 



314 



GOETHE. 



I invite you to return hither at the end of a year, 
to visit our general festival, and see how far 
your son is advanced: then shall you be admit- 
ted into the Sanctuary of Sorrow." 

"Permit me one question," said Wilhelm : 
" as you have set up the life of this divine Man 
for a pattern and example, have you likewise 
selected his sufferings, his death, as a model of 
exalted patience?" 

"Undoubtedly we have," replied the Eldest. 
"Of tills we make no secret; but we draw a 
veil over those sufferings, even because we re- 
verence them so highly. We hold it a damnable 
audacity to bring forth that torturing Cross, and 
the Holy One who suffers on it, or to expose 
them to the light of the sun, which hid its face 
when a reckless world forced such a sight on 
it; to take these mysterious secrets, in which 
the divine depth of Sorrow lies hid, and play 
with them, fondle them, trick them out, and rest 
not till the most reverend of all solemnities ap- 
pears vulgar and paltry. Let so much, for the 
present, suffice to put your mind at peace re- 
specting your son ; and to convince you, that on 
meeting him again, you will find him trained, 
more or less, in one department or another, but 
at least in a proper way ; and, at all events, not 
wavering, perplexed, and unstable." 

Wilhelm still lingered, looking at the pictures 
in this entrance-hall, and wishing to get expla- 
nation of their meaning. "This, too," said the 
Eldest, "we must still owe you for a twelve- 
month. The instruction which, in the interim, 
we give the children, no stranger is allowed to 
witness : then, however, come to us ; and you 
will hear what our best speakers think it ser- 
viceable to make public on these matters." 

Shortly after this conversation, a knocking 
was heard at the little gate. The Overseer of 
last night announced himself: he had brought 
out Wilhelm's horse ; and so our friend took 
leave of the Three ; who, as he set out, con- 
signed him to the Overseer with these words : 
" This man is now numbered among the Trusted, 
and thou understandest what thou hast to tell 
him in answer to his questions; for, doubtless, 
he still wishes to be informed on much that he 
has seen and heard while here: purpose and 
circumstance are known to thee." 

Wilhelm had, in fact, some questions on his 
mind ; and these he ere long put into words. 
As they rode along they were saluted by the 
children, as on the preceding evening; but to- 
day, though rarely, he now and then observed 
boy who did not pause in his work to salute 
:he Overseer, but let him pass unheeded. Wil- 
helm asked the cause of this, and what such an 
exception meant. His companion answered : 
"It is full of meaning; for it is the highest pun- 
ishment which we inflict on our pupils; they 
are declared unworthy to show reverence, and 
obliged to exhibit themselves as rude and un- 
rultivated natures: but they do their utmost to 
get free of this situation, and in general adapt 
themselves with great rapidity to any duty. 



Should a young creature, on the other hand, ob- 
durately make no attempt at return and amend- 
ment, he is then sent back to his parents, with 
a brief but pointed statetnent of his case. Who- 
ever cannot suit himself to the regulations, must 
leave the district where they are in force." 

Another circumstance excited Wilhelm's cu- 
riosity to-day, as it had done yesterday: Uie 
variety of color and shape apparent in the dress 
of the pupils. Hereby no gradation could be 
indicated ; for children who saluted differently, 
were sometimes clothed alike ; and others agree- 
ing in salutation, differed in apparel. Wilhelm 
inquired the reason of this seeming contradic- 
tion. " It will be explained," said the other, 
"when I tell you, that, by this means, we en- 
deavor to find out the children's several cha- 
racters. With all our general strictness and 
regularity, we allow in this point a certain lati- 
tude of cl^oice. Within the limits of our own 
stores of cloths and garnitures, the pupils are 
permitted to select what color they please; and 
so likewise within moderate limits, in regard to 
shape and cut. Their procedure, in these mat- 
ters, we accurately note ; for by the color, we 
discover their turn of thinking; by the cut, their 
turn of acting. However, a decisive judgment 
in this is rendered difficult by one peculiar pro- 
perty of human nature, by the tendency to imi- 
tate, the inclination to unite with something. 
It is very seldoin that a pupil fancies any dress 
that has not been already there ; for most part, 
they select something known, something which 
they see before their eyes. Yet this also we 
find worth observing; by such external circum- 
stances, they declare themselves of one party 
or another; they unite with this or that; and 
thus some general features of their characters 
are indicated; we perceive whither each tends, 
what example he foiloM-s. 

" We have had cases where the dispositions 
of our children verged to generality; where one 
fashion threatened to extend over all; and any 
deviation from it to dwindle into the state of an 
exception. Such a turn of matters we endeavor 
softly to stop: we let our stores run out; this 
and that sort of stuff, this and that sort of decora- 
tion, is no longer to be had : we introduce some- 
thing new and attractive ; by bright colors and 
short smart shape, we allure the lively; by 
grave shadings, by commodious many-folded 
make, the thoughtful ; and thus, by degrees, re- 
store the equilibrium. 

"For to uniform, we are altogether disin- 
clined ; it conceals the character, and, more 
than any other species of distortion, withdraws 
the peculiarities of children from the eye of 
their superiors." 

Amid this and other conversation, Wilhelm 
reached the border of the Province ; and this at 
the point, where, by the direction of his anti- 
quarian friend, he was to leave it, to pursue his 
next special object. 

At parting, it was now settled with the Over 
seer, that, after the space of a twelvemonth; 



GOETHE. 



315 



Willielm should return, when the grand Trien- 
nial Festival was to be celebrated ; on which 
occasion all the parents were invited ; and 
finished pupils were sent forth into the tasks of 
chanceful life. Then, too, so he was informed, 
he might visit at his pleasure all the other Dis- 
tricts ; where, on peculiar principles, each branch 
of education was communicated and reduced to 
practice in complete isolation, and with every 
furtherance. 



That a year must have passed since Wilhelm 
left the Pedagogic Province, is rendered certain, 
by the circumstanire, that we now meet him at 
the Festival to which he ha<l been invited: but 
as our wandering Renunciants sometimes un- 
expectedly dive down and vanish from our 
sight, and then again emerge into view at a 
place where they were not looked for, it cannot 
be determined with certainty what track they 
have followed in the interim. 

Now, however, the Traveller advances from 
the side of the plain country into tlie Pedagogic 
Province: he comes over fields and pasturages; 
skirts, on the dry lea, many a little freshet; sees 
bushy rather than woody hills; a free prospect 
on all sides, over a surface but little undulated. 
On such tracks, he did not long doubt that he 
was in the horse-producing region; and accord- 
ingly, he failed not here and there to observe 
greater or smaller herds of mares and foals. 
But all at once the horizon darkens with a fierce 
cloud of dust, which, rapidly swelling nearer 
and nearer, covers all the breadth of the space; 
yet at last, rent asunder by a sharp side wind, 
is forced to disclose its interior tumult. 

At full gallop, rushes forward a vast multi- 
tude of these noble animals, guided and held 
together by mounted keepers. 'J'lie monstrous 
hurlyburly whirls past the wanderer ; a fair boj' 
among the keepers looks at him with surprise; 
pulls in, leaps down, and embraces his father. 

Now commences a questioning and answer- 
ing: the boy relates that an agricultural life had 
not agreed with liim ; the harvest-home he had 
indeed found delightful, but the subsequent ar- 
rangements, the ploughing and digging, by no 
means so. This the Superiors remark, and ob- 
serve at the same time that he likes to employ 
himself with animals; they direct him to the 
useful and necessary domestic breeds ; try him 
as a sequestered herdsman and keeper, and at 
last promote him to the more lively equestrian 
occupation ; where accordingly he now, himself 
a young foal, has to watch over foals, and to 
forward their good nourishment and training, 
under the oversight of skilful comrades. 

Father and son, following the herd, by vari- 
ous lone-lying spacious farm-yards, reached the 
town or hamlet, near which the great annual 
Market was held. Here rages an incredible 
confusion, in which it is hard to determine 
whether merchants or wares raise more dust. 
From all coiintries, purchasers assemble here to 



procure animals of noble blood and careful 
training; all the languages of the Earth, you 
would fancy, meet your ear. Amid all this hub- 
bub, too, rises the lively sound of powerful wind- 
instruments : everything bespeaks motion, vigor, 
and life. 

The wanderer meets his Overseer of last 
year, who presents him to the others: he is even 
introduced to one of the Three; and by him, 
though only in passing, paternally and expres- 
sively saluted. 

Wilhelm, here again observing an example 
of exclusive culture and life-leading, expresses 
a desire to know in what else the pupils are 
practised, by v/ay of counterpoise-; that so in 
this wild, and, to a certain degree, savage occu- 
pation of feeding animals, the youth may not 
himself roughen into an animal. And, in 
answer, he is gratified to learn, that precisely 
with this violent and rugged-looking occupation 
the softest in the world is united; the learning 
and practising of languages. 

"To this," it was said, "we have been in- 
duced by the circumstance, that there are youths 
from all quarters of the world assembled here : 
now to prevent them from uniting, as usually 
happens when abroad, into national knots, and 
forming exclusive parties, we endeavor by a free 
communication of speech to approximate diem. 

" Indeed, a general acquaintance with lan- 
guages is here in some degree rendered neces- 
sary : since, in our yearly market-festivals, 
every foreigner wishes to converse in his own 
tones and idiom ; and, in the course of cheapen- 
ing and purchasing, to proceed with all possible 
convenience. That no Babylonish confusion of 
tongues, however, no corruption of speech, may 
arise from this practice, we employ a different 
language month by month, throughout the year: 
according to the maxim, that in learning any- 
thing, its first principles alone should be taught 
by constraint. 

" We look upon our scholars,"' said the Over- 
seer, "as so many swimmers, who, in the ele- 
ment which threatened to swallow them, feel 
with astonishment that diey are lighter, that it 
bears and carries them forward: and so it is 
with everything that man undertakes. 

" However, if any one of our young men show 
a special inclination for this or the other lan- 
guage, we neglect not, in the midst of this 
tumultuous-looking life, which nevertheless of- 
fers very many quiet, idly solitary, nay, tedious 
hours, to provide for his true and substantial 
instruction. Our riding grammarians, among 
whom there are even some pedagogues, you 
would be surprised to discover among these 
beardei and beardless Centaurs. Your Felix 
has turned himself to Italian ; and in the mono 
tonous solitude of his herdsman life, you shall 
hear him send forth many a dainty song with 
proper feeling and taste. Practical activity and 
expertness are far more compatible witli suf- 
ficient intellectual culture, than is generally 
supposed." 



.316 



GOETHE. 



Each of these districts was celebrating its 
peculiar festival; so the guest was now con- 
ducted to the Instrumental MiisJc department. 
This tract, skirted by the level country, began 
from its very border to exhibit kind and beauti- 
fi;lly changing valleys, little trim woods; soft 
biooks, by the side of which, among the sward, 
here and there a mossy crag modestly stood 
forth. Scattered, bush-encircled dwellings you 
might see on the hill-sides; in soft hollows, the 
luMises clustered nearer together. Those grace- 
fully separated cottages lay so far apart, that 
neitlier tones nor mistones could be heard from 
Ohe to the other. 

'J'liey now approached a wide space, begirt 
with buildings and shady trees, where crowded, 
man on man, all seemed on the stretch of ex- 
pectation and attention. Just as the stranger 
entered, there was sent forth from all the in- 
slrnments a grand symphony, the full rich power 
and tenderness of which he could not but ad- 
mire. Opposite the spacious main orchestra, 
was a smaller one, which failed not to attract 
liis notice : here stood various younger and elder 
scholars; each lield his instiument in readiness 
vitliout playing; these were they who as yet 
could not, or durst not, join in with the whole. 
It was interesting to observe how they stood as 
it were on the start; and our friend was in- 
formed tliat such a festival seldom passed over, 
without some one or other of them suddenly 
developing his talent. 

As among the instrumental music, singing 
was now introduced, no doubt could remain 
that this also was favored. To the question. 
What other sort of culture was here blended in 
kind union with the chief employment, our 
wanderer learned in reply, that it was Poetry, 
and of the lyrical kind, fn this matter, it ap- 
peared, their main concern was, that both arts 
should be developed each for itself and from 
itself, but then also in contrast and combination 
with each other. The scholars were first in- 
structed in each according to its own limitations ; 
then taught how the two reciprocally limit, and 
again reciprocally free each other. 

To poetical rhythm, the musical artist opposes 
measure of tone and movement of tone. But 
hero the mastery of Music over Poesy soon 
Bhows itself; for if the latter, as is fit and ne- 
cessary, keep her quantities never so steadily 
in view, still for the musician few syllables are 
decidedly short or long; at his pleasure he can 
overset the most conscientious procedure of the 
vhythmer, nay, change prose itself into song; 
from which, in truth, the richest possibilities 
present themselves; and the poet would soon 
feel himself annihilated, if he could not, on his 
own side, by lyri. al tenderness and boldness, 
inspire the musician with reverence; and, now 
in the soltest setpience, now by the most abrupt 
transitions, awaken new feelings in the mind. 

The singers to be met with here are mostly 
poets themselves. Dancing also is taught in its 
fundamental principles; that so all these ac- 



complishments may regularly spread themselves 
into every district. 

The guest, on being led across the next bound- 
ary, at once perceived an altogether different 
mode of building. The houses were no longer 
scattered into separation, no longer in the shape 
of cottages: they stood regularly united, beauti- 
ful in their exterior, spacious, convenient, and 
elegant within ; you here saw an unconfined, 
well-built, stately town, corresponding to the 
scene it stood in. Here the Plastic Arts, and 
the trades akin to them, have their home; and 
a peculiar silence reigns over these spaces. 

The plastic artist, it is true, must still figure 
himself as standing in relation to all that lives 
and moves among men : but his occupation is 
solitary; and yet, by the strangest contradiction, 
there is perhaps no other that so decidedly re- 
<|uires a living accompaniment and society. 
Now here, in that circle, is each in silence form- 
ing shapes that are forever to engage the eyes 
of men ; a holiday stillness reigns over the 
whole scene ; and did you not here and there 
catch the picking of stone-hewers, and the mea- 
sured stroke of carpenters, who are now busily 
employed in finishing a lordly edifice, the air 
were unmoved by any sound. 

Our wanderer was struck, moreover, by the 
earnestness, the singular rigor with which be- 
ginners, as well as more advanced pupils, were 
treated ; it seemed as if no one by his own 
power and judgment accomplished anything, 
but as if a secret spirit, striving towards one 
single great aim, pervaded and vivified them 
all. Ijj^owhere did you observe a scheme or 
sketch ; every stroke was drawn with fore- 
thought. As the wanderer inquired of his guide 
the reason of this peculiar procedure, he was 
told : That Imagination was in itself a vague, 
unstable power, which the whole merit of the 
plastic artist consisted in more and more deter- 
mining, fixing, nay, at last, exalting to visible 
presence. 

The necessity for sure principles in other arts 
was mentioned. "Would the musician," it was 
said, "permit his scholar to dash wildly over 
the strings, nay, to invent bars and intervals for 
himself at his own good pleasure? Here it is 
palpable that nothing can be left to the caprice 
of the learner: the element he is to work in is 
irrevocably given ; the implement he is to wield 
is put into his hands; nay, the very way and 
maimer of his using it, I mean the changing of 
the fingers, he finds prescribed to liim ; so or- 
dered, that the one part of his hand shall give 
place to the other, and each prepare the proper 
path for its follower: by such determinate co- 
operation only can the impossible at last become 
possible. 

" But what chiefly vindicates the practice of 
strict requisitions, of decided laws, is that ge 
nius, that native talent, is precisely the readiest 
to seize them, and yield them willing obedience 
It is only the half- gifted that would wish to 
put his own contracted singularity in the place 



GOETHE. 



317 



of the uncomlitioned whole, and justify his false 
attempts under cover of an unconstrainable ori- 
ginality and independence. To tliis we grant 
no currency, we guard our scholars from all 
such misconceptions, whereby a large portion 
of life, nay, often the whole of life, is apt to be 
perplexed and disjointed. 

"With genius we love most to be concerned; 
for this is animated just by that good spirit of 
quickly recognising what is profitable for it. 
Genius understands that Art is called Art be- 
cause it is not Nature. Genius bends itself to 
respect even towards what may be named con- 
ventional: for what is this but agreeing, as the 
most distinguished men have agreed, to regard 
the unalterable, the indispensable as the best? 
And does not such submission always turn to 
good account? 

"Here, too, as in all our departments, to the 
great assistance of the teachers, our three Reve- 
rences and their signs, with some changes suit- 
able to the nature of the main employment, 
have been introduced and inculcated." 

The wanderer, in his farther survey, was 
surprise<l to observe that the Town seemed still 
extending; street unfolding itself from street, 
and so offering the most varied prospects. The 
exterior of the edifices corresponded to their 
destination; they were dignified and stately, 
not so much magnificent as beautiful. To the 
nobler and more earnest buildings in the centre 
of the Town, the more cheerful were harmoni- 
ously apjjended; till farther out, gay decorated 
suburbs, in graceful style, stretched forth into 
the country, and at last separated into garden- 
houses. 

Tlie stranger could not fail to remark, that the 
dwellings of the musicians in the preceding dis- 
trict were by no means to be compared, in 
beauty or size, with the present, which painters, 
statuaries, and architects inliabited. He was 
told that this arose from the nature of the thing. 
The musician, ever shrouded in himself, must 
cultivate his inmost being, that so he may turn 
it outwards. The sense of the eye he may not 
flatter. The eye easily corrupts the judgment 
of the ear, and allures the spirit from the inward 
to tlie outward. Inversely, again, the plastic 
artist has to live in the external world; and to 
manifest his inward being, as it were uncon- 
sciously, in and upon what is outward. Plastic 
artists should dwell like kings and gods: how 
else are they to build and decorate for kings and 
gods? They must at last so raise themselves 
above the common, that the whole mass of a 
people may feel itself ennobled in and by their 
works. 

Our friend then begged an explanation of 
another paradox: Why at this time, so festive, 
so enlivening, so tumultuously excited, in the 
other regions, the greatest stillness prevailed 
iere, and all labors were continued? 

"A plastic artist," it was answered, "needs 
no festival ; (or him the whole year is a festival. 
W'hen he has accomplished something excellent, 



it stands, as it has long done before his own eye, 
now at last before the eye of the world: in liis 
task he needed no repetition, no new effort, no 
fresh success; whereas the musician constantly 
afflicts himself with all this; and to him, there- 
fore, the most splendid festival, in the most 
numerous assemblage, should not bo refused." 

"Yet, at such a season," replied Wilhelm, 
"something like an exhibition might be desira 
ble ; in which it would be pleasant to inspect 
and judge the trieimial progress of your best 
pupils." 

"In other places," it was answered, "an ex- 
hibition may be necessary; with us it is not. 
Our whole being and nature is exhibition. Look 
round you at these buildings of every sort : all 
erected by our pupils; and this not witliout 
plans, a hundred times talked of and meditated ; 
for the builder must not grope and experiment ; 
what is to continue standing, must stand rightly, 
and satisfy, if not forever, yet at least for a long 
space of time. If we cannot help committing 
errors, we must build none. 

"With statuaries we proceed more laxly, 
most so of all with painters ; to both we give 
liberty to try this each in his own way. It 
stands in their power to select in the interior 
or exterior compartments of edifices in public 
places, some space which they may incline to 
decorate. They give forth their ideas, and if 
these are in some degree to be approved of, the 
cotnpletion of them is permitted, and this in two 
ways : either with liberty, sooner or later, to 
remove the work, should it come to displease 
the artist; or, with the condition that what is 
once set up shall remain unalterable in its 
place. Most part choose the first of these offers, 
retaining in their own hands this power of re- 
moval ; and in the performance, they constantly 
avail themselves of the best advice. The second 
case occurs seldomer ; and we then observe 
that the artist trusts less to himself, holds long 
conferences with companions and critics, and 
by this means produces works really estimable, 
and deserving to enduie.' 

After all this, our Traveller neglected not to 
ask : What other species of instruction was com- 
bined with the main one here? and received 
lor answer, that it was Poetry, and of the Epic 
sort. 

This to our friend must have seemed a little 
singular, when he heard farther that the pupils 
were not allowed to read or hear any finished 
poems by ancient or modern poets. "We merely 
impart to them," it was said, "a series of my- 
ihuses, traditions, and legends, in the most 
laconic form. And now, from the pictorial or 
poetic execution of these subjects, we at once 
discover the peculiar productive gift of the 
genius devoted to the one or the other art. Both 
poet and painter thus labor at the same foun- 
tain ; and each endeavors to draw off the water 
to his own advantage, and attain his own re- 
quired objects with it; in which he succeeds 
niu'-''. better, than if he attempted again to 
27* 



318 



GOETHE. 



fashion something that has been fashioned al- 
ready." 

The Traveller himself had an opportunity of 
seeing how this was accomplished: several 
painters were busy in a room ; a gay young 
friend was relating with great minuteness a 
very simple story ; so that he employed almost 
as many words as the others did pencil-strokes, 
to complete the same exhibition and round it 
fully off. 

He was told, that in working together the 
friends were wont to carry on much pleasant 
conversation; and that in this way several im- 
provisatori had unfolded their gifts, and suc- 
ceeded in exciting great enthusiasm for this 
twofold mode of representation. 

Our friend now reverted his inquiries to the 
subject of plastic art. "You have no exhibi- 
tion," said he; "and therefore, I suppose, give 
no prize either ?" 

"No," said the other, "we do not; but here, 
close by, we can show you somethmg which 
we reckon more useful." 

They entered a large hall, beautifully lighted 
from above ; a wide circle of busy artists first 
attracted the eye; and from the midst of these, 
rose a colossal group of figures, elevated in the 
centre of the place. Male and female forms, of 
gigantic power, in violent postures, reminded 
one of that lordly fight between Heroic youths 
and Amazons, wherein hate and enmity at last 
issue in mutually regretful alliance. This strik- 
ingly intertwisted piece of art presented an 
equally favorable aspect from every point of its 
circuit. In a wide ring round it were many 
artists sitting and standing, each occupied in his 
own way; the painter at his easel, the drawer 
at his sketch-board; some were modelling it in 
full, others in bas-relief; there were even archi- 
tects engaged in planning the pedestal, on which 
a similar group, when wrought in marble, was 
to be erected. Each individual was proceeding 
by his own method in this task : painters and 
drawers were bringing out the group to a plain 
Surface ; careful, however, not to destroy its 
figures, but to retain as much of it as possible. 
In the same manner were works in bas-relief 
going forward. One man only had repeated the 
whole group in a miniature scale; and in cer- 
tain movements and arrangements of limbs, he 
really seemed to have surpassed his model. 

And now it came out that this man was the 
maker of the model ; who, before working it in 
marble, had here submitted his performance 
not to a critical, but to a practical trial ; and by 
accurately observing whatever any of his fellow- 
artists in his special department and way of 
thought might notice, retain or alter in the 
group, was purposing, in subsequent considera- 
tion, to turn all this to his own profit; so that, 
when at length the grand work stood finished 
in marble, though undertaken, planned, and 
executed by one, it might seem to belong to all. 
The greatest silence reigned throughout this 
apartment also; but the Superior raised his 



voice, and cried : " Is there any of you, then 
who in presence of this stationary work can, 
with gifted words, so awaken our imagination, 
that all we here see concreted, shall again be- 
come fluid, without losing its character ; and sc 
convince us, that what our artist has here laic' 
hold of, was indeed the worthiest?" 

Called forth on all sides by name, a fair 
youth laid down his work; and as he stept for- 
ward, began a quiet speech, seemingly intended 
merely to describe the present group of figures; 
but ere long he cast himself into the region of 
poetry, plunged into the middle of the action, 
and ruled this element like a master; by de- 
grees, his representation so swelled and mounted 
by lordly words and gestures, that the rigid 
group seemed actually to move about its axis, 
and the number of its figures to be doubled and 
trebled. Wilhelm stood enraptured, and at last 
exclaimed: "Can we now forbear passing over 
into song itself, into rhythmic melody?" 

"This I should wish to hinder," said the 
Overseer; "for if our excellent statuary will be 
candid, he will confess to us that our poet 
scarcely pleases him ; and this because their 
arts lie in the most opposite regions: on the 
other hand, I durst bet, that here and there a 
painter has not failed to appropriate some living 
touches from the speech. 

" A soft kindly song, however, I could wish 
our friend to hear : there is one, for instance, 
which you sing to an air so lovely and earnest; 
it turns on Art in general, and I myself never 
listen to it without pleasure." 

After a pause, in which they beckoned to 
each other, and settled their arrangements by 
signs, the following heart and spirit stirring song 
resounded in stately melody from all sides: 

When inventing, when selecting-, 

Artist, by thyself continue long : 
When some good thou art etfecting, 

Haste and see it in the thronsr. 
Here in others look, discover 

What thy own life's course has been; 
And thy deeds of years past over 

In thy fellow man be seen. 

The devising, the uniting, 

What and how the forms shall be; 
One thmg will the other lighten, 

And at last comes joy to thee ! 
Wise and true what tliou impartest, 

Fairly shaped, and softly done ; 
Thus of old the cunning artist 

Artist-like his glory won. 

As all Nature's thousand changes 

But one changeless God proclaim; 
So in Art's wide kingdoms ranges 

One sole meaning still the same : 
This is Truth, eternal Reason, 

Which from Beauty takes its dress, 
And serene through time and season, 

Stands for aye in loveliness. 



While the orator, tlie singer, 

Pour their hearts in rhyme and prose, 
'Neath the painter's busy finger, 

Sliall bloom forth Life's cheerfo. rose, 
Girt with sisters ; in the middle, 

And with Autumn's fruitage blent, 
That of life's mystt rious riddle 

Some short glimpses may be henU 



GOETHE. 



319 



Thousandfold, and graceful, show thou, 

Form from forms evolving fair ; 
And of man's briglit image know thou 

That a God once tarried there: 
And whate'er your tasks or prizes, 

Stand as brethren one and all, 
Whde, like song, sweet incense rises 

From the altar at your call. 



All this Wilhelm could not but let pass, 
though it must have seemed para<ioxical enough ; 
and, had he not seen it with his eyes, might 
even have appeared impossible. But now, 
when it was explained and pointed out to him, 
openly and freely, and in fair sequence, he 
scarcely needed to put any farther question on 
the subject. However, he at last addressed his 
conductor as follows: "I see here a most pru- 
dent provision made for much that is desirable 
in life : but tell me farther, which of your 
regions exhibits a similar attention to Dramatic 
Poetry, and where could I instruct myself in 
that matter? I have looUed round over all your 
edifices, and observed none that seemed des- 
tined for such an object." 

" In reply to this question, we must not hide 
from you, that, in our whole Province, there is 
no such edifice to be seen. The drama pre- 
supposes the existence of an idle multitude, per- 
haps even of a populace ; and no such class 
finds harbor with us ; for birds of that feather, 
when they do not in spleen forsake us of their 
own accord, we soon take care to conduct over 
the marches. Doubt not, however, that in our 
Institution, so universal in its character, this 
point was carefully meditated: but no region 
could be found for the purpose, everywhere 
some important scruple came in the way. In- 
deed, who among our pupils could readily de- 
termine, with pretended mirth, or hypocritical 
sorrow, to excite in the rest a feeling untrue in 
itself, and alien to the moment, for the sake of 
calling forth an always dubious satisfaction? 
Such juggleries we reckoned in all cases dan- 
gerous, and could not reconcile with our earnest 
objects." 

"It is said, however," answered Wilhelm, 
" that this far-stretching art promotes all the rest, 
of whatever sort. ' 

■'Nowise," answered the other: "it employs 
the rest, but spoils them. I do not blame a 
player for uniting himself with a painter; but 
the painter, in such society, is lost. Without 
any conscience, the player will lay hold of 
whatever art or life presents him, and use it for 
his fugitive objects, indeed with no small profit: 
the painter, again, who could wish in return to 
extract advantage from the theatre, will con- 
stantly find himselt a loser by it; and so also 
in the like case will the musician. The com- 
bined Arts appear to me like a family of sisters, 
of whom the greater part were inclined to good 
economy, but one was light-headed, and desirous 
to appropriate and squander the whole goods 
and chattels of the household. The Theatre is 
this wasteful sister : it has an ambiguous origin, 



which in no case, whether as art or trade or 
amusement, it can wholly conceal." 

Wilhelm cast his eyes on the ground with a 
deep sigh ; for all that he had enjoyed or suf- 
fered on the Stage rose at once before his mind ; 
and he blessed the good men who were wise 
enough to spare their pupils such pain, and, out 
of principle and conviction, to banish such errors 
from their sphere. 

His attendant, however, did not leave him 
long in these meditations, but continued : "As 
it is our highest and holiest principle that no 
talent, no capacity be misdirected, we cannot 
hide from ourselves that among so large a num- 
ber, here and there a mimical gift will some- 
times decidedly come to light; exhibiting itself 
in an irresistible desire to ape the characters, 
forms, movements, speech of others. This we 
certainly do not encourage; but we observe our 
pupil strictly, and if he continue faithful to his 
nature, then we have already established an in- 
tercourse with the great theatres of all nations, 
and so thither we send any youth of tried capa- 
bility, that, as the duck on the pond, so he on 
the boards, may be forthwith conducted, full 
speed, to the future quack-quacking, and gibble- 
gabbling of his life." 

Wilhelm heard this with patience, but only 
with half-conviction, perhaps with some spleen . 
for so strangely is man tempered, that he may 
be persuaded of the worthlessness of any darl- 
ing object, may turn away from it, nay, even 
execrate it, but yet will not see it treated in this 
way by others; and perhaps the Spirit of Con- 
tradiction which dwells in all men, never rouses 
itself more vehemently and stoutly than in such 
cases. 

And the Editor of these sheets may himself 
confess, that he lets not this strange passage 
through his hands without some touch of anger. 
Has not he, too, in many senses, expended more 
life and faculty than was right on the Theatre? 
And would these men convince him that this 
has been an unpardonable error, a fruitless 
toil? 

But we have no time for appending, in 
splenetic mood, such remembrances and after- 
feelings to the narrative: for our friend now 
finds himself agreeably surprised, as one of the 
Three, and this a particularly prepossessing one, 
again comes before his eyes. Kind, open meek- 
ness, announcing the purest peace of soul, came 
in its refreshing effluences along with him. 
Trustfully the Wanderer could approach, and 
feel his trust returned. 

Here he now learned that the Chief was at 
present in the Sanctuary, instructing, teaching, 
blessing; while the Three had separated to visit 
all the Regions, and everywhere, after most 
thorough information obtained, and conferences 
with the subordinate Overseers, to forward what 
was in progress, to found what was newly plan- 
ned, and thereby faithfully discharge their high 
duty. 

This same excellent person now gave him a 



320 



GOETHE. 



more comprehensive view of their internal 
situation and external connections ; explained 
to liiin the mutual influences of one Region on 
another ; and also by what steps, after a longer 
or a shorter date, a pupil could be transferred 
from the one to the other. All this harmonized 
completely with what he already knew. At 
the same time, he was much gratified by the 
description given of his son ; and their farther 
plai] of education met with his entire approval. 
He was now, by the Assistants and Overseer, 
invited to a Miners' Festival, which was forth- 
with to be celebrated. The ascent of the Moun- 
tains was difficult; and Wilhelm fancied he ob- 
served that his guide walked even slower to- 
wards evening, as if the darkness had not been 
likely to obstruct their path still more. But 
when deep night came round them, this enigma 
was solved : our Wanderer observed little flames 
come glimmering and wavering forth from many 
dells and chasms; gradually stretch themselves 
into lines, and roll over the summits of the 
mountains. Much kindlier than when a vol- 
cano opens, and its belching roar threatens 
whole countries with destruction, did this fair 
light appear; and yet, by degrees, it glowed 
with new brightness; grew stronger, broader, 
more continuous; glittered like a stream of 
stars, soft and lovely indeed, yet spreading 
boldly over all the scene. 

After the attendant had a little while enjoyed 
the surprise of his guest, for they could clearly 
enough observe each other, their faces and forms 
as well as their path being illuminated by the 
light from the distance — he began: "You see 
here, in truth, a curious spectacle: these lights, 
which, day and night, the whole year over, 
gleam and work under ground, forwarding the 
acquisition of concealed and scarcely attainable 
treasures; these now mount and well forth 
from their abysses, and gladden the upper night. 
Scarcely could one anywhere enjoy so brave a 
review, as here, where this most useful occupa- 
tion, which in its subterranean concealment is 
disj)ersed and hidden from the eye, rises before 
us in its full completeness, and bespeaks a great 
secret combination." 

Amid such speeches and thoughts, they had 
reached the spot where these tire-brooks poured 
themselves into a sea of flame, surrounding a 
well-lighted insular space. The Wanderer 
placed himself in the dazzling circle, within 
which, glittering lights by thousands formed an 
imposing contrast with the miners, ranked round 
it like a dark wall. Forthwith arose the gayest 
music, accompanied by becoming songs. Hol- 
low masses of rock came forward on inachinery, 
and opened a resplendent interior to the eye of 
the delighted spectator. Mimetic exhibitions, 
and whatever else at such a moment can gratify 
the multitude, combined with all this at once to 
excite atid to satisfy a cheerful attention. 

But with what astonishment was Wilhelm 
tilled, when, on being introduced to the Su- 
periors, he observed Friend Jarno, in solemn 



stately robes, among the number ! " Not in 
vain," cried Jarno, "have I changed my former 
name with the more expressive title of Montan : 
thou findest me here initiated in mountain and 
cave; and now, if questioned, I could disclose 
and explain to thee much that a year ago was 
still a riddle to myself." 



As Wilhelm, in order to reach any point of 
the line marked out by the first Arrow, had to 
proceed obliquely through the country, he found 
himself necessitated to perform the journey on 
foot, leaving his luggage to be carried after him. 
For this walk of his, however, he was richly 
rewarded ; meeting at every step, quite unex- 
pectedly, with loveliest tracts of scenery. They 
were of that sort, which the last slope of a 
mountain region forms in its meeting with the 
plain country; bushy hills, their soft declivities 
employed in domestic use ; all level spaces 
green ; nowhere aught steep, unfruitful, or un- 
ploughed to be noticed. Ere long he reached 
the main valley, into which the side- waters 
flowed ; and this too was carefully cultivated, 
graceful when you looked over it; with taper 
trees marking the bends of the river, and of the 
brooks which poured into it. On looking at his 
map, his indicator, he observed with surprise 
that the line drawn for him cut directly through 
this valley; so that, in the first place, he was at 
least on the right road. 

An old castle, in good repair, and seemingly 
built at diflerent periods, stood forth on a bushy 
hill ; at the foot of which a gay hamlet stretched 
along, with its large inn rising pron)inent among 
the other houses. Hither he proceeded ; and 
was received by the landlord kindly enough, 
yet with an excuse that he could not be admit- 
ted, unless by the permission of a party who 
had hired the whole establishment for a time; 
on which account he, the landlord, was uniler 
the necessity of sending all his guests to the 
older inn, which lay farther up the hamlet. 
After a short conference, the man seemed to 
bethink himself, and said: "Indeed there is no 
one of them at home even now ; but this is Sa- 
turday, and the Bailiff" will not fail to be here 
soon ; he comes every week to settle the ac- 
counts of the last, and make arrangements for 
the next. Truly, there is a fair order reigns 
among these men, and a pleasure in having to 
do with them, though they are strict enough; 
for if they yield one no great profit, it is sure 
and constant." He then desired his new guest 
to amuse himself in the large upper hall, and 
await what farther might occur. 

Here Wilhelm, on entering, found a large 
clean apartment; except for benches and tables, 
altogether empty. So much the more was he 
surprised to see a large tablet inserted above 
one of the doors, with these words marked on, 
it in golden letters, Ubi homines sunt modi sunt; 
which in modern tongue may signify, that where 
men combine in society, the way and manner 



GOETHE. 



321 



in wliicli they like to be and to continue together 
is directly established. This motto made our 
Wanderer think ; he took it as a good omen ; 
finding here, expressed and confirmed, a prin- 
ciple which he had often, in the course of life, 
perceived for himself to be furthersome and 
reasonaljle. He had not waited long, when the 
Bailiff made his appearance; who being fore- 
warned by the landlord, after a short conversa- 
tion, and no very special scrutiny, admitted 
Willielm on the following terms : To continue 
three days; to participate quietly in whatever 
should occur; and happen what might, to ask 
no questions about the reason, and at taking 
leave, to ask none about the score. All this our 
traveller was obliged to comply with, the deputy 
not being allowed to yield in a single point. 

The Bailiff was about retiring, when a sound 
of vocal music rolled up the stair: two pretty 
young men entered singing; and these the Bail- 
iff, by a simple sign, gave to understand that 
their guest was accepted. Without interrupting 
their song, they kindly saluted the stranger, and 
continued their duet with the finest grace, show- 
ing clearly enough that they were well trained, 
and complete masters of their art. As Wilhelm 
testified the most attentive interest, they paused 
and inquired : If in his own pedestrian wan- 
derings no song ever occurred to him, which 
he went along singing by himself? " A good 
voice," answered Wilhelm, " Nature has in truth 
denied me : yet I often feel as if a secret Genius 
were whispering some rhythmic words in my 
ear; so that, in walking, I move to musical 
measure ; fancying, at the same time, that I 
hear low tones, accompanying some song, which, 
in one way or another, has pleasantly risen be- 
fore me." 

" If you recollect such a song, write it down 
for us," said they : " We shall see if we have 
skill to accompany your singing Demon." He 
toojc a leaf from his note-book, and handed them 
the following lines: 

From the mountains to the champaign, 

By the glens and hills along, 
Comes a rustling and a tramping, 

Conies a motion as of song ; 
And this undetermined roving 

Brings delight, and brings good heed ; 
And thy striving, be 't with Loving, 

And thy living, be *t in Deed ! 

After brief study, there arose at once a gay 
marching melody, which, in its repetition and 
restriction still stepping forward, hurried on the 
hearer with it: he was in doubt whether this 
was his own tune, his former theme ; or one 
now for the first time so fitted to the words, 
that no other movement was conceivable. The 
singers had for some time pleasantly proceeded 
in this manner, when two stout young fellows 
came in, whom, by their accoutrements, you 
directly recognised as masons; two others, who 
followed them, being as evidently carpenters. 
'J'hese four, softly laying down their tools, list- 
ened to the music, and soon struck in with sure 
ana decided voices j so that to the mind it 
20. 



seemed as if a real wayfaring company were 
stepping along over hill and valley; and Wil- 
helm thought he had never heard anything so 
graceful, so enlivening to heart and mind. This 
enjoynnent. however, was to be increased yet 
farther, and raised to the highest pitch, by the 
entrance of a gigantic figure, mounting the stair 
with a hard firm tread, which, with all his ef- 
forts, he could scarcely moderate. A heavy- 
laden dorsel he directly placed in the corner; 
himself he seated on a bench, which beginning 
to creak under his weight, the others laughed, 
yet without going wrong in their music. Wil- 
helm, however, wasexceedingly surprised, when, 
with a huge bass voice, this Son of Anak joined 
in also. The hall quivered ; and it was to be 
observed that in his part he altered the burden, 
and sang it thus : 

Life 's no resting, but a moving, 

Let thy life be deed on deed ! 

Farther, you could very soon perceive that he 
was drawing down the time to a slower step, 
and forcing the rest to follow him. Of this, 
when at last they were satisfied and had con- 
cluded, they accused him; declaring he had 
tried to set them wrong. 

"Not at all !" cried he: '"it is you who tried 
to set me wrong; to put me out of my own 
step, which must be measured and sure, if I am 
to walk with my loading up hill and down dale, 
and yet, in the end, arrive at my appointed 
hour, to satisfy your wants. 

One after the other, these persons now passed 
into an adjoining room to the Bailiff; and Wil- 
helin easily observed that they were occupied 
in settling accounts; a point, however, as to 
which he was not allowed at present to inquire 
farther. Two fair lively boys in the mean- 
while entered, and began covering a table in 
all speed, moderately furnishing it with meat 
and wine; and the Bailiff, coming out, invited 
them all to sit down along with him. The boys 
waited ; yet forgot not their own concern, but 
enjoyed their share in a standing posture. Wil- 
helm recollected witnessing similar scenes 
during his abode among the players; yet tlie 
present company seemed to be of a much more 
serious cast; constituted not out of sport, for 
show, but with a view to iiTiportant concerns 
of life. 

The conversation of the craftsmen with the 
Bailiff added strength to this conviction. Tliese 
four active young people, it appeared, were 
busy in the neighbourhood, where a violent con 
flagration had destroyed the fairest village in 
the country; nor did Wilhelm fail to learn thai 
the worthy Bailiff was employed in getting 
timber and other building materials; all which 
looked the more enigmatical, as none of these 
persons seemed to be resident here, but in ail 
other points announced themselves as transitory 
strangers. By way of conclusion to the meal 
St. Christopher, such was the name they gavt 
the giant, brought out, for good-night, a dainty 
glass of wine, which had before been set aside 



3'22 



GOETHE. 



B gay choral song kept the party stil! some time 
together, after they were out of sight : and then 
Wilhelm was at last conducted to a chamber of 
the loveliest aspect and situation. The full 
moon, enlightening a rich plain, was already 
up ; and in the bosom of our Wanderer it awoke 
remembrances of similar scenes. The spirits 
of all dear friends hovered past him : especially 
the image of Lenardo rose in him so vividly, 
that he might have fancied the man himself 
was standing before his eyes. All this had pre- 
pared him with its kind influences for nightly 
rest; when, on a sudden, there arose a tone of 
so strange a nature, that it almost frightened 
him. It sounded as from a distance, and yet 
seemed to be in the house itself; for the build- 
ing quivered many times, and the floors rever- 
berate<l when the sound rose to its highest pitch. 
Wilhelm, though his ear was usually delicate in 
discrimi)iating tones, could make nothing of this: 
he compared it to the droning roar of a huge 
organ-pipe, which, for sheer compass, produces 
no determinate note. Whether this nocturnal 
terror passed away towards morning, or Wil- 
helm by degrees became accustomed to the 
-sound, and no longer heeded it, is difficult to 
, discover: at any .rate, he fell asleep; and was 
lin due time pleasantly awakened by the rising 
sun. 

Scarcely had one of the boys who were in 
watting brought him breakfast, when a figure 
entered, whom he had already noticed last 
TOght at supper, without clearly ascertaining 
'his quality. A well-formed, broad-shouldered, 
yet nimble man; who now, by the implements 
which he spread out, announced himself as 
Barber, and forthwith prepared for performing 
his much-desired office on Wilhelm. For the 
rest, he was quite silent: and with a light hand 
he went through his task, without once having 
opened his lips. Wilhelm therefore began, and 
said : "Of your art you are completely master; 
and I know not that I have ever had a softer 
razor on my cheeks : at the same time, how- 
ever, you appear to be a strict observer of the 
laws of the Society." 

Roguishly smiling, laying his finger on his 
lips, the taciturn shaver elided through the door. 
"By my sooth!" cried Wilhelm after him, "I 
think you must be old Redcloak ; if not himself, 
at least a descendant of his : it is lucky for you 
that you ask no counter service of me; your 
turn would have been but sorrily done." 

No sooner had this curious personage retired, 
than the well-known Bailiff" came in, inviting 
onr friend to dinner for this day, in words 
which sounded pretty strange: the Bond, so 
said the speaker expressly, gave the stranger 
welcome; requested his company at dinner; 
and took pleasure in the hope of being more 
closely connected with him. Inquiries were 
then made as to the guest's health, and how he 
was contented with his entertainment; to all 
which he could only answer in terms of satis- 
'nc.tion. He would, in truth, have liked much 



to ask of this man, as previously of the silent 
Barber, some information touching the horrid 
sound, which throughout the night had, if not 
tormented, at least discomposed him : but, 
mindful of his engagement, he forbore all ques- 
tions ; hoping that, without importunity, from 
the good-will of the Society, or in some other 
accidental way, he might be informed according 
to his wishes. 

Our friend, now when left alone, began to 
reflect on the strange person who had sent him 
this invitation, and knew not well what to 
make of the matter. To designate one or more 
superiors by a neuter noun, seemed to him a 
somewhat precarious mode of speech. For the 
rest, there was such a stillness all round, that 
he could not recollect of ever having passed a 
stiller Sunday. He went out of doors; and, 
hearing a sound of bells, walked towards the 
village. Mass was just over; and among the 
villagers and country-people crowding out of 
church, he observed three acquaintances of last 
night; a mason, a carpenter, and a boy. Farther 
on, he met among the Protestant worshippers 
the other corresponding three. How the rest 
managed their devotion was unknown to him: 
but so much he thought himself entitled to con- 
clude, that in this Society a full religious tolera- 
tion was practised. 

About midday, at the castle-gate, he was met 
by the Bailiff"; who then conducted him through 
various halls into a large antechamber, and 
there desired him to take a seat. Many persons 
passed through into an adjoining hall. Those 
already known were to be seen among them ; 
St. Christopher himself went by: all saluted the 
Bailifl^ and the stranger. But what struck our 
friend most in this afl^air was, that the whole 
party seemed to consist of artisans ; all dressed 
in the usual fashion, though extremely neat and 
clean : a few among the number you might at 
most perhaps have reckoned of the clerk 
species. 

No more guests now making their appear- 
ance, the Bailiff" led our friend through the 
stately door into a spacious hall. Here a table 
of immense length had been covered ; past the 
lower end of which he was conducted, towards 
the head, where he saw three persons standing 
in a cross direction. But what was his astonish- 
ment when he approached, and Lenardo, scarce- 
ly yet recognised, fell upon his neck. From this 
surprise he had not recovered, when another 
person, with no less warmth and vivacity, like- 
wise embraced him; announcing himself as our 
strange Friedrich, Natalia's brother. The rap- 
ture of these friends diff'used itself over all pre- 
sent; an exclamation of joy and blessing sounded 
along the whole table. But in a moment, the 
company being seated, all again became silent; 
and the repast, served up with a certain solem- 
nity, was enjoyed in like manner. 

Towards the conclusion of the ceremony, 
Lenardo gave a sign: two singers rose; and 
Wilhelm was exceedingly surprised to hear in 



GOETHE. 



322 



this place his yesternight's song; which we, for 
tlie sake of what follows, shall beg permission 
to insert once more. 

From the mountains to the champaign. 

By the glens and hills along, 
Comes a rustling and a tramping, 

Comes a mfilion as of song ; 
And this umletermined roving 

Brings delight, and brings good heed ; 
And thy stri\'ing, oe't with Loving, 

And thy living, be't in Deed ! 

Scarcely had this duet, accompanied by a 
chorus of agreeable number, approached its 
conclusion, when two other singers, on the op- 
posite side, started up impetuously; and, with 
earnest vehemence, inverted rather than con- 
tinued the song; to Wilhelm's astonishment, 
proceeding thus : 

For the tie is snapt asijnder, 

TnisE and loving hope are fled ; 
Can I tell, in fear aiid wonder. 

With what dangers now bested, 
I, cut off from fnend and brother. 

Like the widow in her wo, 
With the one and not the other. 

On and on, my way must go ! 

The chorus, taking up this strophe, grew 
more and more numerous, more and more voci- 
ferous; and yet the voice of St. Christopher, 
from the bottotn of the table, could still be dis- 
tinctly recognised among them. The lamenta- 
tion, in the end, rose almost to be frightful : a 
spirit of dispiritment, combining with the skil- 
ful execution of the singers, introduced some- 
thing unnatural into the whole, so that it pained 
our friend, and almost made him shudder. In 
truth, they all seemed perfectly of one mind ; 
and as if lamenting their own fate on the eve 
of a separation. The strange repetitions, the 
frequent resuscitation of a fatiguing song, at 
length became dangerous in the eyes of the 
Bond itself: Lenardo rose, and all instantly sat 
down, abruptly breaking off their hymn. The 
other, with friendly words, thus began: 

" Indeed I cannot blame you for continually 
recalling to your minds the destiny which stands 
before us all, that so, at any hour, you tnay be 
ready for it. If aged and life-weary inen have 
called to their neighbors : Think of dying! we 
younger and life-loving men may well keep en- 
couraging and reminding one another with the 
cheerful words: Think of wandering! Yet, 
withal, of a thing which we cither voluntarily 
undertake, or believe ourselves constrained to, 
it were well to speak with cheerfulness and 
moderation. You yourselves know best what, 
in our situation, is fixed, and what is movable : 
let us enjoy the former, too, in sprightly and gay 
tones; and to its success be this parting cup 
now drunk!" He emptied his glass, and sat 
down : the four singers instantly rose, and in 
flowing connected tones, thus began : 

Keep not standing iix'd and rooted, 

Briskly venture, briskly roam, 
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it, 

And slout heart, are still at home. 



In each land the sun does visit. 

We are gay, whate'er betide* 
To give room for wand'riiig is it 

That the world was made so wide. 

As the chorus struck in with its repetition 
of these lines, Lenardo rose, and with him all 
the rest. His nod set the whole company into 
singing movement; those at the lower end 
marched out, St. Christopher at their head, in 
pairs through the hall ; and the uplifted wan- 
derers' song grew clearer and freer, the farther 
they proceeded ; producing at last a particularly 
good effect, when, from the terraces of the castle- 
garden, you looked down over the broad valley, 
in whose fulness and beauty you might well 
have liked to lose yourself While the multi- 
tude were dispersing this way and that, accord- 
ing to their pleasure, Wilhelm was made ac- 
quainted with the third Superior. This was 
the Amtmann ; by whose kind influence many 
favors had been done the Society; in particular, 
the Castle of his patron the Count, situated 
among several families of rank, had been given 
up to their use, so long as they might think fit 
to tarry here. 

Towards evening, while the friends were in 
a far-seeing grove, there came a portly figure 
over the threshold, whom Wilhelm at once re- 
cognised as the Barber of this morning. To a 
low mute bow of the man, Lenardo answered : 
" You now come, as always, at the right season ; 
and will not delay to entertain us with your 
talent. I may be allowed," continued he, turn- 
ing towards Wilhelin, " to give you some know- 
ledge of our Society, the Bond of which I may 
flatter myself that I am. No one enters our 
circle unless he have some talents to show, 
which may contribute to the use or enjoyment 
of society in general. This man is an excellent 
surgeon ; of his skill as a beard-artist you your- 
self can testify: for these reasons, he is no less 
welcome than necessary to us. Now, as his 
employment usually brings with it a great and 
often burdensome garrulity, he has engaged, for 
the sake of hi.s own culture, to comply with a 
certain condition ; as, indeed, every one that 
means to live with us must agree to constrain 
himself in some particular point, if the greater 
freedom be left him in all other points. Ac- 
cordingly, our Barber has renounced the use of 
his tongue, in so far as aught common or casual 
is to be expressed by it: but by this means, 
another gift of speech has been unfolded in him, 
which acts by forethought, cunningly and plea- 
surably; I mean the gift of narration. 

"His life is rich in wonderful experiences, 
which he used to split in pieces, babbling of 
them at wrong times ; but which he now, con- 
strained by silence, repeats and arranges m his 
quiet thought. This also his power of iiTiagina 
tion now forwards, lending life and movement 
to past occurrences. With no common art and 
skill, he can relate to us genuine Antique Tales, 
or modern stories of the saine fabulous cast , 
thereby, at the right hour alfording u.-i a moft 



3 '24 



GOETHE. 



pleasant entertainment, when I loose his tongue 
for hiin ; which I now do; giving hiin, at the 
same time, this praise, that in the considerable 
period during which I have known him, he has 
never once been guilty of a repetition. I cannot 
but hope, that, in the present case, for love and 
respect to our dear guest, he will especially dis- 
tinguish himself." 

A sprightly cheerfulness spread over Red- 
cloak's face ; and without delay, he began 
speaking as follows. 

THE NEW MELUSINA. 

" Respected gentlemen ! Being aware that 
preliminary speeches and introductions are not 
much to your taste, I shall without farther talk 
assure you, tliat in the present instance, 1 hope 
to fulfil your commission moderately well. 
From me has many a true history gone forth 
already, to the high and universal satisfaction 
of hearers : Ijut, to-day I may assert, that I have 
one to tell, which far surpasses the former; and 
which, though it happened to me several years 
ago, still disquiets me in recollecting it, nay, 
still gives hope of some farther development. 

" By way of introduction, let me confess, that 
I have not always so arranged my scheme of 
life as to be certain of the next period in it, or 
even of the next day. In my youth, I was no 
first-rate economist; and often found myself in 
manifold perplexity. At one time, I undertook 
a journey, thinking to derive good profit in the 
course of it: but the scale I went upon was too 
liberaT; and after having commenced my travel 
with Extra-post, and then prosecuted it for a 
time in the Diligence, I at last found myself 
obliged to front the end of it on foot. 

" Like a gay young blade, it had been from 
of old my custom, on entering any inn, to look 
round for the landlady, or even the cook, and 
wheedle myself into favor with her; whereby, 
for most part, my shot was somewhat reduced. 

"One night at dusk, as I was entering the 
Post-house of a little town, and purposing to set 
about my customary operations, there came a 
fair double-seated coach with four horses, rat- 
tling up to the door behind me. I turned round ; 
and observed in it a young lady, without maid, 
without servants. I hastened to open the car- 
riage for her, and to ask if I could help her in 
anything. On stepping out, a fair form dis- 
played itself; and her lovely countenance, if 
you looked at it narrowly, was adorned with a 
slight shade of sorrow. I again asked if there 
was aught I could do for her. '0 yes I' said 
she, 'if you will lift that little Box carefully, 
which you will find standing on the seat, and 
bring it in : but I beg very much of you to carry 
It with all steadiness, and not to move or shake 
It in the least.' I took out the Box with great 
care; she shut the coach-door; we walked up 
.nairs together, and she told the servants that 
uhe was to stay here for the night. 

"We were now alone in the chamber: she 



desired me to put the Box on the table, which 
was standing at the wall; and as, by several 
of her movements, I observed that she wished 
to be alone, I took my leave, reverently but 
warmly kissing her hand. 

"'Order supper for us two,' said she then: 
and you may well conceive with what pleasure 
I executed the commission ; scarcely deigning, 
in my pride of heart, to cast even a side-look on 
landlady and menials. With impatience I ex- 
pected the moment that was to lead me back 
to her. Supper was served : we took our seats 
opposite each other ; I refreshed my heart, for 
the first time during a considerable while, with 
a good meal : and no less with so desirable a 
sight beside me; nay, it seemed as if she were 
growing fairer and fairer every moment. 

" Her conversation was pleasant ; yet she 
carefully waived whatever had reference to af- 
fection and love. The cloth was removed : I 
still lingered, I tried all sorts of manosuvres to 
get near her ; but in vain ; she kept me at my 
distance, by a certain dignity which I could not 
withstand ; nay, against my will, I had to part 
from her at a rather early hour. 

" After a night passed in waking or unrestfuUy 
dreaming, I rose early; inquired whether she 
had ordered horses ; and learning that she had 
not, I walked into the garden, saw her standing 
dressed at the window, and hastened up to her. 
Here, as she looked so fair, and fairer than ever, 
love, roguery, and audacity all at once started 
into motion within me : I rushed towards her, 
and clasped her in my arms. 'Angelic, irre- 
sistible being.' cried I, 'pardon ! but it is impos- 
sible — !' With incredible dexterity she whisked 
herself out of my arms, and I had not even time 
to imprint a kiss on her cheek. 'Forbear such 
outbreakings of a sudden foolish passion,' said 
she, ' if you would not scare away a happiness 
which lies close beside you, but which cannot 
be laid hold of till after some trials.' 

'"Ask of me what thou pleasest, angelic spi- 
rit!' cried I: 'but do not drive me to despair.' 
She answered with a smile: 'If you mean to 
devote yourself to my service, hear the terms. 
I am come hither to visit a lady of my friends, 
and with her I purpose to continue for a time: 
in the meanwhile, I could wish that my carriage 
and this Box were taken forward. Will you 
engage with if? You have nothing to do, but 
carefully to lift the Box into the carriage and 
out; to sit down beside it, and punctually take 
charge that it receive no harm. When you 
enter an inn, it is put upon a table, in a chamber 
by itself irr which you must neither sit nor 
sleep. You lock the chamber-door with this 
key, which will open and shut any lock, and 
has the peculiar property, that no lock shut by 
it can be opened in the interim.' 

"I looked at her; I felt strangely enough at 
heart: I promised to do all, if 1 might hope to 
see her soon, and if she would seal this hope to 
me with a kiss. She did so; and from that 
moment, I had become entirely her bondman. 



GOETHE. 



32S 



I was now to order horses, she said. We set- 
tled the way I was to take; the places where I 
was to wait, and expect her. She at last pressed 
a purse of gold into my hand, and I pressed my 
lips on the fair hand that gave it me. She seemed 
moved at parting ; and for me, I no longer knew 
what I was doing or was to do. 

" On my return frpm giving my orders, I 
found the room-door locked. I directly tried 
my master-key, and it performed its duty per- 
fectly. The door flew up : I found the chamber 
empty: only the Box standing on the table where 
I had laid it. 

" The carriage drove up : I carried the Box 
carefully down with me, and placed it by my 
side. The hostess asked: 'Where is the lady, 
then V A child answered : 'She is gone into the 
town.' I nodded to the people; and rolled off 
in triumph from the door, which I had last 
niglit entered with dusty gaiters. That in my 
hours of leisure I diligently meditated on this ad- 
venture, counted my money, laid many schemes, 
and still now and then kept glancing at the Box, 
you will readily imagine. I posted right for- 
ward ; passed several stages without alighting; 
and rested not till I had reached a considerable 
town, where my fair one had appointed me to 
wait. Her commands had been pointedly obey- 
ed : the Box always carried to a separate room, 
and two wax candles lighted beside it, for such 
also had been her order. I would then lock the 
chamber ; establish myself in my own, and take 
such comfort as the place aiforded. 

"For a while I was able to employ myself 
with thinking of her ; but by degrees the time 
began to hang heavy on my hands. I was not 
used to live without companions: these I soon 
found, at tables-d'liote, in coffee-houses, and 
public places, altogether to my wish. In such 
a mode of living my money began to melt away ; 
and one night, it vanished entirely from my 
purse, in a fit of passionate gaming, which I 
had not had the prudence to abandon. Void of 
money; with the appearance of a rich man, ex- 
pecting a heavy bill of charges; uncertain whe- 
ther and when my fair one would again make 
lier appearance, I felt myself in the deepest 
embarrassment. Doubly did I now long for 
her ; and believe, that, without her and her gold, 
jt was quite impossible for me to live. 

"After supper, which I had relished very 
.iltle, being forced for this time to consume it in 
solitude, I took to walking violently up and down 
my room : I spoke aloud to myself, cursed my 
folly with horrid execrations, threw myself on 
the floor, tore my liair, and indeed behaved in 
the most outrageous fashion. Suddenly, in the 
adjoinitjg chamber where the Box was, I heard 
a slight movement, and then a soft knocking at 
the well-bolted door, which entered from my 
apartment. I gather myself, grope for my mas- 
ter-key; but the door-leaves fly up of them- 
selves; and in the splendor of those burning 
wax-lights enters my Beauty. I cast myself at 
her leet, kiss her robe, her hands; she raises 



me ; I venture not to clasp her, scarcely to look 
at her; but candidly and repentantly confess to 
her my fault. ' It is pardonable,' said she ; 
'only it postpones your happiness and mine. 
You must now make another tour into the world, 
before we can meet again. Here is more money,' 
continued she, 'sufficient if you husband it with 
any kind of reason. But as wine and play have 
broug^ht you into this perplexity, be on your 
guard in future against wine and women, and 
let me hope for a glad meeting when the time 
comes.' 

" She retired over the threshold ; the door- 
leaves flew together: I knocked, I entreated; 
but nothing farther stirred. Next morning while 
presenting his bill, the waiter smiled, and said • 
'So we have found out at last, then, why you 
lock your door in so artful and incomprehensible 
a way, that no master-key can open it. We sup- 
posed you must have much money and precious 
ware laid up by you ; but now we have seen 
your treasure walking down stairs ; and in good 
truth, it seemed worthy of being well kept.' 

"To this I answered nothing; but paid my 
reckoning, and mounted with my Box into the 
carriage. I again rolled forth into the world, 
with the firmest resolution to be heedful in 
future of the warning given me by my fair and 
mysterious friend. Scarcely, however, had I 
once more reached a large town, when forth- 
with I got acquainted with certain interesting 
ladies, from whom I absolutely could not tear 
myself away. They seemed inclined to make 
me pay dear for their favor: for whije they 
still kept me at a certain distance, they led me 
into one expense after the other; and I, being 
anxious only to promote their satisfaction, once 
more ceaseii to think of my purse, but paid and 
spent straight forward, as occasion needed. 
But how great was my astonishment and joy, 
when, after some weeks, I observed that the 
fulness of my store was not in the least dimin- 
ished, that my pnrse was still as round and 
crammed as ever ! Wishing to obtain more 
strict knowledge of this pretty quality, I set 
myself down to count; I accurately marked the 
sum; and again proceeded in my joyous life as 
before. We had no want of excursions by land, 
and excursions by water; of dancing, singing, 
and other recreations. But now it required 
small attention to observe that the purse was 
actually diminishing; as if by my cursed count- 
ing, I had robbed it of the property of being 
uncountable. However, this gay mode of ex- 
istence liad been once entered on; I could not 
draw back ; and yet my ready money soon 
verged to a close. I execrated my situation ; 
upbraided my fair friend, for having so led nje 
into temptation; took it as an offence that she 
did not again show herself to me ; renounced, 
in my spleen, all duties towards her ; and re 
solved to break open the Box, and see if pei 
adventure any help might be found there. I 
was just about proceeding with my ptirpose. 
but I put it ofl" till night, that 1 might go through 
28 



326 



GOETHE. 



the business with full composure; and, in the 
mean time, I hastened off to a banquet, for 
which this was the appointed hour. Here 
again we got into a high key ; the wine and 
trumpet-sounding had flushed me not a little, 
when by the most villanous luck it chanced, 
that during the dessert, a former friend of my 
dearest fair one, returning from a journey, en- 
tered unexpectedly, placed himself beside her, 
and, without much ceremony, set about assert- 
ing his old privileges. Hence, very soon arose 
ill-h)mior, quarrelling, and battle: we plucked 
out our spits ; and I was carried home half-dead 
of several wounds. 

" The surgeon had bandaged me and gone 
away: it was far in the night; my sick-nurse 
had fallen asleep ; the door of the side-room 
went up ; my fair mysterious friend came in, 
and sat down by me on the bed. She asked 
how I was : I answered not, for I was faint 
and sullen. She continued speaking with much 
sympathy : she rubbed my temples with a cer- 
tain balsam, whereby I felt myself rapidly and 
decidedly strengthened, so strengthened that I 
could now get angry and upbraid her. In a 
violent speech I threw all the blame of my 
misfortune on her; on the passion she had in- 
spired me with ; on her appearing and vanish- 
ing, and the tedium, the longing which in such 
a case I could not but feel. I waxed more and 
more vehement, as if a fever had been coming 
on ; and I swore to her at last, that if she would 
not be mine, would not now abide with me and 
wed me, I had no wish to live any longer ; to 
all which I required a peremptory answer. As 
she lingered and held back with her expla- 
nation, I got altogether beside myself, and tore 
off my double and triple bandages, in the firm- 
est resolution to bleed to death. But what was 
my amazement, when I found all my wounds 
liealed, my skin smooth and entire, and this 
fair friend in my arms ! 

" Henceforth we were the happiest pair in 
the world. We both begged pardon of each 
other, without either of us rightly knowing 
why. She now promised to travel on along 
with me : and soon we were sitting side by 
side in the carriage; the little Box lying oppo- 
site us on the other seat. Of this 1 had never 
spoken to her, nor did I now think of speaking, 
though it lay there before our eyes ; and both 
of us, by tacit agreement, took charge of it, as 
circumstances might require; I, however, still 
carrying it to and from the carriage, and busy- 
ing myself, as formerly, with the locking of the 
doors. 

" So long as aught remained in my purse, I 
had continued to j)ay ; but when my cash went 
done, I signifipd the (act to her. ' That is easily 
helped,' said sue, [lointing to a couple of little 
pouches fixed ai ilie top, to the side of the car- 
riage. These I luid often observed before, but 
never turned to use. blie put her hand into the 
one, and pulled out some gold pieces, as from 
'.he othei some coins ol' silver; thereby showing 



me the possibility of meeting any scale of ex 
penditure, which we might choose to adopt. 
And thus we journeyed on from town to town, 
from land to land ; contented with each other 
and with the world : and I fancied not that she 
would again leave me ; the less so, that for 
some time she had evidently been as loving 
wives wish to be, a circumstance by which our 
happiness and mutual affection was increased 
still farther. But one morning, alas! she could 
not be found : and as my actual residence, with- 
out her company, became displeasing, I again 
took the road with my Box ; tried the virtue of 
the two pouches, and found it still unimpaired 

"My journey proceeded without accident. 
But if I had hitherto paid little heed to the 
mysteries of my adventure, expecting a natural 
solution of the whole, there now occurred some- 
thing which threw me into astonishment, into 
anxiety, nay, into fear. Being wont, in my im- 
patience for change of place, to hurry forward 
day and night, it was often my hap to be travel- 
ling in the dark; and when the lamps, by any 
chance, went out, to be left in utter obscurity. 
Once in the dead of such a night, I had fallen 
asleep ; and on awakening, I observed the glim- 
mer of a light on the covering of my carriage. 
I examined this more strictly, and found that it 
was issuing from the Box ; in which there seem- 
ed to be a chink, as if it had been chapped by 
the warm and dry weather of summer, which 
was now come on. My thoughts of jewels 
again came into my head ; I supposed there 
must be some carbuncle lying in the Box, and 
this point I forthwith set about investigating. I 
postured myself as well as might be, so that iriy 
eye was in immediate contact with the chink. 
But how great was my surprise, when a fair 
apartment, well-lighted, and furnished with 
much taste and even costliness, met my inspec- 
tion, just as if I had been looking down through 
the opening of a dome into a royal saloon! A 
fire was burning in the grate; and before it 
stood an arm-chair. I held my breath and con- 
tinued to observe. And now there entered from 
the other side of the apartment a lady with a 
book in her hand, whom I at once recognised 
for my wife, though her figure was contracted 
into the extreme of diminution. She sat down 
in the chair by the fire to read; she trimmed 
the coals with the most dainty pair of tongs; 
and in the course of her movements, I could 
clearly perceive that this fairest little creature 
was also in the family way. But now I was 
obliged to shift my constrained posture a little; 
and the next moment, when I bent down to 
look in again, and convince myself that it was 
no dream, the light had vanished, and my eye 
rested on empty darkness. 

" How amazed, nay, terrified I was, you may 
easily conceive. I started a thousand thoughts 
on this discovery, and in truth could think no- 
thing. In the midst of this, I fell asleep ; and 
on awakening, I fancied that it must have been 
a mere dreatn : yet I felt myself in some degree 



GOETHE. 



827 



estranged from my fair one ; and though I 
watched over the Box, but so much the more 
carefully, I knew not whether the event of her 
reappearance in human size was a thing which 
I should wish or dread. 

"After some time she did in fact reappear : 
one evening, in a white robe, she came gliding 
in ; and as it was just then growing dusky in 
my room, she seemed to me taller than when I 
had seen her last: and I remembered having 
heard that all beings of the mermaid and 
gnome species increased in stature very per- 
ceptibly at the fall of night. She flew, as usual, 
to my arms ; but I could not with right gladness 
press her to my obstructed breast. 

"'My dearest,' said she, 'I now feel by thy 
reception of me, what, alas, I already knew too 
well. Thou hast seen me in the interim: thou 
art acquainted with the state in which, at cer- 
tain times, I find myself; thy happiness and 
mine is interrupted, nay, it stands on the brink 
of being annihilated altogether. I must leave 
thee; and I know not whether I shall ever see 
thee again.' Her presence, the grace with 
which she spoke, directly banished from my 
memory almost every trace of that vision, which 
indeed had already hovered before me as little 
more than a dream. I addressed her with kind 
vivacity, convinced her of my passion, assured 
her that I was innocent, that my discovery was 
accidental: in short, I so managed it that she 
appeared composed, and endeavored to com- 
pose me. 

"'Try thyself strictly,' said she, 'whether this 
discovery has not hurt thy love, whether thou 
canst forget that I live in two forms beside thee, 
whether the dimiimtion of my being will not 
also contract thy affection.' 

"I looked at her: she was fairer than ever; 
and I thought within myself: Is it so great a 
misfortune, after all, to have a wife who from 
time to time becomes a dwarf, so that one can 
carry her about with liim in a casket? Were it 
not mu<h worse if she became a giantess, and 
put her husband in the box? My gaiety of heart 
had returned. 1 would not for the whole world 
have let her go. 'Best heart,' said I, 'let us be 
and continue ever as we have been. Could 
either of us wish to be better? Enjoy thy con- 
veuicncy; and I promise thee to guard the Box 
with so much the more faithfulness. Why 
shouhl the prettiest sight I have ever seen in 
my life make a bail impression on me? How 
IjHppy would lovers be, could they but procure 
such miniature pictures! Aiul after all it was 
but a picture, a little sleiglit-of-hand-deception. 
Thou art trying and teasing me: but thou shalt 
see how I will stand it.' 

"'The matter is more serious than thou 
thinkest,' said the fair one: 'however, I am 
truly glad to see thee take it so lightly; for 
much gooil may still be awaiting us both. I 
will irust in thee; and for my own part do my 
utmost: only promise me that thou wilt never 
mention this discovery by way of reproach. 



Another prayer likewise I most earnestly tnake 
to thee : Be more than ever on thy guard against 
wine and anger.' 

" I promised what she required ; I could have 
gone on promising to all lengths; but she her- 
self turned aside the conversation; and thence- 
forth all proceeded in its former routine. We 
had no inducement to alter our place of re- 
sidence : the town was large, the society vari- 
ous ; and the fine season gave rise to many an 
excursion, and garden-festival. 

"In all such atnusements the presence of my 
wife was welcome, nay, eagerly desired, by 
women as well as men. A kind insinuating 
manner, joined with a certain dignity of bearing 
secured to her on all hands praise and estima- 
tion. Besides, she could play beautifully on the 
lute, accompanying it with her voice; and no 
social night could be perfect, unless crowned by 
the graces of this talent. 

"I will be free to confess that I have never 
got much good of music ; on the contrary, it has 
always rather had a disagreeable effect on me. 
My fair one soon noticed this, and accordingly, 
when by ourselves, she never tried to entertain 
me by such means : in return, however, she 
appeared to indemnify herself while in so.-iety, 
where indeed she always found a crowd of 
admirers. 

" And now, why should I deny it, our late 
dialogue, in spite of my best intentions, had by 
no means sufficed to abolish the matter within 
me: on the contrary, my temper of mind had 
by degrees got into the strangest tune, almost 
without my being conscious of it. One night, 
in a large company, this hidden grudge broke 
loose, and by its consequences produced to my- 
self the greatest damage. 

" When I look back on it now, I in fact loved 
my Beauty far less, after diat unlucky discovery: 
I was also growing jealous of her; a whim that 
had never struck me before. This night at 
table, I found myself placed very much to my 
mind beside my two neighbours, a couple of 
ladies, who, for some time, had appeared to me 
very charming. Amid jesting and soft small 
talk, I was not sparing of my wine: while, on 
the other side, a pair of musical dilletanti had 
got hold of my wife, and at last contrived to 
lead the company into singing separately, and 
by way of chorus. This put me into ill-humor. 
The two amateurs appeared tome impertinent; 
the singing vexed me; and when, as my turn 
came, they even requested a solo-strophe from 
me, I grew truly indignant, I emptied my glass, 
and set it down again with no soft movement. 

"The grace of my two fair neighbours soon 
pacified me, indeed ; but there is an evil na- 
ture in wrath, when once it is set agoing. It 
went on fermenting within me, though all things 
were of a kind to mduce joy and complaisance 
On the contrary, I WHxed more splenetic than 
ever when a lute was produced, and my fair 
one began fingering it and singing, to the ad 
miration of all the rest. Unhappily, a genercl 



328 



GOETHE. 



silence was requested. So then, I was not even 
to talk any more; and these tones were going 
through me like a toothach. Was it any won- 
der that, at last, the smallest spark should blow 
vy the mine? 

" The songstress had just ended a song amid 
the loudest applauses, when she looked over to 
rne ; and this truly with the most loving face in 
the world. Unluckily, its lovingness could not 
penetrate so far. She perceived that I had just 
gulped down a cup of wine, and was pouring 
out a fresh one. With her right forefinger, she 
beckoned to me in kind threatening. 'Consider 
that it is wine !' said she, not louder than for 
myself to hear it. — 'Water is for mermaids!' 
cried I. — 'My ladies,' said she to my neighbours, 
•crown the cup with all your gracefulness, that 
it be not too often emptied.' — 'You will not let 
yourself be tutored?' whispered one of them in 
my ear. — 'What ails the Dwarf?' cried I, with 
a more violent gesture, in which I overset the 
glass. — 'Ah, what you have spilt!' cried the 
paragon of women ; at the same time, twanging 
her strings, as if to lead back the attention of 
he company from this disturbance to herself 
Her attempt succeeded ; the more completely 
as she rose to her feet, seemingly that she might 
play with greater convenience, and in this atti- 
t'lde continued preluding. 

"At sight of the red wine running over the 
table-cloth, I returned to myself I perceived 
the great fault I had been guilty of; and it cut 
me through the very heart. Never till now had 
music spoken to me : the first verse she sang 
was a friendly good-nigljt to the company, here 
as they were, as they might still feel themselves 
together. With the next verse they became as 
if scattered asunder ; each felt himself solitary, 
separated, no one could fancy that he was pre- 
sent any longer. But what shall I say of the 
last verse? It was directed to me alone; the 
voice of injured Love bidding farewell to Mo- 
roseness and Caprice. 

"In silence I conducted her home; forebod- 
ing no good. Scarcely, however, had we reached 
our chamber, when she began to show herself 
exceedingly kind and graceful, nay, even ro- 
guish ; she made me the happiest of all men. 

"Next morning, in high spirits and full of 
love, I said to her: 'Thou hast so often sung, 
when asked in company; as, for example, thy 
touching farewell song last night. Come now, 
for my sake, and sing me a dainty gay welcome 
to this morning hour, that we may feel as we 
were meeting for the first time.' 

"'That I may not do, my friend,' said she 
seiiously. 'The song of last night referred to 
our parting, which must now forthwith take 
place : for I can only tell thee, the violation of 
thy promise and oath will have the worst con- 
sequences for us both; thou hast scofl'ed away 
a great felicity, and I too must renounce my 
dearest wishes.' 

•' As I now pressed and entreated her to ex- 
plain herself more clearly, she answered : 



' That, alas, I can well do ; for, at all events 
my continuance with thee is over. Hear, then, 
what I would rather have concealed to the 
latest times. The form, under which thou 
sawest me in the Box, is my natural and proper 
form : for I am of the race of King Eckwald, 
the dread Sovereign of the Dwarfs, concerning 
whom authentic History has recorded so much. 
Our people are still as of old laborious and busy, 
and therefore easy to govern. Thou must not 
fancy that the Dwarfs are behindhand in their 
manufacturing skill. Swords which followed 
the foe, when you cast them after him ; invisible 
and mysteriously binding chains; impenetrable 
shields, and such like ware, in old times, formed 
their staple produce. But now they chiefly em- 
ploy themselves with articles of convenience 
and ornament; in which truly they surpass all 
people of the Earth. I may well say, it would 
astonish thee to walk through our workshops 
and warehouses. All this would be right and 
good, were it not that with the whole naticu in 
general, but more particularly with the royal 
family, there is one peculiar circumstance con- 
nected.' 

She paused for a moment; and I again begged 
farther light on these wonderful secrets; which 
accordingly she forthwith proceeded to grant. 

"'It is well known,' said she, 'that God, so 
soon as he had created the world, and the ground 
was dry, and the mountains were standing 
bright and glorious, that God, I say, thereupon, 
in the very first place, created the Dwarfs; to 
the end, that there might be reasonable beings 
also, who, in their passages and chasms, might 
contemplate and adore his wonders in the in- 
ward parts of the Earth. It is farther well 
known, that this little race by degrees became 
uplifted in heart, and attempted to acquire the 
dominion of the Earth ; for which reason God 
then created the Dragons, in order to drive back 
the Dwarfs into their mountains. Now, as the 
Dragons themselves were wont to nestle in the 
large caverns and clefts, and dwell there ; and 
many of them, too, were in the habit of spitting 
fire, and working much other mischief the poor 
little Dwarfs were by this means thrown into 
exceeding straits and distress, so that not know- 
ing what in the world to do, they humbly and 
fervently turned to God. and called to him in 
prayer, that he would vouchsafe to abolish this 
unclean Dragon generation. But though it con- 
sisted not with his wisdom to destroy his own 
creatures, yet the heavy sufferings of the pooi 
Dwarfs so moved his compassion, that anon lie 
created the Giants, ordaining them to fight these 
Dragons, and if not root them out, at least lessen 
their numbers. 

" ' Now, no sooner had the Giants got mode- 
rately well through with the Dragons, than tlieii 
hearts also began to wax wanton; and, in then 
presumption, they practised much tyranny, es- 
pecially on the good little Dwarfs, who then 
once more in their need turned to the Lord ; 
and he, by the power of his hand, creited the 



GOETHE. 



329 



Knights, who were to make war on the Giants 
Riid Dragons, and to live in concord with the 
Dwarfs. Hereby was the work of creation com- 
pleted on this side: and it is plain, that hence- 
forth Giants and Dragons, as well as Knights 
and Dwarfs, have always maintained them- 
selves in being. From this, my friend, it will 
be clear to thee, that we are of the oldest race 
on the Earth ; a circumstance which does lis 
honor, but, at the same time, brings great disad- 
vantage along with it. 

"'For as there is nothing in the world that 
can endure forever, but all that has once been 
great, must become little and fade, it is our lot, 
also, that ever since the creation of the world, 
we have been waning and growing smaller; 
especially the royal family, on whom, by reason 
of their pure blood, this destiny presses with the 
heaviest force. To remedy this evil, our wise 
teachers have many years ago devised the ex- 
pedient of sending forth a Princess of the royal 
house from time to time into the world, to wed 
some honorable Knight, that so the Dwarf pro- 
geny may be refected, and saved from entire 
decay.' 

" Though my fair one related these things 
with an air of the utmost sincerity, I looked at 
her hesitatingly; for it seemed as if she meant 
to palm some fable on me. As to her own 
dainty lineage, I had not the smallest doubt: 
but that she should have laid hold of me in 
place of a Knight, occasioned some mistrust; 
seeing I knew myself too well to suppose that 
my ancestors had come into the world by an 
immediate act of creation. 

"I concealed my wonder and scepticism, and 
asked her kindly; 'But tell me, my dear cbild, 
how hast thou attained this large and stately 
sliape? For I know few women that in rich- 
ness of form can compare with thee.' — 'Thou 
slialt hear,' replied she. ' It is a settled maxim 
in the Council of the Dwarf Kings, that tliis ex- 
traordinary step be forborne as long as it possibly 
can ; which, indeed, I cannot but say is quite 
natural and proper. Perhaps they might have 
lingered still longer, had not my brother, born 
after ine, come into the world so exceedingly 
small, that the nurses actually lost him out of 
his swaddling-clothes, and no creature yet knows 
whither he is gone. On this occurrence, unex- 
ampled in the annals of Dwarfdoin, the Sages 
were assembled ; and without more ado, the 
resolution was taken, and I sent out in quest of 
a husband.' 

"'The resolution!" exclaimed I: 'that is all 
extremely well. One can resolve, one can take 
his resolution : but to give a Dwarf this hea- 
venly sha|)e, how did your Sages manage that?' 

" ' It had been provided for already,' said she, 
'by our ancestors. In the royal treit^ury, lay a 
monstrous gold ring. I speak of it as it then 
appeared to me, when I saw it in my childhood ; 
for it was this same ring, which I have here on 
my finger. We now went to work as follows: 

"'1 was inlbrmed of all that awaited ine ; 
2k 



and instructed what I had to do and to forbear. 
A splendid palace, after the pattern of my fa- 
ther's favorite summer residence, was then got 
ready: a main edifice, wings, and whatever 
else you could think of. It stood at the entrance 
of a large rock-cleft, which it decorated in the 
handsomest style. On the appointed day, oni 
court moved thither, my parents also and my 
self. The army paraded ; and four-and-twenty 
priests, not without difficulty, carried on a costly 
litter the mysterious ring. It was placed on the 
threshold of the building, just within the spot 
where you entered. Many ceremonies were 
observed ; and after a pathetic farewell, I pro- 
ceeded to my task. I slept forward to tlie ring; 
laid my finger on it ; and that instant, began 
perceptibly to wax in stature. In a few mo- 
ments I had reached my present size ; and then 
I put the ring on my finger. But' now, in the 
twinkling of an eye, the doors, windows, gates 
flapped to; the wings drew up into the body 
of the edifice ; instead of a palace, stood a little 
Box beside me; which I forthwith lifted, and 
carried off with me; not without a pleasant 
feeling in being so tall and strong, still, indeed, 
a dwarf to trees and mountains, to streams and 
tracts of land; yet a giant to grass and herbs; 
and above all, to ants, from whom we Dwarfs, 
not being always on the best terms with them, 
often suffer considerable annoyance. 

" ' How it fared with me on my pilgrimage, I 
might tell thee at great length. Suffice it to say, 
I tried many; but no one save thou seemed 
worthy of being honored to renovate and per 
petuate the line of the glorious Eckwald.' 

"In the course of these narrations, my head 
had now and then kept wagging, without my- 
self having absolutely shaken it. I put several 
questions; to which I received no very satisfac- 
tory answers; on the contrary, I learned, to my 
great affliction, that after what had happened, 
she must needs return to her parents. She had 
hopes still, she said, of getting back to me : but 
for the present, it was indispensably necessary 
to present herself at court; as otherwise, both 
for her and me, there was nothing but utter 
ruin. The purses would soon cease to pay; 
and who knew what all would be the conse- 
quences'? 

"On hearing that our money would run short, 
I inquired no farther into consequences: I 
shrugged my shoulders; I was silent, and she 
seemed to understand me. 

" We now packed up, and got into our car- 
riage ; the Box standing opposite us; in which, 
however, I could still see no symptoms of a pa 
lace. In this way we proceeded several stages 
Post-money and drink-money were readily and 
richly paid from the pouches to the right and 
left; till at last we reached a mountainous dis- 
trict; and no sooner had we alighted here, than 
my fair one walked forward, directing me to 
follow her with the Box. She led me by rather 
steep paths to a narrow plot of green ground, 
through which a clear brook now gushed in 
28* 



330 



GOETHE. 



little falls, now ran in quiet windings. She 
pointed to a little knoll; bade me set the Box 
down there, then said: 'Farewell! Thou wilt 
easily find the way back ; remember me j I 
hope to see thee again.' 

" At this moment, I felt as if I could not leave 
her. She was just now in one of her fine days, 
or if you will, her fine hours. Alone with so 
fair a being, on the green sward, among grass 
and flowers, girt in by rocks, waters murmuring 
round you, what heart could have remained in- 
sensible ! I came forward to seize her hand, to 
3lasp her in iny arms: but she motioned me 
back ; threatening me, though still kindly enough, 
with great danger, if I did not instantly withdraw. 

'"Is there no possibility, then,' exclaimed I, 
'of my staying with thee, of thy keeping me 
beside thee?' These words I uttered with such 
rueful tones and gestures, that she seemed 
touched by them, and after some thought, con- 
fessed to me that a continuance of our union 
was not entirely impossible. Who happier 
than I ! My importunity, which increased every 
moment, compelled her at last to come out with 
her scheme, and inform me that if I too could 
resolve on becoming as little as I had once seen 
her, I might still remain with her, be admitted 
to her house, her kingdom, her family. The 
proposal was not altogether to my mind ; yet at 
this moment I positively could not tear myself 
away ; so, having already for a good while been 
accustomed to the marvellous, and being at all 
times prone to bold enterprises, I closed with 
her offer, and said she might do with me as she 
pleased. 

"1 was thereupon directed to hold out the 
little finger of my right hand : she placed her 
own against it; then with her left hand, she 
quite softly pulled the ring from her finger, and 
let it run along mine. That instant, I felt a 
violent twinge on my finger : the ring shrunk 
together, and tortured me horribly. I gave a 
loud cry, and caught round me for my fair one, 
but she had disappeared. What state of mind 
1 was in during this moment, I find no words 
to express ; so I have nothing more to say, but 
that I very soon, in my miniature size, found 
myself beside tny fair one in a wood of grass- 
stalks. The joy of meeting after this short yet 
most strange separation, or, if you will, of this 
re-union without separation, exceeds all concep- 
tion. I fell on her neck; she replied to my 
caresses, and the little pair was as happy as the 
large one. 

" With some difficulty, we now mounted a 
hill: 1 say dilficuliy, because the sward had be- 
come for us an almost impenetrable forest Yet 
at length we reached a bare space; and how 
surprised was I at perceiving there a large 
boiled mass; which, ere long, I could not but 
recognise for the Box, in the same state as when 
I had set it down. 

"'Go up to it, my friend,' said she, 'and do 
hut knock with the ring: thou shalt see won- 
ders.' 1 went up accordingly, and no sooner had 



I rapped, than I did, in fact, witness the great- 
est wonder. Two wings came jutting out ; and 
at the same time there fell, like scales and 
chips, various pieces this way and that; while 
doors, windows, colonnades, and all that be- 
longs to a complete palace at once came into 
view. 

" If ever you have seen one of Rontchen's 
desks; how, at one pull, a multitude of springs 
and latches get in motion, and writing board 
and writing materials, letter and money com- 
partments, all at once, or in quick succession, 
start forward, you will partly conceive how this 
palace unfolded itself, into which my sweet 
attendant now introduced me. In the large 
saloon, I directly recognised the fire-place which 
I had l"ormerly seen liom above, and the chair 
in which she had then been sitting. And on 
looking up, I actually fancied I coiUd still see 
something of the chink in the dome, through 
which I had peeped in. I spare you the de- 
scription of the rest: in a word, all was spa- 
cious, splendid, and tasteful. Scarcely had I 
recovered from my astonishment, when I heard 
afar otf a sound of military music. My better 
half sprang up; and with rapture announced 
to me the approach of His Majesty her Father. 
We slept out to the threshold, and here beheld 
a magnificent procession moving towards us, 
from a considerable cleft in the rock. Soldiers, 
servants, officers of stale, and glittering courtiers, 
followed in order. At last you observed a 
golden throng, and in the midst of it the King 
himself So soon as the whole procession had 
drawn up before the palace, the King, with his 
nearest retinue, slept forward. His loving 
daughter hastened out to him, pulling me along 
with her. We threw ourselves at his feet; he 
raised me very graciously ; and on coming to 
stand before him, I perceived, that in this little 
world I was still the most considerable figure. 
We proceeded together to the palace; where 
His Majesty, in presence of his whole court, 
was pleased to welcome me with a well-studied 
oration, in which he expressed his surprise at 
finding us here; acknowledged me as his son- 
in-law, and appointed the nuptial ceremony to 
take place on the morrow. 

"A cold sweat went over me as I heard him 
speak of marriage: for I dreaded this event 
more than music, which otherwise appeared to 
me the most hateful thing on Earth. Your 
music-makers, I used to say, enjoy at least the 
conceit of being in unison with each other, and 
working in concord : for when they have tweak- 
ed and tuned long enough, grating our ears with 
all manner of screeches, they believe in their 
hearts that the matter is now adjusted, and one 
instrument accurately suited to the other, llie 
band-master himself is in this happy delusion; 
and so they set forth joyfully, though still tear- 
ing onr nerves to pieces. In the marriage-state, 
even this is not the case: for although it is but 
a duet, and you might think two voices, or even 
two instruments, might in some degree be at- 



GOETHE. 



331 



tuned to each other, yet this happens very sel- 
dom: for while the man gives out one tone, the 
wife directly takes a higher one, and the man 
again a higher ; and so it rises from the cham- 
ber to the choral pitch, and farther and farther, 
till at last wind-instruments themselves cannot 
reach it. And now, as harmonica! music itself 
is an offence to me, it will not be surprising 
that disharmonical should be a thing which 1 
cannot endure. 

" Of the festivities in which the day was 
spent, I shall and can say nothing: for I paid 
small heed to any of them. The sumptuous 
victuals, the generous wine, the royal amuse- 
ments, I could not relish. I kept thinking and 
considering what I was to do. Here, however, 
there was but little to be considered. I deter- 
mined, once for all, to take myself away, and 
hide somewhere. Accordingly, I succeeded in 
reaching the chink of a stone, where I entrench- 
ed and concealed myself as well as might be. 
My first care after this was to get the unhappy 
ring off my finger; an enterprise, however, 
which would by no means prosper, for on the 
contrary, I felt that every pull I gave, the metal 
grew slraiter and cramped me with violent 
pains, which again abated so soon as I desisted 
from my purpose. 

"Early in the morning I awoke (for my little 
person had slept, and very soundly); and was 
just stepping out to look farther about me, when 
I felt a kind of rain coming on. Through the 
grass, flowers, and leaves, there fell as it were 
something like sand and grit in large quantities ; 
but v/hat was my horror when the whole of it 
became alive, and an innumerable host of Ants 
rushed down on me! No sooner did they ob- 
serve me, than they made an attack on all 
sides; and though 1 <lefen<led myself stoutly 
and gallantly enough, they at last so heujmed 
me in, so nipped and pinched me, that 1 was 
glad to hear them calling to surrender. I sur- 
rendered instantly and wholly; whereupon an 
Ant of respectable stature approaclied me with 
courtesy, nay, with reverence, and even recom- 
mended itself to my good graces. I learned 
that the Ants had now become allies of my 
father-in-law, and by him been called out in the 
present emergency, and commissioued to fetch 
me back. Here then was little I in the hands 
of creatures still less. I had nothing for it but 
looking Ibrward to tiie marriage; nay, I must 
now thank Heaven, if my father-in-law were 
not wroth, if my fair one had not taken the 
sullens. 

"Let me skip over tlie whole train of cere- 
tnonies : in a word, we were wedded. Gaily 
and joyously as matters went, there were, never- 
theless, solitary hours, in which you were led 
astray inlo reflection ; and now there happened 
to me something which had never happened 
before: what, and how, you shall learn. 

'■ Everything about me was completely adapt- 
ed to juy jireaent Ibrju and wants; the bottles 
and glasses uere in a lit ratio to a iittle toper, 



nay, if you will, better measure, in proportion, 
than with us. In my tiny palate, the dainty 
tidbits tasted excellently ; a kiss from the little 
mouth of my spouse was still the most charm- 
ing thing in nature; and 1 will not deny that 
novelty made all these circumstances highly 
agreeable. Unhappily, however, I had not for- 
gotten my former situation. I felt within me a 
scale of bygone greatness; and it rendered me 
restless and cheerless. Now, for the first time, 
did I understand what the philosophers might 
mean by their Ideal, which they say so plagues 
the mind of man. I had an Ideal of myself; 
and often in dreams I appeared as a giant. In 
short, my wife, my ring, my dwarf figure, and 
so many other bonds and restrictions, made me 
utterly unhappy, so that I began to think seri- 
ously about obtaining my deliverance. 

"Being persuaded that the whole magic lay 
in the ring, I resolved on filing this asunder. 
From the court-jeweller, accordingly, I borrow- 
ed some files. By good luck, I was left-handed, 
as, indeed, throughout my whole life, I had 
never done aught in the riglit-handed way. I 
stood tightly to the work: it was not small : for 
the golden hoop, so thin as it appeared, had 
grown proportionably thicker in contracting 
from its former length. All vacant hours I 
privately a|iplied to this task ; and at last, the 
metal being nearly through, I was provident 
enough to step out of doors. This was a wise 
measure: for all at once the golden hoop started 
sharply from my finger, and my frame shot aloft 
with such violence, that I actually fancied I 
should dash against the sky; and, at all events, 
I must have bolted through the dome of our 
palace; nay, perhaps, in my new awkward- 
ness, have destroyed this summer-residence al- 
together. 

" Here then was I standing again ; in truth, 
so much the larger, but also, as it seemed to me, 
so much the more foolish and helpless. On re 
covering from my stupefaction, 1 observed the 
royal strong-box lying near me, which I found 
to be moderately heavy, as 1 lifted it, and car- 
ried it down the foot-path to the next stage ; 
where I directly ordered horses, and set forth. 
By the road, I soon made trial of the two side- 
pouches. Instead of money, which appeared 
to be run out, I found a little key: it belonged 
to the strong-box, in which X got some moderate 
compensation. So long as this held out, I made 
use of the carriage : by and by I sold it, and 
proceeded by the Diligence. The strong-box, 
too, I at length cast from me, having no hope 
of its ever filling again. And thus in the end, 
though after a considerable circuit, 1 again re- 
turned to the kitchen-hearth, to the landlady 
and the cook, where you were first introduced 
to me." 

WHERK IS THE TIIATTOR? 

"No! No!' exclaimed he, violetitly anu 
hastily rushing into the chamber allolteil hnn, 
and setting down his candle: "No! 't is impo* 



332 



GOETHE. 



Bible ! But whither shall I turn f For the first 
time I tliinlc otherwise than he ; for the tirst 
time, 1 feel, I wish otherwise. O father! couldst 
thou but be present invisibly, conldst tliou but 
look through and through me, thou wouldst see 
that I am still the same, still thy true, obedient, 
affectionate son. Yet to say No! To contradict 
my father's dearest, long-cherished wish ! How 
shall I disclose it? How shall I express it? No, 
I cannot marry Julia ! While I spealc of it, I 
shudder. And how shall I appear before him, 
tell him this, him the good, kind father? He 
looks at me with astonishment, without speak- 
ing: the prudent, clear-sighted, gifted man, can 
find no words. Wo is me! Ah, I know well 
to whom I would confide this pain, this per- 
plexity; who it is I would choose for my ad- 
vocate ! Before all others, thou, Lucinda ! And 
I would first tell thee how I love thee, how I 
give myself to thee, and pressingly entreat thee 
to speak for me ; and if thou canst love me 
again, if thou wilt be mine, to speak for us 
both." 

To explain this short pithy monologue will 
require some details. 

Professor N. of N. had an only boy of singular 
beauty, whom, till the child's eighth year, he 
had left entirely in charge of his wife. This 
excellent woman had directed the hours and 
days of her son, in living, learning, and all good 
behaviour. She died ; and the father instantly 
felt, that to prosecute this parental tutelage was 
impossible. In their lifetime, all had been har- 
mony between the parents : they had labored 
for a common aim, had determined in concert 
what was next to be done ; and the mother had 
not wanted skill to execute wisely, by herself, 
what the two had planned together. Double 
and treble was now the widower's anxiety, see- 
ing, as he could not but daily see, that for the 
sons of professors, even in universities, it was 
only by a sort of miracle that a happy educa- 
tion could be expected. 

In this strait he applied to his friend the 
Oberan-itmann of R., with whom he had already 
been treating of plans for a closer alliance be- 
tween their families. The Oberamtmami gave 
him counsel and assistance; so the son was 
established in one of those Institutions, which 
still fiourish in Germany, and where charge is 
taken of the whole man, and body, soul, and 
spirit are trained with all attention. 

The son was thus provided for; the father, 
however, felt himself very lonely: robbed of 
Ills wife ; shut out from the cheerful presence 
of tlje boy, whom he had seen, without etfort of 
hi . growing up in such desirable culture. But 
In ..! again the friendship of the Oberamtmann 
Bt-rved him in good stead : the distance of their 
abodes vanished before his affection, his desire 
fcr movement, for diversion of thought. In this 
aospitable home the widowetl Man of Letters 
Sjund, in a family circle motherless like his 
own, two beautiful little daughters growing up 
iix diverse loveliness; a state of things which 



more and more confirmed the fathers in theit 
purpose, in their hope, of one day seeing their 
families united in the most joyful bonds. 

They lived under the sway of a mild good 
Prince: the meritorious Oberamtmann was cer- 
tain of his post during life; and in the appoint- 
ment of a successor, his recommendation was 
likely to go far. And now, according to the 
wise fainily arrangement, sanctioned also by 
the Minister, Lucidor was to train himself for 
the important office of his future father-in-law. 
This in consequence he did, from step to step. 
Nothing was neglected in communicating to 
hiin all sorts of knowledge, in developing in 
him all sorts of activity, which the State in any 
case requires: practice in rigorous judicial law; 
and also in the laxer sort, where prudence and 
address find their proper field; foresight for 
daily ways and means; not excluding higher 
and more comprehensive views, yet all tending 
towards practical life, and so as with effect and 
certainty to be einployed in its concerns. 

With such purposes had Lucidor spent his 
school-years: by his father and his patron, he 
was now warned to make ready for the uni- 
versity. In all departments he already showed 
the fairest talents ; and to Nature he was farther 
indebted for the singular happiness of inclining, 
out of love for his lather, out of respect for his 
friend, to turn his capabilities, first from obe- 
dience, then from conviction, on that very object 
to which he was directed. He was placed in 
a foreign university, and here, both by his own 
account in his letters, and by the testimony of 
his teachers and overseers, he continued walk 
ing in the path that led towards his appointed 
goal. It was only objected to him, that in cer- 
tain cases he had been too impetuously brave. 
The father shook his head at this ; the Ober- 
amtmann nodded. Who would not have been 
proud of such a son ? 

Meanwhile, the two daughters, Julia and 
Lucinda, were waxing in stature and graces. 
Julia, the younger, waggish, lovely, unstable, 
highly entertaining; the other difficult to pour- 
tray, for, in her sincerity and purity, she repre- 
sented all that we prize most in woman. Visits 
were paid and repaid ; and, in the Professor's 
house, Julia found the most inexhaustible amuse- 
ment. 

Geography, which he failed not to enliven by 
Topography, belonged to his province; and no 
sooner did Julia cast her eyes on any of the 
volumes, of which a whole series from Ho 
mann's warehouse were standing there, than 
the cities all and sundry had to be mustered, 
judged, preferred, or rejected: all havens espe- 
cially obtained her favor ; other towns, to acqinre 
even a slight approval from her, must stand 
forth well supplied with steeples, domes, and 
minarets. 

Julias father often left her for weeks to the 
care of his tried friend. She was ar.-tually ad 
vancing in knowledge of her science; ami al- 
ready the inhabited world, in its main features, 



GOETHE. 



333 



in its chief points and places, stood before her 
with some accuracy and distinctness. The 
garbs of foreign nations attracted her peculiar 
attention ; and often when her foster-father 
aslced Iter in jest; If among the many young 
htmdsorne men who were passing to and fro 
before lier window, there was not some one or 
other whom she liked? she would answer: 
" Yes, indeed, if he do but look odd enough." 
And as our young students are seldom behind- 
hand in this particular, she had often occasion 
to take notice of ndividuals among them: they 
brought to her it »nd the costume of foreign na- 
tions; however she declared in the end, that 
if she was to bestow her undivided attention on 
any one, he must be at least a Greek, equipped 
in the complete fashion of his country; on 
which account, also, she longed to be at some 
Leipzig Fair where, as she understood, such 
persons were to be seen walking the streets. 

After his dry and often irksome labors, our 
Teacher had now no happier moments, than 
those he spent in inirthfully instructing her; 
triumphing withal, in secret, that a being ^o 
attractive, ever entertaining, ever entertained, 
was in the end to be his own daughter. For 
the rest, the two fathers had mutually agreed, 
that no hint of their purpose should be com- 
municated to the girls; from Lucidor, also, it 
was kept secret. 

Thus had years passed away, as indeed they 
very lightly pass; Lucidor presented himself 
completed, having stood all trials to the joy 
even of the sujierior overseers, who wished 
nothing more heartily than being able, with a 
good conscience, to fulfil the hopes of old, 
worthy, favored, end deserving servants. 

And so the business had at length by quiet 
regular steps come so far, that Lucidor. after 
having demeaned himself in subordinate sta- 
tions to universal satisfaction, was now to be 
placed in a very advantageous post, suitable to 
his wishes and merits, and lying just midway 
between the University and the Oberamtman- 
ship. 

The father now spoke with his son about 
Julia, of whom he had hitherto only hinted, as 
about his bride and wife, without any doubt or 
condition ; congratulating him on the happiness 
of having appropriated such a jewel to himself^ 
The Professor saw in fancy his daughter-in law 
again from time to time in his house; occupied 
with charts, plans, and views of cities : the son 
recalled to mind the gay and most lovely crea- 
ture, who, in times of childhood, had, by her 
rogueries as by her kindliness, always delighted 
him. Lucidor was now to ride over to the 
Oberamtmann's, to take a closer view of the 
full-grown fair one; and, for a few week.s, to 
surrender himself to the habitudes and fami- 
liarity of her household. If the young people, 
as was to be hoped, should speedily agree, the 
Profe.s.sor was forthwith to ajipear, that so a 
solemn betrothmont might forever secure the 
anticipated happiness. 



Lucidor arrives, is received with the friend- 
liest welcome; a chamber is allotted him; he 
arranges himself there, and appears. And now 
he finds, besides the members of the family 
alrea<ly known to us, a grown-up sou ; misbred 
certainly, yet shrewd and good-natured; so that 
if you liked to take him as the Jesting Counsel- 
lor of the party, he fitted not ill with the rest. 
There belonged, moreover, to the house, a very 
old, but healthy and gay-hearted man; quiet, 
wise, discreet ; completing his life, as it were, 
and here and there requiring a little help. Di- 
rectly after Lucidor, too, there had arrived an- 
other stranger; no longer young, of an impres- 
sive aspect, dignified, thoroughly well-bred, and, 
by his acquaintance with the most distant quar- 
ters of the world, extremely entertaining. He 
was called Antoni. 

Julia received her announced bridegroom in 
fit order, yet with an excess rather than a defect 
of frankness: Lucinda, on the other hand, did 
the honors of the house, as her sister did those 
of herself. So passed the day ; peculiarly agree- 
able to all, only to Lucidor not: he, at all times 
silent, had been forced, that he might avoid 
sinking dumb entirely, to employ himself in 
asking questions ; and in this attitude, no one 
appears to advantage. 

Throughout he had been absent-minded ; for 
at the first glance he had felt, not aversion or 
repugnance, yet estrangement, towards Julia : 
Lucinda, on the contrary, attracted him, so that 
he trembled every time she looked at him with 
her full pure peaceful eyes. 

Thus hard bested, he reached his chamber 
the first night, and gave vent to his heart in that 
soliloquy with which we began. But to explain 
this sufficiently, to show how the violence of 
such an emphatic speech agrees with what we 
know of him already, another little statement 
will be necessary. 

Lucidor was of a deep character ; and for 
most part had something else in his mind, than 
what the present scene required : hence talk 
and social conversation would never prosper 
rightly with him; he felt this, and was wont to 
continue silent, except when tlie topic happened 
to be particular on some department which he 
had completely studied, and of which, whatever 
he needed was at all times ready. Besides this, 
in his early years at school, and later at the 
university, he had been deceived in friends, and 
had wasted the effusions of his heart unhappily ; 
hence every communication of his feelings 
seemed to him a doubtful step, and doubting 
destroys all such communication. With his 
father he was used to speak only in unison; 
therefore, his full heart poured itself out in mo- 
nologues, so soon as he was by himself. 

Next morning he had summoned up his reso- 
lution ; and yet he alinost lost heart and com- 
posure again, when Julia met him with stil' 
more friendliness, gaiety, and frankness, than 
ever. She had much to ask ; about liis journeys 
by land and journeys by water ; how, when a 



334 



GOETHE. 



student, witli his knapsack on his back, he had 
roamed and climbed through Switzerland, nay, 
crossed the Alps themselves. And now of those 
fair islands on the great Sonthern Lake, she had 
much to say ; and then backwards, the Rhine 
must be accompanied from his primary origin ; 
at first, through most undelicious regions, and 
so downwards through many an alternation, till 
at length, between Maynz and Coblenz, you 
find it still worth while respectfully to dismiss 
the old River from his last confinement, into the 
wide world, into the sea. 

Lucidor, in the course of this recital, felt him- 
self much lightened in heart; he narrated will- 
ingly and well, so that Julia at last exclaimed 
in rapture: " It is thus that our other self should 
be !" At which phrase Lucidor again felt 
startled and frightened ; thinking he saw in it 
an allusion to their future pilgrimage in common 
through life. 

From his narrative duty, however, he was 
soon relieved: for the stranger, Antoni, very 
speedily overshadowed all mountain streams, 
and rocky banks, and rivers whether hemmed 
in or left at liberty. Under his guidance you 
.low went forward to Genoa; Livorno lay at no 
great distance; whatever was most interesting 
in the country you took with you as fair spoil ; 
Naples, too, was a place you should see before 
you died ; and then, in truth, remained Constan- 
tinople, which also was by no means to be 
neglected. Antoni's descriptions of the wide 
world carried the imagination of every hearer 
along with him, though Antoni himself intro- 
duced little fire into the subject. Julia, quite 
enraptured, was still nowise satisfied : she longed 
for Alexandria, Cairo, and, above all, for the 
Pyramids : of which, by the lessons of her in- 
tended father-in-law, she had gained some mo- 
derate knowledge. 

J..uci(lor, next night (he had scarcely shut his 
door; the candle he had not put down) ex- 
claimed : "Now, bethink thee, then ; it is grow- 
ing serious! Thou hast studied and meditated 
many serious things : what avails thy law-learn- 
ing, if thou canst not act like a man of law 1 
View thyself as a delegate, forget thy own feel- 
ings, and do what it would behove thee to do 
for another. It thickens and closes round me 
horribly! The stranger is plainly come for tlie 
sake of Lucincia ; she shows him the fairest, 
noblest social and hospitable attentions: that 
.'jltle fool would run through the world with any 
me for anything or nothing. Besides, she is a 
M'ag; her interest in cities and countries is a 
farce, by which she keeps us in silence. But 
why do I look at the aflair so perplexedly, so 
•larrowly? Is not the Oberamtmann himself 
the most judicious, the clearest, the kindest me- 
diator 1 Thou wilt tell him how thou feelest 
and ihinkest; and lie will think with thee, if 
not likewise feel. With thy father he has all in- 
fluence. And is not the one as well as the other 
sis daughter? What would this Antoni the 
Traveller with Lucinda, who is born lor home, 



to be happy and to make happy? Let the wa- 
vering quicksilver fasten itself to the Wandering 
Jew: that will be a right match." 

Next morning Lucidor came down, with the 
firm purpose of speaking with the father; and 
waiting on him expressly to that end, at the 
hour when he knew him to be disengaged. 
How great was his vexation, his perplexity, on 
learning that the Oberamtmaim had been called 
away on business, and was not expected till the 
day after the morrow ! Julia, on this occasion, 
seemed to be expressly in her travelling fit ; she 
kept by the world- wanderer, and, with some 
sportive hits at domestic economy, gave up Lu- 
cidor to Lucinda. If our friend, viewing this 
noble maiden from a certain distance, and under 
one general impression, had already, with his 
whole heart, loved her, lie failed not now in 
this nearest nearness to discover with double 
and treble vividness in detail, all that had be- 
fore as a whole attracted him. 

The good old friend of the family now brought 
himself forward, in place of the absent father : 
he too had lived, had loved ; and was now, 
after many hard buffetings and bruises of life, 
resting at last, refreshed and cheerful, beside 
the friend of his youth. He enlivened the con- 
versation ; and especially expatiated on per- 
plexities in choice of wives; relating several 
remarkable examples of explanations, both in 
time and too late. Lucinda appeared in all her 
splendor. She admitted : That accident, in all 
departments of life, and so likewise in the busi- 
ness of marriage, often produced the best result; 
yet that it was finer and prouder when one 
could say he owed his happiness to himself, to 
the silent calm conviction of his heart, to a noble 
purpose and a quick determination. Tears stood 
in Lucidor's eyes as he applauded this senti- 
ment: directly afterwards, the two ladies went 
out. The old president liked well to deal in 
illustrative histories; and so the conversation 
expanded itself into details of pleasant instances, 
which however, touclied our hero so closely, 
that none but a youth of as delicate manners as 
his could have refrained from breaking out with 
his secret. He did break out, so soon as he was 
by himself 

"I have constrained myself!'' exclaimed ho- 
"with such perplexities I will not vex my good 
father: I have forborne to speak: for I see in 
this worthy old man the substitute of both fa- 
thers. To him will I speak; to him disclose 
the whole: he will surely bring it about; he 
has already almost spoken what I wish. Will 
he censure in the individual case what he 
praises in general? To-morrow I visit him: I 
must give vent to this oppression.'' 

At breakfast, the old man was not present : 
last night he had spoken, it appeared, too much ; 
had sat too long, and likewise drunk a drop or 
two of wine beyond his custom. Much was 
said in his praise; many anecdotes were re- 
lated ; and precisely of such sayings and do- 
ings as brought Lucidor to despair for not hay- 



GOETHE. 



333 



ing forthwith applied to him. This unpleasant 
feeling was but aggravated, when he learned 
that in such altacks of disorder the good old 
njan would often not make his re-appearance 
for a week. 

For social converse, a country residence has 
mauy advantages; especially when the owners 
of it have, for a course of years, been induced, 
as thinking and feeling persons, to improve tlie 
natural capabilities of their environs. Such 
had been the good fortune of this spot. The 
Oberamtmann, at first unwedded, then in a 
long happy marriage, himself a man of fortune, 
and occupying a lucrative post, had, according 
to his own judgment and perception, according 
to the taste of his wife, nay, at last according to 
the wishes and whims of his children, laid out 
and forwarded many larger and smaller deco- 
rations ; which by degrees being skilfully con- 
nected with plantations and paths, afforded to 
the promenader a very beautiful, continually 
varying, characteristic series of scenes. A pil- 
grimage through these, our young hosts now 
proposed to their guest; as in general we take 
pleasure in showing our improvements to a 
stranger, that so what has become habitual in 
our eyes, may appear with the cliarm of novelty 
in his, and leave with him, in permanent re- 
membrance, its first favorable impression. 

The nearest, as well as the most distant part 
of the grounds, was peculiarly appropriate for 
modest decorations, and altogether rural indivi- 
dualities. Fertile hills alternated with well- 
watered meadows ; so that the whole was 
visible from time to time, without being flat; 
and if the land seemed chiefly devoted to pur- 
poses of utility, the graceful, the attractive, was 
by no ineaus excluded. 

To the dwelling and office-houses were united 
various gardens, orchards, and green spaces ; 
out of which you imperceptibly passed into a 
little wood, with a broad, clear carriage-road 
winding up and down through the midst of it. 
Here, in a central spot, on the most considerable 
elevation, there had been a Hall erected, with 
side-chambers entering from it. On coming 
through the main-door, you saw in a large 
mirror the most favorable prospect which the 
country afforded ; and were sine to turn round 
that instant, to recover yourself on the reality 
from the effect of this its unexpected image : 
fur the approach was artfully enough contrived, 
and all that could excite surprise was carefully 
hid till the last moment. No one entered but 
ielt himself pleasurably tempted to turn from 
the mirror to JVature, and from Nature to the 
mirror. 

Once in motion in this fairest, brightest, long- 
est day, our party tiiade a spiritual campaign 
of it, over and through the whole. Here the 
daughters pointed out the evening seat of their 
pood mother, where a stately box-tree had kept 
clear space all round it. A little farther on, 
Lucinda s place of inorning-prayer was half- 
roguishly exinbited by Julia: close to a little 



brook, between poplars and alders, with meu 
dows sloping down from it, and fields stretch- 
ing upwards. It was indescribably pretty. You 
thought you had seen such a spot everywhere, 
but nowhere so impressive, and so perfect in 
its simplicity. In return for this, the young 
master, also half against Julia's will, pointed 
out the tiny groves, and child's gardens, which, 
close by a snug-lying mill, were now scarcely 
discernible : they dated from a time when Julia, 
perhaps in her tenth year, had taken it into her 
head to become a milleress ; intending, after the 
decease of the two old occupants, to assume the 
management herself, and choose some brave 
mi lima n for her husband. 

" That was at a time," cried Julia, " when I 
knew nothing of towns lying on rivers, or even 
on the sea; nothing of Genoa, of Naples, and 
the like. Your worthy father, Lucidor, has con- 
verted me ; of late I come seldom hither.' She 
sat down with a roguish air, on a little bench 
that was now scarcely large enough for her; 
under an elder-bough, which had bent deeply 
towards the ground: "Fie on this cowering!"' 
cried she; then started up, and ran otf with her 
gay brother. 

The remaining pair kept up a rational con- 
versation ; and in these cases, reason approaches 
close to the borders of feeling. Wandering over 
changeful, simple natural objects, to contemplate 
at leisure how cunning scheming man contrives 
to gain some profit from them ; how his percep- 
tion of what is laid before him, combining with 
the feeling of his wants, does wonders, first in 
rendering the world inhabitable, then in peo- 
pling it, and at last in overpeopling it: all this 
could here be talked of in detail. Lucinda gave 
account of everything ; and, modest as she was, 
she could not hide that these pleasant and con- 
venient combinations of distant parts by roads, 
had been her work, under the proposal, direc- 
tion, or favor of her revered mother. 

But as the longest day at last bends down to 
evening, our party were at last forced to think 
of returning; and while devising some pleasant 
circuit, the merry brother proposed that they 
should take the short road, though it command- 
ed no fine prospects, and was even in some 
places more difficult to get over. "For," cried 
he, "you have preached all day about your de- 
corations and reparations, and how you have 
improved and beautified the scene for pictorial 
eyes and feeling hearts: let me also have my 
turn." 

Accordingly, they now set forth over ploughed 
grounds, by coarse paths, nay, sometimes pick- 
ing their way by stepping-stones in boggy 
places; till at last they perceived, at some 
distance, a pile of machinery towering up in 
manifold combination. More closely examined, 
it turned out to be a large apparatus for sport 
and games, arranged not without judgment. And 
in a certain popular spirit. Here, fixed at suit 
able distances, stood a large swing-wheel, on 
which the ascending and the descending rider 



336 



GOETHE. 



might still sit horizontally, and at their ease; 
other see-saws, swing-ropes, leaping-poles, bowl- 
ing and nine-pins courses, and whatever oan be 
fancied for variedly and equally employing and 
diverting a crowd of people gathered on a large 
common. " This," cried he, "is my invention, 
my decoration ' And though my father found 
the money, and a shrewd fellow the brain ne- 
cessary lor it, yet without me, whom you often 
call a person of no judgment, money and brain 
would not have come together." 

In this cheerful mood, the whole four reached 
home by sunset. Antoni also joined them; but 
the little Julia, not yet satisfied with this unrest- 
ing travel, ordered her coach, and set forth on a 
visit to a lady of her friends, in utter despair at 
not having seen her for two days. The party 
left behind began to feel embarrassed before 
they were aware; it was even mentioned in 
words that the father's absence distressed tliem. 
The conversation was about to stagnate, when 
all at once the madcap sprang from his seat, 
and in a few moments returned with a book, 
proposing to read to the company. Lucinda 
forbore not to inquire how this notion had oc- 
curred to him, now for the first time in a twelve- 
month. "Everything occurs to me," said he, 
" at the proper season : this is more than you 
can say for yourself" He read them a series 
of genuine Antique Tales ; such as lead man 
away from himself, flattering his wishes, and 
making him forget all those restrictions, between 
M'hich, even in the happiest moments, we are 
still hemmed in. 

" What shall I do now !" cried Lucidor, when 
at last he saw himself alone. "The hour presses 
on: in Antoni I have no trust; he is an utter 
stranger, I know not who he is, how he comes 
to be here, nor what he wants; Lucinda seems 
to be his object ; and if so, what can I expect 
of him? Nothing remains for me but applying 
to Lucinda herself: she must know of it, she 
before all others. This was my first feeling: 
why do we stray into sidepaths and subter- 
fuges? My first thought shall be my last, and I 
hope to reach my aim." 

On Saturday morning, Lucidor, dressed at an 
early hour, M'as walking to and fro in his 
chamber; thinking and conning over his pro- 
jected address to Lucinda, when he heard a 
sort of jestful contention before his door, and the 
<loor itself directly afterwards went up. The 
mad younker was shoving in a boy before him, 
with coflee and baked ware for the guest; he 
himself carried cold meats and wine. "Go 
thou foremost," cried the younker: "for the 
guest must be first served ; I am used to serve 
myself My friend, to-day I am entering some- 
what early and tumultuously : but let us take 
our breakfast in peace ; then we shall see what 
is to be done; for of our company there is no- 
thing to be hoped. The little one is not yet 
back from her friend ; they two have to pour 
iiiit their hearts together every fortnight, other- 
'vise the poor dear hearts would burst. On 



Saturdays, Lucinda is good for nothing; she 
balances her household accounts for my father; 
she would have had me taking share in the con- 
cern, but Heaven forbid ! When I know the 
price of anything, no morsel of it can I relish. 
Guests are expected to-morrow ; the old mati 
has not yet got refitted ; Antoni is gone to hunt, 
we will do the same." 

Guns, pouches, and dogs were ready, as our 
pair stept down into the court; and now tliey 
set forth over field and hill, shooting at best 
some leveret or so, and perhaps here and there 
a poor indifferent undeserving bird. Meanwhile 
they kept talking of domestic affairs, of the 
household and company at present assembled 
in it. Antoni was mentioned, and Luciilor failed 
not to inquire more narrowly about him. The 
gay younker, with some self-complaisance, as- 
serted, that strange as the man was, and much 
mystery as he made about himself, he, the gay 
younker, had already seen through him and 
through him. "Without doubt," continued lie, 
"Antoni is the son of a rich mercantile family, 
whose large partnership concern fell to ruin at 
the very time when he, in the full vigor of 
youth, ^vas preparing to take a cheerful and 
active hand in their great undertakings, and 
withal to share in their abundant profits. 
Dashed down from the summit of his hopes, he 
gathered himself together, and undertook to 
perform for strangers what he was no longer in 
a case to perform for his relatives. And so he 
travelled through the world; became thoroughly 
acquainted with it and its mutual traifickings ; 
in the meanwhile, not forgetting his own ad- 
vantage. Unwearied diligence and tried fidelity 
obtained and secured for him unbounded con- 
fidence from many. Thus in all places he ac- 
quired connections and friends ; nay, it is easy 
to see that his fortune is as widely scattered 
abroad as his acquaintance; and accordingly 
his presence is from time to time required in all 
quarters of the world." 

These things the merry younker told in a 
more circumstantial and simple style, intro- 
ducing many farcical observations, as if he 
meant to spin out his story to full length. 

"How long, for instance," cried he, "has tliis 
Antoni been connected with my father! They 
think I see nothing, because I trouble myself 
about nothing; but for this very reason, I see it 
better, as I take no interest in it. To my father 
he has intrusted large sums, who again has de- 
posited them securely and to advantage. It 
was but last night that he gave our old dietetic 
friend a casket of jewels; a finer, simpler, cost- 
lier piece of ware, I never cast my eyes on, 
though I saw this only with a single glance, for 
they make a secret of it. Most probably it is to 
be consigned to the bride for her pleasure, satis 
faction, and future security. Antoni has set his 
heart on Lucinda! Yet when I see them to 
gether, I cannot think it a well-assorted match 
The hop-skip would have suited him better ; I 
believe, too, she would take htm sooner than 



GOETHE. 



337 



the elder would. Many a time, I see her look- 
ing over to the old curmudgeon, so gay and 
sympathetic, as if she could find in her heart to 
spring into the coach with him, and fly off at 
full gallop." Lucidor collected himself: he 
knew not what to answer ; all that he heard 
obtained his internal approbation. The younker 
proceeded: "All along the girl has had a per- 
verted liking for old people : I believe, of a 
truth, she would have skipped away and wed- 
ded your father, as briskly as she would his 
son." 

Lucidor followed his companion, over stock 
and stone, as it pleased the gay youth to lead 
him: both forgot the chase, which at any rate 
could not be productive. They called at a 
farm-house, where, being hospitably received, 
the one friend entertained himself with eating, 
drinking, and tattling : the other again plunged 
into meditations, and projects for turning this 
new discovery to his own profit. 

From all these narrations and disclosures, 
Lucidor had acquired so much confidence in 
Antoni, that immediately on their return he 
asked for him, and hastened into the garden, 
where he was said to be. In vain ! No soul 
was to be seen anywhere. At last he entered 
the door of the great Hall ; and strange enough, 
the setting sun, reflected from the mirror, so 
dazzled him, that he could not recognise the 
two persons, who were sitting on the sofa; 
though he saw distinctly that it was a lady and 
a man, which latter was that instant warmly 
kissing the hand of his companion. How great, 
accordingly, was Lucidor's astonishment, when, 
on recovering his clearness of vision, he beheld 
Antoni sitting by Lucinda! He was like to sink 
through the ground : he stood, however, as if 
rooted to the spot; till Lucinda, in the kindest, 
most unembarrassed manner, shifted a little to 
a side, and invited him to take a seat on her 
right hand. Unconsciously he obeyed her, and 
while she addressed him, inquiring after his 
present day's history, asking pardon for her ab- 
sence on domestic engagements, he could scarce- 
ly hear her voice. Antotii rose, and took his 
leave : Lucinda, resting herself from her toil, as 
the others were doing, invited Lucidor to a 
short stroll. Walking by her side, he was silent 
and embarrassed; she, too, seemed ill at ease; 
and had he been in the slightest degree self- 
collected, her deep-drawn breathing must have 
disclosed to him that she had heartfelt sighs to 
' suppress. She at last took her leave, as they ap- 
proached the house: he on the other hand 
turned round, at first slowly, then at a violent 
pace, to the open country. The park was too 
narrow for him ; he hastened through the fields, 
listening only to the voice of his heart, and 
without eyes for the beauties of this loveliest 
evening. When he found himself alone, and 
his feelings were relieving their violence in a 
shower of tears, he exclaimed : 

"Already in my life, but never with such 
lerceness, have I felt the agony which now 
2s 



makes me altogether wretched : to see the loig- 
wished-for happiness at length reach me ; hand- 
in-hand and arm in-arm unite with me; and at 
the same moment announce its eternal depar- 
ture ! I was sitting by her, I was walking by 
her; her fluttering garment touched me, nnd I 
have lost her ! Reckon it not over, torture not 
thy heart with it; be silent, and determine!" 

He laid a prohibition on his lips; he held his 
peace, and planned and meditated, stepping 
over field and meadow and bush, not always 
by the smoothest paths. Late at night, on re- 
turning to his chamber, he gave voice to his 
thoughts for a moment, and cried : " To-mor- 
row morning I am gone ; another such day I 
will not front." 

And so, without undressing, he threw him- 
self on the bed. Happy, healthy season of 
youth ! He was already asleep ; the fatiguing 
motion of the day had earned for him the 
sweetest rest. Out of bright morning dreams, 
however, the earliest sun awoke him: this was 
the longest day in the year ; and for him it 
threatened to be too long. If the grace of the 
peaceful evening star had passed over him un- 
noticed, he felt the awakening beauty of the 
morning only to despair. The world was lying 
here as glorious as ever; to his eyes it was still 
so; but his soul contradicted it; all this be- 
longed to him no longer, he had lost Lucinda. 

His travelling-bag was soon packed; this he 
was to leave behind him ; he left no letter with 
it; a verbal message in excuse of absence from 
dinner, perhaps also from supper, might be left 
with the groom, whom at any rate he must 
awaken. The groom, however, was awake 
already: Lucidor found him in the yard, walk- 
ing with large strides before the stable-door. 
" You do not mean to ride^' cried the usually 
good-natured man, with a tone of some spleen. 
"To you I may say it; but young master is 
growing worse and worse. There was he 
driving about far and near yesterday; you 
might have thought he would thank God for a 
Sunday to rest in. And see, if he does not 
come this morning before daybreak, rummages 
about in the stable, and while I am getting up, 
saddles and bridles your horse, flings himself 
on it, and cries : 'Do but consider the good work 
I am doing! This beast keeps jogging on at a 
staid juridical trot, I must see and rouse him 
into a smart life-gallop.' He said something 
just so, and other strange speeches besides." 

Lucidor was doubly and trebly vexed : he 
liked the horse, as corresponding to his own 
character, his own mode of life : it grieved him 
to figure his good sensible beast in the hands 
of a madcap. His plan, too, was overturned; 
his purpose of flying to a college friend, with 
whom he had lived in cheerful cordial uuion, 
and in this crisis seeking refuge beside him. 
His old confidence had been awakened, the in 
tervening miles were not counted ; he had 
fancied himself already at the side of his true 
hearted and judicious friend, finding counseh 
29 



3-^8 



GOETHE. 



and assuag:ement from his words and looks. 
Tliis prospect was now cut off: yet not entirely, 
if lie could venture with the fresh pedestrian 
limbs, which still stood at his command, to set 
forth towards the goal. 

First of all, accordingly, he struck through 
the jjark ; making for the open country, and the 
road which was to lead him to his friend. Of 
his direction he was not quite certain, when 
looking to the left, his eye fell upon the Hermi- 
tage, which had hitherto been kept secret from 
him : a strange edifice, rising with grotesque 
joinery through bush and tree: and here, to his 
■extreme astonishment, he observed the good old 
man, wjio for some days had been considered 
sick, standing in the gallery under the Chinese 
roof, and looking blithely through the soft morn- 
ing. The friendliest salutation, the most pres- 
sing entreaties to come up, Lucidor resisted 
with excuses and gestures of haste. Nothing 
but sympathy with the good old man, who, has- 
tening down with infirm step, seemed every 
moment in danger of falling to the bottom, could 
induce him to turn thither, ami then suffer him- 
self to be conducted up. With surprise he 
entered the pretty little hall: it had only three 
windows, turned towards the park ; a most 
graceful prospect: the other sides were deco- 
rated, or Vather covered, with hundreds of por- 
traits, copperplate, or painted, which were fixed 
in a certain order to the wall, and separated by 
colored borders and interstices. 

" I favor you, my friend, more than I do every 
one; this is the sanctuary in which I peacefully 
spend my last days. Here I recover myself 
from all the mistakes, which society tempts me 
to commit: here my dietetic errors are correct- 
ed, and my old being is again restored to equi- 
librium." 

Lucidor looked over the place ; and being 
well read in history, he easily observed that 
an historical taste had presided in its arrange- 
ment. 

'' Above, there, in the frieze," said the old 
■virtuoso, "you will find the names of distin- 
guished men in the primitive ages; then those 
of later antiquity; yet still only their names, 
for how they looked would now be difficult to 
discover. But here, in the main field, comes 
my own life into play: here are the men whose 
:names I used to hear mentioned in my boyhood. 
For some fifty years or so, the name of a dis- 
tinguished man continues in the remembrance 
•of the people; then it vanishes, or becomes 
fabulous. Though of German parentage, I was 
■born in Holland ; and for me, William of Orange, 
Stadtholder, and King of England, is the patri- 
arch of all common great men and heroes. 

"Now, close by William, you observe Louis 
XIV. as the person who — " How gladly would 
Lucidor have cut short the good old man, had 
it but been permitted him, as it is to us the nar- 
rators : for the whole late and latest history of 
■the world seemed impending; as from the por- 
'.l^its of Frederick the Great and his generals, 



towards which he was glancing, was but too 
clearly to be gathered. 

And though the kin<lly young man could not 
but respect his old friends lively sympathy ii» 
these things, or deny that some individual fea- 
tures and views in this exhibitory discourse 
might be interesting; yet at college he had heard 
the late and latest history of Europe already; 
and what a man has once heard, he fancies 
himself to know forever. Lucidor's thoughts 
were wandering far away; he heard not, he 
scarcely saw ; and was just on the point, in spite 
of all politeness, of flinging himself out, and 
tumbling down the long fatal stair, when a loud 
clapping of hands was heard from below. 

While Lucidor restrained his movement, the 
old man looked over through the window, and 
a well-known voice resounded from beneath: 
"Come down, for Heaven's sake, out of your 
historic picture gallery, old gentleman ! Con- 
clude your fasts and humiliations, and help me 
to appease our young friend, when he learns it. 
Lucidor's horse I have ridden somewhat hard ; 
it has lost a shoe, and I was obliged to leave the 
beast behind me. What will he say ? He is 
too absurd, when one behaves absurdly." 

"Come up!" said the old man, and turned in 
to Lucidor: "Now, what say you?" Lucidor 
was silent, and the wild blade entered. The 
discussion of the business lasted long: at length 
it was determined to despatch the groom forth- 
with, that he might seek the horse and take 
charge of it. 

Leaving the old man, the two younkers hast- 
ened to the house; Lucidor, not quite unwill- 
ingly, submitting to this arrangement. Come 
of it what might, within these walls the sole 
wish of his heart was included. In such des- 
perate cases, we are, at any rate, cut off from 
the assistance of our free will ; and we feel 
ourselves relieved for a moment, when, from 
any quarter, direction and constraint takes hold 
of us. Yet, on entering his chamber, he found 
himself in the strangest mood; like a man who, 
having just left an apartment of an inn, is forced 
to return to it, by the breaking of an axle. 

The gay yonnker fell upon the travelling-bag, 
unpacking it all in due order ; especially select- 
ing every article of holiday apparel, which, 
though only on the travelling scale, was to be 
found there. He forced Lucidor to put on fresh 
shoes and stockings; he dressed for him his 
clustering brown locks, and decked him at all 
points with his best skill. Then stepping back, 
and surveying our friend and his own handi- 
work, from head to foot, he exclaimed : " Now, 
then, my good fellow, you do look like a man 
that has some pretensions to pretty damsels; 
and serious enough, moreover, to spy about you 
for a bride. Wait one moment ! You shall see 
how I too can produce myself, when the hour 
strikes. This knack I learned from your mili- 
tary officers ; the girls are always glancing at 
them ; so I likewise have enrolled myself among 
a certain Soldiery; and now they look at mp 



too, and look again, and no soul of them knows 
what to make of it. And so, fiom this looking 
and relooking, from this surprise and attention, 
a pretty enongh result now and then arises; 
which, though it were not lasting, is worth en- 
joying for the moment. 

"But, cotne along, my friend, and do the like 
service for me! When you have seen me case 
myself by piecemeal in my equipment, you will 
not say that wit and invention have been de- 
nied me." He now led his friend through 
several long spacious passages of the old castle. 
"I have quite nestled myself here," cried he. 
"Though I care not for hiding, I like to be 
alone ; you can do no good with other people." 

They were passing by the office-rooms, just 
as a servant came out with a patriarchal writ- 
ing-apparatus, black, massive, and complete; 
paper, too, was not forgotten. 

"I know what is to be blotted here again," 
cried the younker: "go thy ways, and leave 
me the key. Take a look of the place, Lucidor ; 
it will amuse you till I am dressed. To a friend 
of justice, such a spot is not odious, as to a tamer 
of horses." And with this, he pushed Lucidor 
into the hall of judgment. 

Lucidor felt himself directly in a well-known 
and friendly element; he thought of the days 
when he, fixed down to business, had sat at 
such a table; and listening and writing, had 
trained himself to his art. Nor did he fail to 
observe, that in this case an old stately domestic 
Chapel had, under the change of religious ideas, 
been converted to the service of Themis. In 
the repositories, he found some titles and acts 
already familiar to him : in these very matters 
he had co-operated, while laboring in the Capi- 
tal. Opening a bundle of papers, there came 
into his hands a rescript, which he himself had 
dictated ; another, of which he had been the 
originator. Hand-writing and paper, signet and 
president's signature, everything recalled to him 
that season of juridical effort, of youthful hope. 
And here, when he looked round, and saw the 
Oberanitnjann's chair, appointed and intended 
for hiiriself; so fair a place, so dignified a circle 
of activity, which he was now like to cast away, 
and utterly lose, all this oppressed him doubly 
and trebly, as the form of Lucinda seemed to 
retire from liim at the same time. 

He turned to go out into the open air, but 
found himself a prisoner. His gay friend, heed- 
lessly or roguishly, had left the door locked. 
Lucidor, however, did not long continue in this 
durance; for the other returned; apologised for 
his oversight, and really called forth good humor 
by his singular appearance. A certain audacity 
of color and cut in his clothes was softened by 
natural taste, as even to tattooed Indians we 
refuse not a certain approbation. "To-day," 
cried he, "the tedium of bygone days shall be 
made good to us. Worthy friends, merry friends 
are conje; pretty girls, roguish and fond; and 
my father, to boot; and wonder on wonder! 
your father too. This will be a festival, truly; 



they are all assembled for breakfast in the par- 
lor." 

With Lucidor, at this piece of information, it 
was as if he were looking into deep fog; all the 
figures, known and unknown, which the words 
announced to him, assumed a spectral aspect: 
yet his resolution, and the consciousness of a 
pure heart, sustained him ; and, in a few se- 
conds, he felt himself prepared for everything. 
He followed his hastening friend with a steady 
step, firmly determined to await the issue, be it 
what it might, and explain his own purposes, 
come what come might. 

And yet, at the very threshold of the hall, he 
was struck with some alarm. In a large half 
circle, ranged round by the windows, he imme- 
diately descried his father with the Oberamt- 
mann, both splendidly attired. 'J"he two sisters, 
Antoni, and others known and unknown, he 
hurried over with a glance, which was threat- 
ening to grow dim. Half wavering, he ap- 
proached his father; who bade him welcome 
with the utmost kindness, yet in a certain style 
of formality which scarcely invited any trustful 
application. Standing before so many persons, 
he looked round to find a place among them for 
the moment: he might have arranged himself 
beside Lucinda; but Julia, contrary to the rigor 
of etiquette, made room for him, so that'he was 
forced to step to her side. Antoni continued 
by Lucinda. 

At this important moment, Lucidor again felt 
as if he were a delegate; and, steeled by his 
whole juridical science, he called up in his own 
favor the tine maxim : That we should transact 
aflfairs delegated to us by a stranger, as if they 
were our own ; why not our own, therefore, in 
the same spirit? Well practised in official ora- 
tions, he speedily ran over what he had to say. 
But the conjpany, ranged in a formal semicircle, 
seemed to outflank him. The purport of his 
speech he knew well; the beginning of it he 
could not find. At this crisis, he observed on a 
table, in the corner, the large ink -glass, and 
several clerks sitting round it : the Oberamtmann 
made a movement as if to solicit attention for a 
speech; Lucidor wished to anticipate him ; and, 
at that very moment, Julia pressed his hand. 
This threw him out of all self-possession; con- 
vinced him that all was decided, all lost for 
him. 

With the whole of these negotiations, these 
family alliances, with social conventions and 
rules of good maimers, he had now nothing more 
to do: he snatched his hand from Julia's, aud 
vanished so rapidly from the room, that the 
company lost him unawares, and he out of doors 
could not find himself again. 

Shrinking from the light of day, which shone 
down upon him in its highest splendor; avoid- 
ing the eyes of men ; dreading search and pur 
suit, he hiuried forwards, and reached the large 
garden-hall. Here his knees were like to fail 
him ; he rushed in, and threw himself, utterly 
comfortless, uoon the sofa beneath the mirror 



340 



GOETHE. 



Amid the polished arrangements of society, to 
be caught in such unspeakalile perplexity! It 
dashed to and fro like waves about him and 
within him. His past existence was struggling 
with his present: it was a frightful moment. 

And so he lay for a time, with his face hid 
in the cushion, on which last night Lucinda's 
arm had rested. Altogether sunk in his sor- 
row, he had heard no footsteps approach ; feel- 
ing some one touch him, he started up, and per- 
ceived Lucinda standing by his side. 

Fancying they had sent her to bring him 
back, had commissioned her to lead him with 
fit sisterly words into the assemblage to front 
Lis hated doom, he exclaimed: "You they 
should not have sent, Lucinda : for it was you 
that drove me away. I will not return. Give 
me, if you are capable of any pity, procure me 
convenience and means of flight. For, that you 
yourself may testify how impossible it was to 
bring me back, listen to the explanation of my 
conduct, which to you and all of them must 
seem insane. Hear now the oath which I have 
sworn in my soul, and which I incessantly re- 
peat in words: with you only did I wish to 
live: with you to enjoy, to employ my days, 
from youth to old age, in true honorable union. 
And let this be as firm and sure as aught ever 
sworn belbve the altar ; this which I now swear, 
now when I leave you, the most pitiable of all 
men." 

He made a movement to glide past her, as 
she stood close before him : but she caught him 
softly in her arms. " What is this !" exclaim- 
ed he. 

" Lucidor !" cried she, " not pitiable as you 
think: you are mine, I am yours; I hold you in 
my arms 5 delay not to throw your arms about 
me. Your father has agreed to all; Antoni 
marries my sister." 

In astonishment he recoiled from her: "Can 
it be?" Lucinda smiled and nodded; he drew 
back from her arms. " Let me view once more, 
at a distance, what is to be mine so nearly, so 
inseparably."' He grasped her hands: " Lu- 
cinila, are you mine I" 

She answered : " Well, then, yes," the sweet- 
est tears in the truest eyes ; he clasped her to 
his breast, and threw his head behind hers; he 
bung like a shipwrecked mariner on the clifis 
of the coast; the ground still shook under him. 
And now his enraptured eye, again opening, 
lighted on the mirror. He saw her there in his 
arms, himself clasped in hers; he looked down, 
and again to the image, buch emotions accom- 
pany man throughout his life. In the mirror, 
also, he beheld the landscape, which last night 
ha<l ai)peared to him so baleful and ominous, 
now lying fairer and brighter than ever; and 
himself in such a posture, on such a back- 
ground! Abundant recompense for all sorrows! 
"We are not alone," said Lucinda; and 
scarcely had he recovered from his rapture, 
when, all decked and garlanded, a company of 
jjirls and boys came forward, carrying wreaths 



of flowers, and crowding the entrance of the 
Hall. "This is not the way," cried Lucinda: 
" how prettily it was arranged, and now it is all 
running into tumult!" A gay march sounded 
from a distance ; and the company were seen 
coming on by the large road in stately proces- 
sion. Lucidor hesitated to advance towards 
them ; only on her arm did he seem certain of 
his steps. She stayed beside him, expecting 
from moment to moment the solemn scene of 
meeting, of thanks for pardon already given. 

But by the capricious gods it was otherwise 
determined. The gay clanging sound of a pos- 
tilion's horn, from the opposite side, seemed to 
throw the whole ceremony into rout. " Who 
can be coming?" cried Lucinda. The thought 
of a strange presence was frightful to Lucidor ; 
and the carriage seemed entirely unknown to 
him. A double-seated, new, spick-and-span 
new travelling chaise! It rolled up to the Hall. 
A well-dressed, handsome boy sprang down ; 
opened the door; but no one dismounted; the 
chaise was empty. The boy stept into it ; with 
a dexterous touch or two he threw back the 
tilts; and there, in a twinkling, stood the 
daintiest vehicle in readiness for the gayest 
drive, before the eyes of the whole party, who 
were now advancing to the spot. Antoni, out- 
hastening the rest, led Julia to the carriage. 
"Try if this machine," said he, "will please 
you ; if you can sit in it, and over the smoothest 
roads, roll through the world beside me: I will 
lead you by no other but the smoothest; and 
when a strait comes, we shall know how to 
help ourselves. Over the mountains, sumpters 
shall carry us, and our coach also." 

"You are a dear creature!" cried Julia. The 
boy came forward ; and, with the quickness of 
a conjurer, exhibited all the conveniences, little 
advantages, comforts, and celerities of the whole 
light edifice. 

"On Earth I have no thanks," cried Julia; 
"but from this little moving Heaven, from this 
cloud, into which you raise me, I will heartily 
thank you." She had already bounded in, 
throwing him kind looks and a kiss of the hand. 
" For the present you come not hither ; but there 
is another whom I mean to take along with me 
in this proof excursion; he himself has still a 
proof to undergo." She called to Lucidor : who, 
just then occupied in mute conversation with 
his father and father-in-law, willingly took 
refuge in the light vehicle ; feeling an irresist- 
ible necessity to dissipate his thoughts in some 
way or other, though it were but for a moment. 
He placed himself beside her; she directed the 
postilion where he was to drive. Instantly 
they darted otf, enveloped in a cloud of dust ; 
and vanished from the eyes of the amazed 
spectators. 

Julia fixed herself in the corner, as firmly 
and commodiously as she could wish. " Now 
do you shift into that one too, good brother; so 
that we may look each other rightly in ths 
face." 



GOETHE. 



341 



Lucidor. You feel my confusion, my embar- 
rassment: I am still as if in a dream j help me 
out of it. 

Julia. Look at these gay peasants, how kindly 
they salute us! You have never seen the Upper 
Hamlet yet, since you came hither. All good 
substantial people there, and all thoroughly de- 
voted to me. No one of them so rich that you 
cannot, Ijy a time, do a little kind service to 
him. This road, which we whirl along so 
smoothly, is my father's doing; another of his 
benefits to the community. 

Lucidor. I believe it, and willingty admit it: 
but what have these external things to do with 
the perplexity of my internal feelings? 

Julia. Patience a little! I will show you the 
riches of this world and the glory thereof Here 
n<jw we are at the lop ! Do but look how clear 
the level country lies all round us leaning 
against the mountains! All these villages are 
much, much indebted to my father ; to mother 
and daughters too. The grounds of yon little 
hamlet are the border. 

Lucidor. Surely you are in a very strange 
mood : you do not seem to be saying what you 
meant to say. 

Julia. But now look down to the left ; how 
beautifully all this unfolds itself! The Church, 
with its liigh lindens; the Amthaus, with its 
poplars, behind the village knoll! Here, too, are 
the garden and the park. 

The postilion drove faster. 

Julia. The Hall up yonder you know: it 
looks almost as well here, as this scene does 
from ic. Here, at the tree, we shall stop a mo- 
ment : now in this very spot our image is re- 
flected in the large mirror; there they see us 
full well, but we cannot see ourselves. — Go 
along, postilion! — There, some little v/hile ago, 
two people, I believe, were reflected at a 
shorter distance; and, if I am not exceedingly 
mistaken, to their great mutual satisfaction. 

Lucidor, in ill humor, answered nothing : they 
went on for some time in silence, driving very 
hard. "Here," said Julia, "the bad road be- 
gins: a service left for you to do, some day. 
Betbre we go lower, look down once more. My 
mother's boxtree rises with its royal summit 
over all the rest. Thou will drive,' continued 
she to the postilion, "down this rough road ; we 
shall take the foot-path through the dale, and so 
be sooner at the otiier side than thou." In dis- 
mounting, she cried : " Well, now, you will con- 
fess, the Wandering Jew, this restless Antoni 
the Traveller, can arrange his pilgrimages pret- 
tily enough for himself and bis companions: it 
is a very beautiful and commodious carriage." 

And with this she tripjied away down hill : 
Lucidor followed her, in deep thought ; she 
was sitting on a pleasant seat ; it was Lucinda's 
little spot. She invited him to sit by her. 

Julia. So now we are sitting here, and one is 
nothing to the other. Thus it was destined to 
be. The little Quicksilver would not suit you. 
Love it you could not, it was hateful to you. 



Lucidor's astonishment increased. 

Julia. But Lucinda, indeed! She is the para- 
gon of all perfections; and the pretty sister was 
once- for all cast out. I see it, the question 
hovers on your lips : vi^ho has told us all so ac- 
curately ? 

Lucidor. There is treachery in it! 

Julia. Yes, truly ! There has been a Traitor 
at work in the matter. 

Lucidor. Name him. 

Julia. He is soon unmasked : You ! You have 
the praiseworthy or blameworthy custom of 
talking to yourself: and now, in the name of 
all, I must confess that in turn we have over- 
heard you. 

Lucidor (starting up). A sorry piece of hospi- 
tality, to lay snares for a stranger in this way! 

Julia. By no means! We thought not of 
watching you, more than any other. But, you 
know, your bed stands in the recess of the wall ; 
on the opposite side is another alcove, common- 
ly employed for laying up household articles. 
Hither, some days before, we had shifted our 
old man's bed ; being anxious about him in his 
remote Hermitage : and here, the first night, 
you started some such passionate soliloquy, 
which he next morning took his opportunity of 
rehearsing. 

Lucidor had not the heart to interrupt her. 
He withdrew. 

Julia (rising and following him). What a 
service this discovery did us all ! For I will 
confess, if you were not positively disagreeable, 
the situation which awaited me was not by any 
means to luy mind. To be Frau Oberanit- 
mannin, what a dreadful state! To have a 
brave gallant husband, who is to pass judgment 
on the people; and, for sheer judgment, cannot 
get to justice ! Who can please neither high nor 
low; and, what is worst, not even himself! 1 
know what my poor mother suffered from the 
incorruptibility, the inflexibility of my father. 
At last, indeed, but not till her death, a certain 
meekness took possession of him: he seemed to 
suit himself to the world, to jnake a truce with 
those evils which, till then, he had vainly 
striven to conquer. 

Lucidor (stopping short ; extremely discon- 
tented with the incident; vexed at this light 
mode of treating it). For the sport of an evening 
this might pass; but to practise such a disgrac- 
ing mystification, day and night, against an un- 
suspicious stranger, is not pardonable. 

Julia. We are all equally deep in the crime, 
we all hearkened you : yet I alone pay the 
penalty of eavesdropping. 

Lucidor. All! So much the more unpardon 
able! And how could you look at me, through 
out the day, without blushing, whom at night 
you were so contemptuously overreaching? Bu 
I see clearly with a glance, that your arrange 
ments by day were planned to make mockery 
of me. A fine family! And where was you 
father's love of justice all this while! — An>. 
Lucinda! — 

29* 



342 



GOETHE. 



Julia. And Lucinda ! What a tone was that ! 
You meant to say, did not you, How deeply it 
grieved your heart to think ill of Lucinda, to 
rank her in a class with the rest of us ■? f 

Lucidor. I cannot understand Lucinda. 

Julia. In other words this pure noble soul, 
this peacefully composed nature, benevolence, 
goodness itself, this woman as she should be, 
unites with a light-minded company, with a 
freakish sister, a spoiled brother, and certain 
mysterious persons! That is incomprehensible! 

Lucidor. Yes, indeed, it is incomprehensible. 

Julia. Comprehend it then ! Lucinda, like the 
rest of us, had her hands bound. Could you 
have seen her perplexity, how fain she would 
have told you all, how often she was on the 
very eve of doing it, you would now love her 
doubly and trebly, if indeed true love were not 
always tenfold and hundredfold of itself. I can 
assure you, moreover, that all of us at length 
thought the joke too long. 

Lucidor. Why did you not end it then? 

Julia. That, too, I must explain. No sooner 
had my father got intelligence of your first mo- 
nologue, and seen, as was easy to do, that none 
of his children would object to such an ex- 
change, than he determined on visiting your 
father. The importance of the business gave 
him much anxiety. A father alone can feel 
the respect which is due to a father. "He 
must be informed of it in the first place," said 
mine, "that he may not in the end, when we 
are all agreed, be reduced to give a forced and 
displeased consent. I know him well : I know 
how any thought, any wish, any purpose cleaves 
to him ; and I have my own fears about the 
issue. Julia, his maps and pictures, he has 
long viewed as one thing; he has it in his eye 
to transport all this hither, when the young pair 
are once settled here, and his old pupil cannot 
change her abode so readily; on us he is to 
bestow his holidays; and who knows what 
other kind friendly things he has projected? He 
must forthwith be informed what a trick Na- 
ture has played us, while yet nothing is declared, 
nothing is determined." And with this, he 
exacted from us all the most solemn promise 
that we should observe you, and come what 
might, retain you here till his return. How this 
return has been protracted ; what art, toil, and 
perseverance it has cost to gain your father's 
consent, he himself will inform you. In short, 
the business is adjusted ; Lucinda is yours. 

And thus had the two promenaders, sharply 
removing from their first resting-place; then 
pausing by the way, then speaking, and walk- 
ing slowly through the green fields, at last 
reached the height, where another well-levelled 
road received them. The carriage came whirl- 
ing up: Juliu in the meanwhile turned her 
friend s attention to a strange sight. The whole 
machineiy, of u inch her gay brother had brag- 
ged so much, was now alive and in motion; the 
wheels were already heaving up and down a 
nultitude of people; the seesaws were flyin" ■ 



maypoles had their climbers ; and many a bold 
artful swing and spring over the heads of an 
innumerable multitude you might see ventured. 
The younker had set all agoing, that so the 
guests, after dinner, might have a gay spectacle 
awaiting them. "Thou wilt drive through the 
Nether Hamlet," cried Julia; "the people wish 
me well, and they shall see how well I am 
off." 

The Hamlet was empty: the young people 
had all run to the swings and seesaws ; old 
men and women, roused by the driver's horn, 
appeared at doors and windows; every one 
gave salutations and blessings, exclaiming: "O 
what a lovely pair !" 

Julia. There, do you hear? We should have 
suited well enough together after all ; you may 
rue it yet. 

Lucidor. But now, dear sister! 

Julia. Ha ! Now dear, when you are rid 
of me? 

Lucidor. One single word ! On you rests a 
heavy accusation : what did you mean by that 
squeeze of the hand, when you knew and felt 
my dreadful situation? A thing so radically 
wicked I have never met with in my life be- 
fore. 

Julia. Thank Heaven, we are now quits ; 
now all is pardoned. I had no mind for you, 
that is certain ; but that you had utterly and ab- 
solutely no mind for me, this was a thing which 
no young woman could forgive; and the squeeze 
of the hand, observe you, was for the rogue. I 
do confess, it was almost too roguish; and I 
forgive myself, because I forgive you; and so 
let all be forgotten and forgiven! Here is my 
hand. 

He took it; she cried : " Here we are again! 
In our park again ; and so in a trice, we whirl 
through the wide world, and back too; we 
shall meet again." 

They had reached the garden-hall ; it ^eemed 
empty; the company, tired of waiting, had gone 
out to walk. Antoni, however, and Lucinda 
came forth. Julia stepping from the carriage 
flew to her friend; she thanked him in a cordial 
embrace, and restrained not the most joyful 
tears. The brave man's cheeks reddened, his 
features looked forth unfolded ; his eye glanced 
moist; and a fair imposing youth shone through 
the veil. 

And so both pairs moved off to join the com- 
pany, with feelings which the finest dream 
could not have given them. 

:ii ***** * 

" Thus, my friends," said Lenardo, after a 
short preamble, " if we survey the most popu- 
lous provinces and kingdoms of the firm Earth, 
we observe on all sides that wherever an avail- 
able soil appears, it is cultivated, planted, shaped, 
beautifieil ; and in the same pro))orlion, coveted, 
taken into possession, fortified and defended. 
Hereby we bring home to our conceptions the 
high worth of property in land ; and are obliged 



GOETHE. 



343 



to consider it as the first and best acquirement 
that can be allotted to man. And if on closer 
inspection we find parental and filial love, the 
union of countrymen and townsmen, and there- 
fore the universal feelin;^; of patriotism, founded 
immediately on this same interest in the soil, 
■we cannot but regard that seizing and retaining 
of Space, in the great or the small scale, as a 
tliing still more important and venerable. Yes, 
Nature herself has so ordered it! A man born 
on the glebe comes by habit to belong to it; the 
two grow together, and the fairest ties are spun 
from their union. Who is there then that would 
spitefully disturb this foundation-stone of all 
existence; that would blindly deny the worth 
and dignity of such precious and peculiar gifts 
of Heaven ? 

"• And yet we may assert, that if what man 
possesses is of great worth, what he does and 
accomplishes must be of still greater. In a wide 
view of things, therefore, we must look on pro- 
perly in land as one small part of the possessions 
that have been given us. Of these the greatest 
and the most precious part consists especially 
in what is movable, and in what is gained by a 
moving life. 

"'Jowards this quarter, we younger men are 
peculiarly constrained to turn; for though we 
had inherited from our fathers the desire of 
abiding and continuing, we find ourselves called 
by a thousand causes nowise to shut our eyes 
against a wider outlook and survey. Let us 
hasten, then, to the shore of the Ocean, and con- 
vince ourselves what boundless spaces are still 
lying open to activity; and confess that, by the 
bare thought of this, we are roused to new vigor. 

"Yet not to lose ourselves in these vast ex- 
panses, let us direct our attention to the long 
aiul large surface of so many countries and 
kingdoms, combined together on the face of the 
Earth. Here we behold great tracts of larrtl 
tenanted by Nomades; whose towns are mov- 
able, whose life-supporting household goods can 
be transferred from place to place. We see 
them in the middle of the deserts, on wide green 
pasturages, lying as it were at anchor in their 
desired haven. Such movement, such wander- 
ing, becomes a habit with them, a necessity ; in 
the end they grow to regard the surface of the 
world as if it were not bulwarked by mountains, 
were not cut asunder by streams. Have we 
not seen the North-east How towards the South- 
west, one people driving another before it, and 
lordship and property altogether changed? 

"From over-populous countries, a similar ca- 
lamity may again, in the great circle of vicissi- 
tudes, occur more than once. What we have 
to dread from foreigners, it may be difficult lo 
say; but it is curious enough, that by our own 
over-population, we ourselves are thronging one 
another in our own domains, and without wait- 
ing to be driven, are driving one another forth, 
passing sentence of banishment each against his 
fellow. 

" Here now is the place and season for giving 



scope in our bosoms, without spleen or anger, 
to a love of movement; for unfettering that im- 
patient wish which excites us to change our 
abode. Yet, whatever we may purpose and 
intend, let it be accomplished not from passion, 
or from any other influence of force, but from a 
conviction corresponding to the wisest judgment 
and deliberation. 

" It has been said, and over again said : Where 
I am well, is my country! But this consolatory 
saw were better worded: Where I am useful, 
is my country ! At home, you may be useless, 
and the fact not instantly observed ; abroad in 
the world, the useless man is speedily convicted. 
And now, if I say : Let each endeavor every- 
where to be of use to himself and others, this is 
not a precept, or a counsel, but the utterance of 
life itself. 

"Cast a glance over the terrestrial ball, and 
for the present leave the ocean out of sight ; lef 
not its hurrying fleets distract your thoughts . 
but fix your eye on the firm earth, and be amazed 
to see how it is overflowed \vitli a swarming 
ant tribe, jostling and crossing, and running to 
and fro forever ! So was it ordained of the Lord 
himself, wlicn, obstructing the Tower of Babel, 
he scattered the human race abroad into all the 
world. Let us praise his name on this account, 
for the blessing has extended to all generations. 

" Observe now, and cheerfully, how the young, 
on every side, instantly get into movement. As 
instruction is not oflered them within doors, and 
knocks not at their gates, they hasten forthwith 
to those countries and cities whither the call of 
science and wisdom allures them. Here, no 
sooner have they gained a rapid and scanty 
training, than they feel themselves impelled to 
look round in the world, whether here and there 
some profitable experience, applicable to their 
objects, may not be met with and appropriated. 
Let these try their fortune! We turn from them 
to those completeil and distinguished men, those 
noble inquirers into Nature, who wittingly en- 
counter every difllculty, every peril, that to the 
world they may lay the world open, and, through 
the most Impassable, pave easy roads. 

"But observe also, on beaten highways, how 
dust on dust, in long cloudy trains, mounts up, 
betokening the track of commodious top-laden 
carriages, in which the rich, the noble, and so 
many others, are whirled along; whose varying 
purposes and dispositions Yorick has most dain- 
tily explained to us. 

"These the stout craftsman, on foot, may 
cheerily gaze after; for whom his country has 
made it a duty to appropriate foreign skill, and 
not till this has been accomplished, to revisit his 
patertial hearth. In still greater nmnbers, do 
traffickers and dealers meet us on our road : the 
little trader must not neglect, from time to time, 
to forsake his shop that he may visit fairs and 
markets, may api)roach the great merchant, an<) 
increase his own sinall profit, by exami)le anil 
partici[)ation of the boundless. But yet nioie 
restlessly do we descry cruizing on horseback 



344 



GOETHE, 



singly, on all high and bye ways, that multitude 
of persons whose business it is, in lawful wise, 
to make forcible pretension to our purses. Sam- 
ples of all sorts, prize-catalogues, invitations to 
purchase, pursue us into town-houses and coun- 
try-houses, and wherever we may seek refuge: 
diligently they assault us and surprise us ; them- 
selves offering the opportimity, which it would 
have entereil no man's tniud to seek. And what 
shall I say of that People which, before all others, 
arrogates to itself the blessing of perpetual wan- 
dering, and by its movable activity contrives to 
overreach the resting, and to overstep the walk- 
ing ? Of them we must say neither ill nor good; 
no good, because our League stands on its guard 
against them ; no ill, because the wanderer, 
mindful of reciprocal advantage, is bound to 
treat with friendliness whomsoever he may 
meet. 

'•But now, above all, we must mention with 
peculiar affection, the whole race of artists ; for 
they, too, are thoroughly involved in this uni- 
versal movement. Does not the painter wan- 
der, with pallet and easel, from face to face ; 
and are not his kindred laborers summoned, 
now this way, now thai, because in all places 
tliere is something to be built and to be fashion- 
ed ? More briskly, however, paces the musician 
on his way ; for he peciiliarly it is, that for a 
new ear has provided new surprise, for a fresh 
mind fresh astonishment. Players, too, though 
they now despise the cart of Thespis, still rove 
about in little choirs; and their moving world, 
wherever they appear, is speedily enough built 
up. So likewise, individually, renouncing se- 
rious profitable engagements, these men delight 
to change place with place, according as rising 
talents, combined with rising wants, furnish 
pretext and occasion. For this success they 
commonly prepare themselves, by leaving no 
important stage in their native land untrodden. 

" Nor let us forget to cast a glance over the 
professorial class : these, too, you find in con- 
tinual motion, occupying and forsaking one chair 
alter the other, to scatter richly abroad on every 
side the seeds of a hasty culture. More assidu- 
ous, however, and of wider aim, are those pious 
souls who disperse themselves through all quar- 
ters of the world, to bring salvation to their 
brethren. Others, on the contrary, are pilgrim- 
ing to seek salvation for themselves : they march 
in Imsts to consecrated, wonder-working places, 
there to ask and receive what was denied their 
souls at liome. 

"And if all these sorts of men surprise us 
less by their wandering, as for most part, with- 
out wandering, the business of their life were 
impossible, of those again who dedicate their 
diligence to the soil, we should certainly expect 
that they, at least, were fixed. By no means ! 
Even without possession, occupation is con- 
ceivable; and we behold the eager farmer for- 
saking the ground which for years has yielded 
him profit and enjoyment: impatiently he 
searches after similar or greater profit, be it far 



or near. Nay, the owner himself will abandon 
his new-grubbed clearage so soon as, by his cul- 
tivation, he has rendered it commodious for a 
less enterprising husbandman: once more he 
presses into the wilderness; again makes space 
for himself in the forests ; in recompense of that 
first toiling, a double and treble space; on 
which also, it may be, he thinks not to con- 
tinue. 

" There we shall leave him, bickering with 
bears and other monsters ; and turn back into 
the polished world, where we find the state of 
things no whit more stationary. Do but view 
any great and regulated kingdom : the ablest 
man is also the man who moves the oftenest ; 
at the beck of his prince, at the order of his 
minister, the Serviceable is transferred from 
place to place. To him also our precept will 
apply: Everywhere endeavor to be useful, 
everywhere you are at home. Yet if we ob- 
serve important statesmen leaving, though re- 
luctantly, their high stations, we have reason to 
deplore their fate: for we can neither recog- 
nise them as emigrators nor as migrators : not 
as emigrators, because they forego a covetable 
situation without any prospect of a better even 
seeming to open ; not as migrators, because to 
be useful in other places is a forturie seldom 
granted them. 

"For the soldier, again, a life of peculiar 
wandering is appointed ; even in peace, now 
this, now that post is intrusted to him ; to fight, 
at hand or alar off for his native country, he 
must keep himself perpetually in motion or 
readiness to move; and not lor immediate de- 
fence alone, but also to fulfil the remote pur- 
poses of nations and rulers, he turns his steps 
towards all quarters of the world ; and to few 
of his craft is it given to find any resting-place. 
And as, in the soldier, coui-age is his first and 
highest quality, so this must always be con- 
sidered as united with fidelity; and accord- 
ingly we find certain nations, famous for trust- 
worthiness, called forth from their home, and 
serving spiritual or temporal regents as body 
guards. 

"Another class of persons indispensable to 
governments, and also of extreme mobility, we 
see in those negotiators, who, despatched from 
court to court, beleaguer princes and ministers, 
and overnet the whole inhabited world with 
their invisible threads. Of these men also, no 
one is certain of his place for a moment. In 
peace, the ablest of them are sent from country 
to country; in war, they march behind the 
army when victorious, prepare the way for it 
when fugitive; and thus are they appointed 
still to be changing place for place; on wliicli 
account, indeed, they at all times carry with 
them a stock of farewell cards. 

"If hitherto at every step we have contrived 
to do ourselves some honor, declaring as we 
have done the most distinguished portion of 
active men to be our mates and fellows in 
destiny, there now remains for you, my beloved 



GO.ETHE. 



345 



friends, by way of termination, a glory higher 
than all the rest, seeing you find yourselves 
united in brotherhood with princes, kings, and 
emperors. Think first, with blessings and 
reverence, of tlie imperial wanderer Hadrian, 
who on foot, at the head of his army, paced 
out the circle of the world which was subject 
to him, and thus in very deed took possession 
of it. Think then with horror of the Conqueror, 
that armed Wanderer, against whom no resist- 
ance availed, no wall or bulwark could shelter 
harmless nations. In fine, accompany with 
honest sympathy those hapless exiled princes, 
who, descending from the summit of the lieight, 
cannot even be received into tlie modest guild 
of active wanderers. 

" And now while we call forth and illustrate 
all this to one another, no narrow despondency, 
no passionate perversion can rule over us. The 
time is past when people rushed forth at ran- 
dom into the wide world : by the labors of 
scientific travellers describing wisely and copy- 
ing like artists, we have become sufficiently ac- 
quainted with the Earth, to know moderately 
well what is to be looked for everywhere. 

'•Yet for obtaining perfect information an in- 
dividual will not suffice. Our Society is found- 
ed on the principle that each in his degree, for 
his purposes, be thoroughly informed. Has any 
one of us some country in his eye, towards 
which his wishes are tending, we endeavor to 
make clear to him, in special detail, what was 
hovering before his imagination as a whole: to 
afford each other a survey of the inhabited and 
inhabitable world, is a most pleasant and most 
profitable kind of conversation. 

"Under this aspect, we can look upon our- 
selves as members of a Union belonging to the 
world. Siniple and grand is the thought; easy 
is its execution by understanding and strength. 
Unily is all-powerful ; no division, therefore, no 
contention among us! Let a man learn, we say, 
to figure himself as without permanent external 
relation; let him seek consistency and sequence 
not in circumstances but in himself; there will 
he find it; there let him cherish and nourish it. 
He who devotes himself to the most needful 
will in all cases advance to his purpose with 
greatest certainty: others again, aiming at the 
higher, the more delicate, require greater pru- 
dence even in the choice of their path. But let 
a man he attemptiiig or treating what he will, 
he is not, as an individual, sufficient for hitn- 
sell ; and to an honest mind, society remains the 
highest want. All serviceable persons ought 
to be related with each other, as the building 
proprietor looks out for an architect, and the 
architect for masons and carpenters. 

'•How and on what principle this Union of 
ours has been fixed and founded, is known to 
all. There is no man among us, who at any 
moment could not to projier purpose employ his 
faculty of action ; who is not assured that in all 
places, whither chance, inclination, or even pas- 
sion may conduct him, he will be received, em- 
2t 



ployed, assisted ; nay, in adverse accidents, as 
far as possible, refitted and indemnified. 

"Two duties we have most rigorously under- 
taken : first, to honor every species of religious 
worship, for all of them are comprehended 
more or less directly in the Creed : secondly, in 
like manner to respect all forms of government ; 
and since every one of them induces and pro- 
motes a calculated activity, to labor according 
to the wish and will of constituted authorities, 
in whatever place it may be our lot to sojourn, 
and for whatever time. Finally, we reckon it 
our duty, without pedantry or rigor, to practise 
and forward decorum of manners and morals, 
as required by that Reverence for ourselves, 
which arises from the Three Reverences; 
whereto we universally profess our adherence; 
having all had the joy and good fortune, some 
of us from youth upwards, to he initiateil like- 
wise in the higher general Wisdom taught in 
certain cases by those venerable men. All this, 
in the solemn hour of parting, we have thought 
good once more to recount, to unfold, to hear 
and acknowledge, as also to seal with a trustful 
Farewell. 

Keep not standing fix'd and rooted, 
Briskly venture, brislily roam ! 

Head and hand, where'er tliou foot it, 
And stout heart are still at home. 

In each land the sun does visit, 
We are fray whate'er betide ; 

To ETive space for wand'ring is it 
That the world was made so wide." 



NOVELLE. 

FRASER'S MAGAZINE, 1833.* 

The spacious courts of the Prince's Castle 
were still veiled in thick mists of an autumnal 
morning; through which veil, meanwhile, as it 
melted into clearness, you could more or less 
discern the whole Hunter-company, on horse- 
back and on foot, all busily astir. The hasty 
occupations of the nearest were distinguishable : 
there was lengthening, shortening of stirrup-lea- 
thers ; there was handing of rifles and shot- 
pouches, there was putting of game-bags to 
rights ; while the hounds, impatient in their 
leashes, threatened to drag their keepers off 
with them. Here and there, too, a horse showed 
spirit more than enough ; driven on by its fiery 
nature, or excited by the spur of its rider, who 
even now in the half-dusk could not repress a 
certain self-complacent wish to exhibit himself. 
All waited however on the Prince, w ho, taking 
leave of his young consort, was now delaying 
too long. 

United a short while ago, they already felt 
the happiness of consentaneous dispositions; 
both were of active vivid character; each will 
ingly participated in the tastes and endeavors 
of the other. The Princes father had already 
in his time, discerned and improved the season 

* Translated by Thomas Carlyle. 



346 



GOETHE. 



when it became evident that all members of 
the commonwealth should pass their days in 
equal industry; should all, in equal working 
and producing, each in his kind, first earn and 
then enjoy. 

How well this had prospered was visible in 
these very days, when the head-market was a 
holding, which you might well enough have 
named a fair. The Prince yester-even had led 
his Princess on horseback through the tumult 
of the heaped-up wares; and pointed out to her 
how on this spot the Mountain region met the 
Plain country in profitable barter: he could 
here, with the objects before him, awaken her 
attention to the various industry of his Land. 

If the Prince at this time occupied himself 
and his servants almost exclusively with these 
pressing concerns, and in particular worked in- 
cessantly with his Finance-minister, yet would 
the Huntmaster too have his right; on whose 
pleading, the temptation could not be resisted 
to undertake, in this choice autumn weather, a 
Hunt that had already been postponed ; and so 
for the household itself, and for the many stran- 
ger visitants, prepare a peculiar and singular 
festivity. 

The Princess staid behind with reluctance: 
but it was proposed to push far into the Moun- 
tains, and stir up the peaceable inhabitants of 
the forests there with an unexpected invasion. 

At parting, her lord failed not to propose a 
ride for her, with Friedrich, the Prince-Uncle, 
as escort: "I will leave thee," said he, "our 
Honorio too, as Equerry and Page, who will 
manage all." In pursuance of which words, 
he, in descending, gave to a handsome young 
man the needful injunctions; and soon thereafter 
disappeared with guests and train. 

The Princess, who had waved her handker- 
chief to her husband while still down in the 
court, now retired to the back apartments, which 
commanded a free prospect towards the Moun- 
tains; and so mucli the lovelier, as the Castle 
itself stood on a sort of elevation, and tlius, be- 
hin.d as well as before, afforded manifold mag- 
nificent views. She found the fine telescope 
still in the position where they had left it yes- 
ter-even, when amusing themselves over bush 
and hill and forest-summit, with the lofty ruins 
of the primeval Stammburg, or Family Tower; 
.which in the clearness of evening stnoil out 
noteworthy, as at that hour with its great light- 
and-shacle masses, the best aspect of so venera- 
ble a memorial of old time was to be had. This 
moniiiig too, with the approximating glasses, 
might be beautifully seen the autumnal tinge 
of the trees, many in kind and number, which 
had struggled up through the masonry unhin- 
dered and undisturbed during long years. The 
fair dame, however, directed the tube somewhat 
lower, to a waste stony fiat, over which the 
Hunting-train was to pass: she waited the mo- 
ment with patience, and was not disappointed: 
for with the clearness and magnifying power 
of the instrument her glancing eyes plainly dis- 



tinguished the Prince and the Head-Equerry ; 
nay, she forbore not again to wave her hand- 
kerchief, as some momentary pause and looking- 
back was fancied perhaps, rather than observeil. 

Prince-Uncle, Friedrich by name, now with 
announcement, entered, attended by his Painter, 
who carried a large portfolio under his ann. 
" Dear Cousin," said the hale old gentleman, 
"we here present you with the Views of the 
Stammburg, taken on various sides to show how 
the mighty Pile, warred on and warring, has 
from old times fronted the year and its weather; 
how here and there its wall had to yield, here 
and there rush down into waste ruins. How- 
ever, we have now done much to make the 
wild mass accessible ; for more there wants not 
to set every traveller, every visitor, into asto- 
nishment, into admiration." 

As the Prince now exhibited the separate 
leaves, he continued: "Here where, advancing 
up the hollow-way, through the outer ring-walls, 
you reach the Fortress proper, rises against us a 
rock, the firmest of the whole mountain; on 
this there stands a tower built, yet when Nature 
leaves otf, and Art and Handicraft begin, no one 
can distinguish. Farther you perceive side- 
wards walls abutting on it, and donjons terrace- 
wise stretching down. But I speak wrong, for 
to the eye it is but a wood that encircles that 
old summit; these hundred and fifty years no 
axe has sounded there, and the massiest stems 
have on all sides sprung up: wherever you 
press inwards lo the walls, the smooth maple, 
the rough oak, the taper pine, with trunk and 
roots oppose you ; round these we have to wind, 
and pick our footsteps with skill. Do but look - 
how artfully our Master has brought tlie cha- 
racter of it on paper : how the roots and stems, 
the species of each distinguishable, twist them- 
selves among the masonry, and the huge boughs 
coine looping through the holes. It is a wilder- 
ness like no other; an accidentally unique lo- 
cality, where ancient traces of long- vanished 
power of Man, and the ever-living, ever-working 
power of Nature show themselves in the most 
earnest conflict.' 

Exhibiting another leaf, he went on: "What 
say you now to the Castle-court, which, become 
inaccessible by the falling in of the old gate- 
tower, had for immemorial time been trodden 
by no foot? We sought to get at it by a side; 
have pierced through walls, blasted vaults asun- 
der, and so provided a convenient but secret 
way. Inside it needed no clearance; here 
stretches a flat rock-summit, smoothed by nature ; 
but yet strong trees have in spots found luck 
and opportunity for rooting themselves there; 
they have softly but decidedly grown up, and 
now stretch out their boughs into the galleries 
where the knights once walked to and fro; nay, 
through the doors and windows into the vaulted 
halls; out of which we would not drive them: 
they have even got the mastery, and may keep 
it. Sweeping away deep strata of leaves, we 
have found the notablest place all smoothed, 



GOETHE. 



347 



the like of which were perhaps not to be met 
with in the world. 

"After all this, however, it is still to be re- 
marked, and on the spot itself well worth ex- 
amining, how on the steps that lead up to the 
main tower, a maple has struck root and fa- 
shioned itself to a stout tree, so that you can 
hardly witli difficulty press by it, to mount tlie 
battlements and gaze over the unbounded pros- 
pect. Yet here, too, you linger pleased in the 
shade ; for that tree is it which high over the 
whole wondrously lifts itself into the air. 

"Let us thank the brave Artist, then, who so 
deservingly in various pictures teaches us the 
whole, even as if we saw it: he has spent the 
fairest hours of the day and of the season there- 
in, and for weeks long kept moving about these 
scenes. Here in this corner has there for him, 
and the warder we gave him, been a little 
pleasant dwelling fitted up. You could not 
think, my Best, what a lovely outlook into the 
country, into court and walls, he has got there. 
But now when all is once in outline, so pure, so 
characteristic, he may finish it down here at his 
ease. With these pictures we will decorate 
our garden-hall ; and no one shall recreate his 
eyes over our regular parterres, our groves and 
sliady walks, without wishing himself up there, 
to follow, in actual sight of the old and of the 
new, of the stubborn, inflexible, imlestructible, 
and of the fresh, pliant, irresistible, what reflec- 
tions and compari?ons would rise for him." 

Honorio entered, with notice that the horses 
were brought out; then said the Princess, turn- 
ing to the Uncle: "Let us ride up; and you 
will show me in reality what you have here set 
before me in image. Ever since I came among 
you, I have heard of this undertaking; and 
should now like of all things to see with my 
own eyes what in the narrative seemed impos- 
sible, and ill the depicting remains improbable.'' 
— " Not yet, my Love," answered the Prince : 
'• what you here saw is what it can become and 
is becoming; for the present much in the enter- 
prise stands still amid impediments; Art must 
first be complete, if Nature is not to shame it.'' 
•^"Then let us ride at lea.st upwards, were it 
only to the foot: I have the greatest wish to-day 
to look about me far in the world.'' — "Altogether 
'as you will it," replied the Prince. — "Let us 
ride through the Town, however,' continued 
the Lady, "over the great market-place, where 
stands the innumerable crowd of booths, look- 
ing like a little city, like a camp. It is as if the 
wants and occupations of all the families in the 
land were turned outwards, assembled in this 
centre, and brought into the light of day: (or 
the attentive observer can descry whatsoever it 
is that man perlbrms and needs; you fancy, for 
the moment, there is no money necessary, that 
all business could here be managed by barier, 
and so at bottom it is. Since the Prince, last 
night, set me on these reflections, it is pleasant 
t/) cousiiler how here, where Mountain and 
Plain meet together, both so clearly speak out 



what they require and wish. For as the High- 
lander can fashion the timber of his woods into 
a hundred shapes, and mould his iron for all 
manner of uses, so these others from below^ 
come to meet him with most manifold wares, 
in which often you can hardly discover the 
material or recognise the aim." 

"I am aware,'" answered the Prince, "that 
my Nephew turns his utmost care to these 
things: for specially, on the present occasion, 
this main point comes to be considered, that one 
receive more than one give out: which to 
manage is, in the long run, tVie sum of all 
Political Economy, as of the smallest private 
housekeeping. Pardon me, however, my Best : 
I never like to ride through markets; at every 
step you are hindered and kept back ; ami then 
flames up in my imagination the monstrous 
misery, which, as it were, burnt itself into my 
eyes, when I witnessed one such world of 
wares go uff in fire. I had scarcely got to " 

"Let us not lose the bright hours," interrupted 
the Princess, for the worthy man had already 
more than once attlicted her with the minute 
description of that mischance: how he being 
on a long journey, resting in the best inn, on the 
market-place which was just then swarming 
with a fair, had gone to bed exceedingly fa- 
tigued ; and in the night-time been, by shrieks, 
and flames rolling up against his lodging, hide- 
ously awakened. 

The Princess hastened to mount her favorite 
horse: and led, not through the backgate up- 
wards, but through the fbregate downwards, 
her reluctant-willing attendant: for who but 
would gladly have ridden by her side, who but 
would gladly have followed after her. And so 
Honorio too had without regret staid back from 
the otherwise so wished-for Hunt, to be exclu- 
sively at her service. 

As was to be anticipated, they could only 
ride through the market step by step ; but the 
fair Lovely one enlivened every stoppage by 
some sprightly remark. "I repeat my lesson of 
yester-niglit,'' said she, "since Necessity is try- 
ing our patience." And in truth, the whole 
mass of men socrowded about the riders, that 
their progress was slow. The people gazed 
with joy at the young dame; and, on so many 
smiling countenances, might be read the plea- 
sure they felt to see that the first woman in the 
land was also the i'airest and gracefnilest. 

Promiscuously mingled stood. Mountaineers, 
who had built their still dwellings amid rocks, 
firs, and spruces; Lowlanders from hills, mea- 
dows, and leas; craftsmen of the little towns; 
and what else had all assembled there. After 
a rjuiet glance, the Princess remarked to her 
attendant, how all these, whencesoever they 
came, had taken more stutf than necessary .'oi 
their clothes, more cloth and linen, more ribands 
for trimming. It is as if the women could not 
be bushy enough, the men not pufl'y enough, U( 
please themselves. 

" We will leave them that," answered the 



348 



GOETHEi- 



uncle: "spend his superfluity on what he will, 
a man is happy in it; happiest when he there- 
with deoks and dizens himself." The fair 
dame nodded assent. 

So had they by degrees got upon a clear 
space, which led out to the suburbs, when, at 
the end of mariy small booths and stands, a 
larger edifice of boards showed itself, which 
was scarcely glanced at till an ear-lacerating 
bellow sounded forth from it. The feeding- 
hour of the wild beasts there exhibited seemed 
to have come : the Lion let his forest and 
desert-voice be heard in all vigor; the horses 
shuddered, and all must remark how, in the 
peaceful ways and workings of the cultivated 
world, the King of the wihlerness so fearfully 
announced himself Coining nearer the booth, 
you could not overlook the variegated colossal 
pictures representing with violent colors and 
strong emblems those foreign beasts ; to a sight 
of which the peaceful burgher was to be irre- 
sistibly enticed. Tiie grim monstrous tiger was 
pouncing on a blackamoor, on the point of tear- 
ing him in shreds; a lion stood earnest and 
majestic, as if he saw no prey worthy of him ; 
other wondrous party-colored creatures, beside 
these mighty ones, deserved less attention. 

''As we come back," said the Princess, "we 
will aliuht and take a nearer view of these 
gentry. ' — "It is strange," observed the Prince, 
" that man always seeks excitement by Terror. 
Inside, there, the Tiger lies quite quiet in his 
cage; and here must be ferociously dart upon 
a black, that the people may fancy the like is 
to be seen within : of murder and sudden death, 
of burning and destruction, there is not enough ; 
but ballad-singers must at every corner keep 
repeating it. Good man will have himself 
Irightened a little; to feel tiie better, in secret, 
how beautiful and laudable it is to draw breath 
in freedom. ' 

VVliatever of apprehensiveness from such 
bugbear images might have remained was soon 
all and wholly effaced, as, issuing through the 
gate, our party entered on the cheerl'ullest of 
scenes. The road led first up the River, as yet 
but a small current, and bearing only light 
boats, but which by and by, as a renowned world- 
stream, would carry forth its name and waters, 
and enliven distant lands. They proceeded 
next through well-cultivated fruit-gardens and 
pleasure-grounds, softly ascending; and by de- 
grees you could look about you in the now-dis- 
closed much-peopled region, till first a thicket, 
then a little wood admitted our ritlers, and the 
gracefuUest localiiies refreshed and limited their 
view. A meadow vale leading upwards, short:y 
belure mown (or the second time, velvet-like to 
look upon, watered by a brook rushing out lively 
copious at once from the uplands above, received 
them as with welcotne; and so they approached 
a higher freer station, which, on issunig from 
the wood, after a stitf ascent, they gained ; and 
could now descry, over new clumps of trees, 
tiie old Castle, the goal oL' their pilgrimage, 



rising in the distance, as pinnacle of the rock 
and forest. Backwards, again (for never did 
one mount hither without turning round), they 
caught, through accidental openings of the high 
trees, the Prince's Castle, on the left, lightened 
by the morning sun ; the well-built higher quar- 
ter of the Town softened under light smoke- 
clouds; and so on, rightwards, the under Town 
the River in several bendings with its meadows 
and mills ; on the farther side, an extensive fer- 
tile region. 

Having satisfied themselves with the pros- 
pect, or rather as usually happens when we 
look round from so high a station, become 
doubly eager ibr a wider, less limited view, they 
rode on, over a broad stony flat, where the 
mighty Ruin stood fronting them, as a green- 
crowned summit, a few old trees far down 
about its foot: they rode along; and so arrived 
there, just at the steepest most inaccessible side. 
Great rocks jutting out froin of old, insensible 
of every change, firm, well-founded, stood 
clenched together there; and so it towered up- 
wards: what had fallen at intervals lay in huge 
plates and fragments confusedly heajjed, and 
seemed to forbid the boldest any attempt. But 
the steep, the precipitous is inviting to youth: 
to undertake it, to storm and conquer it, is for 
young limbs an enjoyinent. The Princess testi- 
fied desire for an attempt; Honorio was at her 
handj the Prince-Uncle, if easier to satisfy, took 
it cheerfully, and would show that he too had 
strength; the horses were to wait below among 
the trees; our climbers make for a certain point, 
where a huge projecting rock affords a standing- 
room, and a prospect, which indeed is already 
passing over into the bird's-eye kind, yet folds 
itself together there picturesquely enough. 

The sun, almost at its meridian, lent the 
clearest light; the Prince s Castle, with its com- 
partments, main buildings, wings, domes, and 
towers, lay clear and stately; the upper Town 
in its whole extent; into the lower also you 
could conveniently look, nay, by the telescope 
di^tinguisll the booths in the market-place, bo 
furthersoine an instrument Honorio would never 
leave behind: they looked at the River up- 
wanls and downwards, on this side the moun- 
tainous, terrace-like, interrupted expanse, on 
that the upswelling, Iruitful land, alternating in 
level and low hill; places innumerable ; for it 
was long customary to dispute iiow many of 
them were here to be seen. 

Over the great expanse lay a cheerful still- 
ness, as is common at noon ; when, as the 
Ancients were wont to say, Pan is asleep, and 
all Nature holds her breath not to awaUen 
him. 

"It is not the first time," said the Princess, 
" that 1, on some such high far-seeing spot, have 
reflected how Nature all clear looks »o pure and 
peaceful, and gives you the impression as if 
there were nothing contradictory in the world 
and yet when you return back into the habita- 
tion of man, be it lol'ty or low, wide or narrow 



there is ever somewhat to contend with, to 
battle with, to smooth and put to riijhts." 

Honorio who, meanwhile, was looking through 
the glass at the Town, exclaimed: "See! see! 
There is fire in the market!' They looked, and 
could observe some smoke, the flames were 
smothered in the daylight. "The fire spreads!" 
cried he, still looking through the glass; the 
niischief indeed now became noticeable to the 
good eyes of the Princess: from time to lime 
you observed a red burst of flame, the smoke 
mounted aloft; and Prince-Uncle said: "Let 
us return; that is not good: I always feared I 
should see that misery a second time." They 
descended, got back to 'their horses. "Ride," 
said the Princess to the Uncle, " fast, but not 
without a groom; leave me Honorio, we will 
follow without delay." The Uncle felt the 
reasonableness, nay necessity of this; and 
started off down the waste stony slope, at the 
quickest pace the ground allowed. 

As the Princess mounted, Honorio said: 
"Please your Excellency to ride slow! In the 
Town as in the Castle, the fire-apparatus is in 
perfect order; the people, in this unexpected 
accident, will not lose their presence of mind. 
Here, moreover, we have bad ground, little 
stones and short grass ; quick riding is unsafe; 
in any case, before we arrive, the fire will be 
got under." The Princess did not think so; 
she observed the smoke spreading, she fancied 
that she saw a flame flash up, that she heard 
an explosion; and now in her imagination all 
the terrific things awoke, which the worthy 
Uncle's repeated narrative of his experiences in 
that market-conflagration had too deeply im- 
planted there. 

Frightfid doubtless had that business been, 
alarming and impressive enough to leave be- 
hind it, painfully through life long, a boding and 
image of its recurrence, when, in the night- 
season, on the great booth-covered market-space, 
a sudden fire had seized booth after booth, be- 
fore the sleepers in these light huts could be 
shaken out of deep dreams: the Prince himself, 
as a wearied stranger arriving only for rest, 
started from his sleep, sprang to the window, 
saw all fearfully illuminated ; flame after flame, 
from the right, from the left, darting through 
each other, rolls quivering towards him. The 
houses of the market-place, reddened in the 
shine, seemed already glowing, threatened every 
moment to kindle, and burst forth in fire : be- 
low, the element raged without let; planks 
cracked, laths cracked, the canvass flew abroad, 
and its dusky fire-peaked tatters whirled them- 
selves round and aloft, as if had spirits, in their 
own element, with perpetual change of shape, 
were, in capricious dance, devouringone another ; 
and there and yonder would dart up out from 
their penal fire. And then with wild howls 
each saved what was at hand : servants and 
masters labored to drag forth bales already 
seized by the flames, to snatch away yet some- 
what from the burning shelves, and pack it into 



the chests, which too they must at last leave a 
prey to the hastening flame. Hov/ many a one 
could have prayed but for a moment's pause to 
the loud-advancing fire; as he looked round for 
the possibility of some device, and was with 
all his possession already seized : on the one 
side, burnt and glowed already, what on the 
other still stood in dark night. Obstinate 
characters, will-strong men grimly fronted the 
grim foe, and saved much, with loss of their 
eyebrows and hair. Alas, all this waste con- 
fusion now rose anew before the fair spirit of 
the Princess; the gay morning prospect was all 
overclouded, and her eyes darkened ; wood and 
meadow had put on a look of strangeness, of 
danger. 

Entering the peaceful vale, heeding little its 
refreshing coolness, they were but a few steps 
down from the copious fountain of the brook 
which flowed by them, when the Princess 
descried, quite down in the thickets, something 
singular, which she soon recognised for the 
tiger: springing on, as she a short while ago 
had seen him painted, he came towards her; 
and this image, added to the frightful ones she 
was already busy with, made the strangest im- 
pression. "Fly! your Grace," cried Honorio, 
"fly!" She turned her horse towards the steep 
hill they had just descended. The young man, 
rushing on towards the monster, drew his pistol 
and fired when he thought himself near enough ; 
but, alas, without effect; the tiger sprang to a 
side, the horse faltered, the provoked wild beast 
followed his course, upwards straight after the 
Princess. She galloped, what her horse could, 
up the steep stony space ; scarcely apprehend- 
ing that so delicate a creature, unused to such 
exertion, could not hold out. It overdid itself, 
driven on by the necessitated Princess; it 
stumbled on the loose gravel of the steep, and 
again stumbled ; and at last fell, after violent 
efforts, powerless to the ground. The fair dame, 
resolute and dextrous, failed not instantly to get 
upon her feet ; the horse too rose, but the tiger 
was approaching; though not with vehement 
speed ; the uneven ground, the sharp stones 
seemed to damp his impetuosity; and only 
Honorio flying after him, riding with checked 
speed along with him, appeared to stimulate 
and provoke his force anew. Both runners, at 
the same instant, reached the spot where the 
Princess was standing by her horse : the Knight 
bent himself, fired, and with this second pistol 
hit the monster through the head, so that it 
rushed dovvn ; and now, stretched out in full 
length, first clearly disclosed the might and 
terror whereof only the bodily hull was left 
lying. Honorio had sprung from his horse ; 
was already kneeling on the beast, quenching 
its last movements, and held his drawn hanger 
in his right hand. The youth was beautifid ; 
he had come dashing on as in sports of the 
lance and the ring the Princess had often seen 
him do. Even so in the riding-course would 
his bidlet, as he darted by, hit the Turks head 
30 



350 



G O E T H E i 



on the pole, right under the turban in the brow; 
even so would he, lightly prancing up, piick his 
naked sabre into the fallen mass, and lift it 
from the grouiid. In all such arts he was dex- 
trous and felicitous; both now stood him in 
good stead. 

"Give him the rest," said the Princess: "I 
fpar lie will hurt you with his claws." — "Par- 
don!" answered the youth: "he is already dead 
enough ; and I would not hurt the sUin, which 
next winter shall shine upon your sledge." — 
'Sport not," said the Princess: "whatsoever of 
pious feeling dwells in the depth of the heart 
unfolds itself in such a moment." — "I too," 
cried Honorio, " was never more pious than 
even now; and therefore do I think of what is 
joyfullest; I look at the tiger's fell only as it 
can attend you to do you pleasure." — " It would 
for ever remind me," said she, "of this (earful 
moment." — "Yet is itj" replied the youth with 
glowing cheeks, "a more harmless spoil than 
when the weapons of slain enemies are carried 
for show before the victor." — "I shall bethink 
me, at sight of it, of your boldness and clever- 
ness ; and need not add that you may reckon 
on my thanks and the Prince's favor for your 
life long. But rise ; the beast is clean dead, let 
us consider what is next: before all things 
rise!" — "As I am once on my knees," replied 
the youth, "once in a posture which in other 
circumstances would have been forVjid, let me 
beg at this moment to receive assurance of the 
favor, of the grace which you vouchsafe me. I 
have already asked so often of your high con- 
sort for leave and promotion to go on my travels. 
He who has the happiness to sit at your table, 
whom you honor with the privilege to entertain 
your company, should have seen the world. 
Travellers stream in on us from all parts; and 
when a town, an important spot in any quarter 
of the world comes in course, the question is 
sure to be asked of us, were we ever there ? 
Nobody allows one sense, till one has seen all 
that: it is as if you had to instruct yourself only 
for the sake of others." 

"Rise!" repeated the Princess : "I were loth 
to wish or request aught that went against the 
will of my Husband ; however, if I mistake not, 
the cause why he has restrained you hitherto 
will soon be at an end. His intention was to 
see you ripened into a- complete self-guided 
nobleman, to do yourself and him credit in 
foreign parts, as hitherto at court; and I should 
think this deed of yours was as good a recom- 
mendatory passport as a young man could wish 
for to take abroad with him," 

That, instead of a youthful joy, a certain 
mournfulness came over his face, the Princess 
had not time to observe, nor had he to indulge 
his emotion; for, in hot haste, up the steep, 
came a woman, with a boy at her hand, straight 
to the group so well known to us; and scarcely 
had Honorio, bethinking him, arisen, when they 
howling and shrieking cast themselves on the 
carcass ; by which action, as well as by their 



cleanly decent, yet party-colored and unustial 
dress, might be gathered that it was the mistress 
of this slain creature, and the black-eyed black- 
locked boy, holding a flute in his hand, her son; 
weeping like his mother, less violent but deeply 
moved, kneeling beside her. 

Now came strong ontbreakings of passion 
froin this woman; interrupted, indeed, and 
pulse-wise; a stream of words, leaping like a 
stream in gushes froin rock to rock. A natural 
language, short and discontinuous, made itself 
impressive and pathetic: in vai/i should we 
attempt translating it into our dialects ; the ap- 
proximate purportof it we must notomit. "They 
have murdered thee, poor beast! murdered 
w ithout need ! Thou wert tame, and wouldst 
fain have laid <lown at rest and waited our 
coming; for thy foot-balls were sore, thy claws 
had no force left. The hot sun to ripen them 
was wanting. Thou wert the beautifullest of 
thy kind : who ever saw a kingly tiger so glori- 
ously stretched out in sleep, as thou here liest, 
dead, never to rise more. When thou awokest 
in the early dawn of morning, and openeilst thy 
throat, stretching out thy red tongue, thou wert 
as if smiling on us; and even when bellowing, 
thou tookest thy food from the hands of a 
woman, from the fingers of a child. How long 
have we gone -with thee on thy journeys ; how 
long has thy company been useful and fruitful 
to us ! To us, to us of a very truth, meat came 
from the eater, and sweetness out of the strong. 
So will it be no more. Wo! wo!" 

She had not done lamenting, when over the 
smoother part of the Castle Mountain, came 
riders rushing down ; soon recognised as the 
Prince's Hunting-train, himself the foremost. 
Following their sport, in the backward hills, 
they had observed the fire-vapors; and fast 
through dale and ravine, as in fierce chase, 
taken the shortest path towards this mournful 
sign. Galloping along the stony vacancy, they 
stopped and stared at sight of the unexpected 
group, which in that empty expanse stood out 
so markwonhy. After the first recognition there 
was silence; some pause of breathing-time; 
and then what the view itself did not impart, 
was with brief words explained. So stood the 
Prince, contemplating the strange unheard-of 
incident; a circle round him of riders, and 
followers that had run on foot. What to do was 
still undetermined; the Prince intent on order- 
ing, executing, when a man pressed forward 
into the circle ; large of stature, party-colored, 
wondrously-apparelled, like wife and child. 
And now the family in union testified their 
sorrow atid astonishment. The man, however, 
soon restrained himself, bowed in reverent dis- 
tance before the Prince, and said: "It is not 
*he time for lamenting; alas, my lord and 
mighty hunter, the lion too is loose, hither to- 
M-ards the mountains is he gone : but spare 
him, have mercy that he perish not like this 
good beast." 

« The Lion !" said the Prince : " Hast thou th.* 



GOETHE. 



301 



trace of him V — " Yes, Lord ! A peasant down 
there, who had heedlessly taken shelter on a 
tree, directed me farther up this way, to the left; 
but I saw the crowd of men and horses here; 
anxious for tidings of assistance, I hastened 
hither." — "So then," commanded the Prince, 
"draw to the left. Huntsmen; you will load 
your pieces, go softly to work, if you drive him 
into the deep woods, it is no matter: but in the 
end, good man, we shall be obliged to kill your 
animal; why were you improvident enough to 
let him loose?' — "The fire broke out," replied 
he, " we kept quiet and attentive ; it spread fast, 
but at a distance from us, we had water enough 
for our defence ; but a heap of powder blew 
up, and threw the brands on to us, and over our 
heads: we were too hasty, and are now ruined 
people." 

The Prince was still busy directing; but for 
a moment all seemed to pause, as a man was 
observed hastily springing down from the 
lieights of the old Castle; whom the troop soon 
recognised for the watchman that had been sta- 
tioned there to keep the Painter's apartments, 
while he lodged there and took charge of the 
workmen. He came running, out of breath, 
yet in few words soon made known that the 
Lion had lain himself down, within the high 
ring-wall, in the sunshine, at the foot of a large 
beech, and was behaving quite quietly. With 
an air of vexation, however, the man concluded : 
•' Why ilid I take my rifle to town yesternight, 
to have it cleaned ; he had never risen again, 
the skin had been mine, and I might all my 
life have had the credit of the thing." 

The Prince, whom his military experiences 
here also stood in stead, for he had before now 
been in situations where from various sides in- 
evitable evil seemed to threaten, said hereupon: 
" What surety do you give me that if we spare 
your lion, he will not woik destruction among 
us, among my people?" 

"This woman and this child," answered the 
father hastily, "engage to tame him, to keep him 
peaceable, till I bring up the cage, and then we 
can carry him back utdiarmed and without 
harming any one." 

The boy put his flute to his lips; an instru- 
ment of the kind once named soft, or sweet 
flntfs; short-beaked like pipes: he, who under- 
stood the art, could bring out of it the gracefullest 
tones. Meanwhile the Prince had inquired of 
the watchman how the lion came up. "By the 
hollow-way,'' answered he, " which is walled 
in on both sides, and was formerly the only en- 
trance, and is to be the only one still: two foot- 
paths, which led in elsewhere, we have so 
blocked up and destroyed that no human being, 
except by that first narrow passage, can reach 
the Magic Castle which Prince Friedrich's talent 
arjd taste is making of it." 

After a little thought, during which the Prince 
looked round at the boy, who still continued as 
if softly preluding, he turned to Honorio, and 
said: "Thou hast done much to-day, complete 



thy task. Secure that narrow path ; keep your 
rifles in readiness, but do not shoot till the crea- 
ture can no otherwise be driven back: in any 
case, kindle a fire, which will frighten liiin if 
he make downwards. The man and woman 
take charge of the rest." Honorio rapidly be- 
stirred himself to execute these orders. 

The child continued his tune, which was no 
tune; a series of notes without law, and per- 
haps even on that account so heart-touching: 
the bystanders seemed as if enchanted by the 
moveiTient of a song-like melody, when the fa- 
ther with dignified enthusiasm began to speak 
in this sort: 

" God has given the Prince wisdom, and also 
knowledge to discern that all God's works are 
wise, each after its kind. Behold the rock, how 
he stands fast and stirs not, defies the weather 
and the sunshine; primeval trees adorn his 
head, and so crowned he looks abroad; neither 
if a mass rush away, will this contiime what it 
was, but falls broken into many pieces and 
covers the side of the descent. But there too 
they will not tarry, capriciously they leap far 
down, the brook receives them, to the river he 
bears them. Not resisting, not contradictory, 
angular; no, smooth and rounded they travel 
now quicker on their way, arrive, from river to 
river, finally at the ocean, whither rriarch the 
giants in hosts, and in the depths whereof 
dwarfs are busy. 

"But who shall exalt the glory of the Lord, 
whom the stars praise from Eternity to Eternity ! 
Why look ye far into the distance? Consider 
here the bee: late at the end of harvest she still 
busily gathers, builds her a house, tight of cor- 
ner, straight of wall, herself the architect and 
mason. Behold the ant: she knows her way, 
and loses it not; she piles her a dwelling of 
grass-halms, earth-crumbs, and needles of the 
fir; she piles it aloft and arches it in; but she 
has labored in vain, for the horse stamps, and 
scrapes it all in pieces: lo ! he has trodden 
down her beams, and scattered her planks; 
impatiently he snorts and cannot rest ; for the 
Lord has made the horse comrade of the wind 
and companion of the storm, to carry man whi 
ther he wills, and woman whither she desires 
But in the Wood of Palms arose he, the Lion, 
with earnest step traversed the wilderness; 
there rules he over all creatures, his might who 
shall withstand? Yet man can tatne him; and 
tlie fiercest of living tilings has reverence for the 
image of God, in which too the angels are made, 
who serve the Lord and his servants. For in 
the den of Lions Daniel was not afraid : he re- 
mained fast and faithful, and the wild bellow- 
ing interrupted not his song of praise." 

This speech, delivered with expression of a 
natural enthusiasm, the child accompanied here 
and there with graceful tones; but now, the 
father having ended, he, with clear melodious 
voice and skilful passaging, struck up his war- 
ble, whereupon the father took the flute, and 
gave note in unison, while the child sang: 



352 



GOETHE, 



From the Dens, I, in a deeper. 
Prophet's snug; of praise can hear ; 
Angel-host tie hath for keeper, 
Needs the good man there to fear ? 
Linn, Lioness, agazing, 
Mildly pressing round him came ; 
Yea, that humble, holy praising, 
It hath made them tame. 

The father continued accompanying this 
strophe with his flute; the mother here and 
there touched in as second voice. 

Impressive, however, in a quite peculiar de- 
gree, it was, when the child now began to shuffle 
the lines of the strophe into other arrangement; 
and thereby if not bring out a new sense, yet 
heighten the feeling by leading it into self-ex- 
citement: 

Angel-host around doth hover. 
Us in heavenly tones to cheer : 
In the dens our head doth cover : 
Needs the poor cliUd there to fear T 

For that humble holy praising 
Will permit no evil nigh : 
Angels hover, keeping, gazing, 
Who so safe as 1 ? 

Hereupon with emphasis and elevation began 
all three : 

For th' Eternal rules above us, 
Lands and oceans rules his will ; 
Lions even as lambs shall love us. 
And the proudest waves be stilL 

Whette4 sword to scabbard cleaving, 
Faith and Hope victorious see. 
Strong, who, loving and believing. 
Prays, O Lord, to thee. 

All were silent, hearing, hearkening; and 
only when the tones ceased could you remark 
and distinguish the iinpression they had made. 
All was as if appeased ; each affected in his 
way. The Prince, as if he now first saw the 
misery that a little while ago had threatened 
him, looked down on his spouse, who leaning 
on him forbore not to draw out the little em- 
broidered handkerchief, and therewith covered 
her eyes. It was blessedness for her to feel her 
young bosom relieved from the pressure with 
which the preceding minutes had loaded it. A 
perfect silence reigned over the crowd ; they 
seemed to have forgotten the dangers: the con- 
flagration below ; and above, the rising up of a 
dubiously-reposing Lion. 

By a sign to bring the horses, the Prince first 
restored the group to motion ; he turned to the 
woman, and said; "You think then that, once 
find the lion, you could, by your singing, by the 
singing of this child, M'ith help of these flute- 
tones, appease hiin, and carry him back to his 
prison, unhurt aiid hurting no one V' They an- 
swered yes, assuring and aflirming; the Castel- 
Un was given them as guide. And now the 
Prince started off in all speed with a few ; the 
Princess followed slower with the rest of the 
train ; mother and son, on their side, under con- 
duct of the warder, who had got himself a mus- 
ket, mounted up the steeper part of the height. 

Before the entrance of the hollow-way which 
opened their access to the Castle, they found the 
hunters h<\sy heaping up dry brushwood, to 



have, in any case, a large fire ready for kindling. 
"There is no need," said the woman : "it will 
all go well and peaceably, without that." 

Farther on, sitting on a wall, his double-barrel 
resting in his lap, Honorio appeared ; at his 
post, as if ready for every occurrence. How 
ever, he seemed hardly to notice our party; he 
sat as if sunk in deep thoughts, he looked round 
like one whose mind was not there. The wo- 
man addressed him with a prayer not to let the 
fire be lit; he appeared not to heed her words; 
she spoke on with vivacity, and cried : "Hand- 
some young man, thou bast killed my tiger, I 
do not curse thee ; spare my lion, good young 
man, I will bless thee." 

Honorio was looking straight out before him, 
to where the sun on his course began to sink. 
" Thou lookest to the west," cried the woman ; 
"thou dost well, there is much to do there; 
hasten, delay not, thou wilt conquer. But first 
conquer thyself" At this he appeared to give 
a smile; the woman stept on; could not, how- 
ever, but look back once more at him : a ruddy 
sun was overshining his face; she thought she 
had never seen a handsoiner youth. 

"If your child," said the warder now, " with 
his fluting and singing, can, as you are per- 
suaded, entice and pacify the lion, we shall soon 
get mastery of him after, for the creature has 
lain down quite close to the perforated vaults 
through which, as the main passage was blocked 
up with ruins, we had to bore ourselves an en- 
trance into the Castle-Court. If the child entice 
him into this latter, I can close the opening with 
little difficulty; then the boy, if he like, can 
glide out by one of the little spiral stairs he will 
find in the corner. We must conceal ourselves; 
but I shall so take my place that a rifle-ball can, 
at any moment, help the poor child in case of 
extremity." 

" All these precautions are unnecessary ; God 
and skill, piety and a blessing, must do the 
work." — "Maybe," replied the warder; "how- 
ever, I know my duties. First, I must lead you, 
by a difficult path, to the top of the wall, right 
opposite the vaults and opening I have men- 
tioned: the child may then go down, as into the 
arena of the show, and lead away the animal, 
if it will follow him." This was done: warder 
and mother looked down in concealinent, as the 
child descending the screw-stairs, showed him- 
self in the open space of the Court, and disap- 
peared opposite them in the gloomy opening ; 
but forthwith gave his flute voice, which by 
and by grew weaker, and at last sank dumb. 
The pause was bodeful enough ; the old Hunter, 
familiar with danger, felt heart sick at the sin- 
gidar conjuncture ; the mother, however, with 
cheerful face, bending over to listen, showed 
not the smallest discomposure. 

At last the flute was again heard ; the child 
stept forth from the cavern with glittering satis- 
fied eyes, the lion after hiin, but slowly, and a» 
it seemed with difficulty. He showed here and 
there desire to lie down ; yet the boy led him 



GOETHE. 



353 



in a half-circle through the few disleaved many- 
tinted trees, till at length, in the last rays of the 
sun wliich poured in through a hole in the 
ruins, he set him down, as if transfigured in the 
bright red light ; and again commenced his pa- 
cifying song, the repetition of which we also 
cannot forbear : 

From the Dens, I, in a deeper. 

Prophet's song of praise can hear ; 

Angel-host he hath for keeper, 

Needs the good man there to fear T 

Lion, liioness, agazing. 

Mildly pressdng round him came ; 

Yea, that humble, holy praising, 

It hath made them tame. 

Meanwhile the lion had laid itself down quite 
close to the child, and lifted its heavy right 
fore-paw into his bosom ; the boy as he sung 
gracefully stroked it; but was not long in ob- 
serving that a sharp thorn had stuck itself be- 
tween the balls. He carefully pulled it out ; 
with a smile, took the party-colored silk-hand- 
kerchief from his neck, and bound up the fright- 
ful paw of the monster; so that his mother for 
joy bent herself back with outstretched arms ; 
and perhaps, according to custom, would have 
shouted and clapped applause, had not a hard 
haml gripe of the warder reminded her that the 
danger was not yet over. 

Triumphantly the child sang on, having with 
a few tones preluded : 

For th' Eternal rules above us, 

Lands and oceans rules his will ; 

Lions even as lambs shall love us, 

And tho proudest waves be still. 

Whetted sword to scabbard cleaving, 

Faith and Hope victorious see, 

Strong, who, loving and believing, 

Prays, Lord, to thee. 

Were it possible to fancy that in the counte- 
nance of so grim a creature, the tyrant of the 
woods, the despot of the animal kingdom, an 
expression of friendliness, of thankful content- 
ment could be traced, then here was such trace- 
able ; and truly the child in his illustrated look 
had the air as of a mighty triumphant victor; 
the other figure, indeed, not that of one van- 
quished, for his strength lay concealed in him; 
but yet of one tamed, of one given up to his 
own peaceful will. The child fluted and sang 
on, changing the lines according to his way, and 
adding new : 

And so to good children bringeth 

Blessed Angel help in need ; 

Fetters o'er the cruel flingeth, 

Worthy art with wings doth speed. 

So have tanjed, and firmly iron'd 

To a poor child's feeble knee, 

Him the forest's lordly tyrant, 

Song and Piety. 



THE TALE.* 

IiT his little Hut, by the great River, which a 

^leavy rain had swoln to overflo wing, lay the 

* Translated by Carlyle. The editor has preferred to 

publish this "Tale" without the translator's comments. 

Whoever is curious to see these, and to have a key to 

2ix 



ancient Ferryman, asleep, wearied by the toil 
of the day. In the middle of the night, loud 
voices awoke him ; he heard that it was travel- 
lers wishing to be carried over. 

Stepping out, he saw two large Will-o'-wisps, 
hovering to and fro on his boat, which lay 
moored : they said, they were in violent haste, 
and should have been already on the other side. 
The old Ferryman made no loitering ; pushed 
ofl^, and steered with his usual skill obliquely 
through the stream ; while the two strangers 
whiffled and hissed together, in an unknown 
very rapid tongue, and every now and then 
broke out in loud laughter, hopping about, at 
one time on the gunwale and the seats, at an- 
other on the bottom of the boat. 

"The boat is heeling!" cried the old man; 
"if you don't be quiet, it will overset; be seated, 
gentlemen of the wisp !" 

At this advice they burst into a fit of laughter, 
mocked the old man, and were more unquiet 
than ever. He bore their mischief with pa- 
tience, and soon reached the farther shore. 

"Here is for your labor!" cried the travellers, 
and as they shook themselves, a heap of glitter- 
ing gold-pieces jingled down into the wet boat. 
" For Heaven's sake, what are you about ■?" cried 
the old man; "you will ruin me forever! Had 
a single piece of gold got into the water, the 
stream, which cannot suffer gold, would have 
risen in horrid waves, and swallowed both my 
skiff' and me; and who knows how it might 
have fared with you in that case : here, take 
back your gold." 

" We can take nothing back, which we have 
once shaken from us," said the Lights. 

" Then you give me the trouble," said the old 
man, stooping down, and gathering the pieces 
into his cap, " of raking them together, and car- 
rying them ashore, and burying them." 

The Lights had leaped from the boat, but the 
old man cried: "Stay; where is my fare?" 

" If you take no gold, you may work for no- 
thing," cried the Will-o'-wisps. — "You must 
know that I am only to be paid with fruits of 
the earth." — "Fruits of the earth? we despise 
them, and have never tasted them." — " And yet 
I cannot let you go, till you have promised that 
you will deliver me three Cabbages, three Arti- 
chokes, and three large Onions." 

The Lights were making off' with jests; but 
they felt themselves, in some inexplicable man- 
ner, fastened to the ground : it was the unplea- 
santest feeling they had ever had. They en- 
gaged to pay him his deinand as soon as possi- 
ble : he let them go, and pushed away. He 
was gone a good distance, when they called to 
him: "Old man I Holla, old man! the main, 
point is forgotten !" He was off", however, arid 
did not hear them. He had fallen quietly down 
that side of the River, where, in a rocky spot, 
which the water never reached, he meant to 

this wondrous production, is referred to "Carlyle's Mis- 
cellanies." Boston: James Munroe & Co. Vol, IV 
Appendix. 

30* 



3G4 



GOETHE. 



bury the pernicious gold. Here, between two 
high crags, he found a monstrous chasm ; shook 
the metal into it, and steered back to his cottage. 

Now, in this chasm, lay the fair green Snake, 
who was roused from her sleep by the gold 
coming chinking down. No sooner did she fix 
her eye on the glittering coins, than she ate 
them all up, with the greatest reli-^h, on the 
spot ; and carefully picked out such pieoes as 
were scattered in the chinks of the rock. 

Scarcely had she swallowed them, when, 
with extreme delight, she began to feel the 
metal melting in her inwards, and spreading 
all over her body ; and soon, to her lively joy, 
she observed that she was grown transparent 
and luminous. Long ago she had been told that 
ihis was possible; but now being doubtful 
vwhetlier such a lifiht could last, her curiosity 
and the desire to be secure against the future, 
drove her from her cell, that she might see who 
it was that had shaken in this precious metal. 
She found no one. The more delightful was it 
to admire her own appearance, and her grace- 
ful brightness, as she crawled along through 
roots and bushes, and spread outlier light among 
the grass. Every leaf seemed of emerald, every 
flower was dyed with new glory. It was in 
vain that she crossed the solitary thickets ; but 
her hopes rose high, when, on reaching the open 
country, she perceived from afar a brilliancy 
resembling her own. "Shall I find my like at 
last, then?" cried she, and hastened to the spot. 
The toil of crawling through bog and reeds gave 
her little thought; for though she liked best to 
live in dry grassy spots of the mountains, among 
the clefts of rocks, and for most part fed on spicy 
herbs, and slaked her thirst with mild dew and 
fresh spring water, yet for the sake of this dear 
gold, and in the hope of this glorious light, she 
would have undertaken anything you could 
propose to her. 

At last, with much fatigue, she reached a wet 
rushy spot in the swamp, where our two Will- 
o'-wisps were frisking to and fro. She shoved 
herself along to them ; saluted them, was happy 
to meet such pleasant gentlemen related to her 
family. The Lights glided towards her, skipped 
up over her, and lauglied in their fashion. 
"Lady Cousin," said they, "you are of the hori- 
zontal line, yet what of that? It is true we are 
related only by the look; for observe you," here 
both the Flames, compressing their whole 
breadth, made themselves as high and peaked 
as possible, "how prettily this taper length be- 
seems us gentlemen of the vertical line ! Take 
it not amiss of us, good Lady; what family can 
boast of such a thing 1 Since there ever was a 
Jack-o'-lanthorn in the world, no one of them 
has either sat or lain." 

The Snake felt exceedingly uncomfortable in 
the company of these relations ; for let her hold 
:her head as high as possible, she found that she 
must bend it to the earth again, would she stir 
from the spot; and if in the dark thicket she 
.bad been extremely satisfied with her appear- 



ance, her splendor in the presence of these 
cousins seemed to lessen every moment, nay 
she was afraid that at last it would go out en- 
tirely. 

In this embarrassment she hastily asked : if 
the gentlemen could not inform her, whence 
the glittering gold came, that had fallen a short 
while ago into the cleft of the rock ; her own 
opinion was, that it had been a golden shower, 
and had trickled down direct from the sky. The 
Will-o'-wisps laughed, and shook themselves, 
and a m-ultitude of gold-pieces came clinking 
down a'?»ut them. The Snake pushed nimbly 
forwards to eat the coin. " Much good may it 
do you. Mistress," said the dapper gentlemen: 
"we can help you to a little mote." They shook 
themselves again several times with great quick- 
ness, so that the Snake could scarcely gulp the 
precious victuals fast enough. Her splendor 
visibly began increasing; she was really shin- 
ing beautifully, while the Lights had in the 
meantime grown rather lean and short of sta- 
ture, without however in the smallest losing 
their good-humor. 

"I am obliged to you for ever," said the Snake, 
having got her wind again after the repast, 
"ask of me what you will; all that I can I 
will do." 

" Very good !" cried the Lights. " Then tell 
us where the fair Lily dwells ■? Lead us to the 
fair Lily's palace and garden; and do not lose 
a moment, we are dying of impatience to fall 
down at her feet." 

"This service," said the Snake with a deep 
sigh, "I cannot now do for you. The fair Lily 
dwells, alas, on the other side of the water."— 
"Other side of the water? And we have come 
across it, this stormy night ! How cruel is the 
River to divide us! Would it not be possible to 
call the old man back ?' 

"It would be useless," said the Snake; "for 
if you found him ready on the bank, he would 
not take you in ; he can carry any one to this 
side, none to yonder." 

" Here is a pretty kettle of fish !" cried the 
Lights: "are there no other means of getting 
through the water?" — "There are other means, 
but not at this moment. I myself could take 
you over, gentlemen, but not till noon." — "That 
is an hour we do not like to travel in." — "Then 
you may go across in the evening, on the great 
Giant's shadow." — "How is that?" — "The great 
Giant lives not far from this ; with his body he 
has no power; his hands cannot lift a straw, 
his shoulders could not bear a faggot of twigs ; 
but with his shadow he has power over much, 
nay all. At sunrise and sunset therefore he is 
strongest; so at evening you merely put your- 
self upon the back of his shadow, the Giant 
walks softly to the bank, and the shadow car- 
ries you across the water. But if you please, 
about the hour of noon, to be in waiting at that 
corner of the wood, where the bushes overhang 
the bank, I myself will take you over and pre- 
sent you to the fair Lily : or on thf; other hand, 



GOETHE. 



3&: 



if you dislike the noontide, you have just to go 
at nightfall to that bend of the rocks, and pay 
a visit to che Giant; he will certainly receive 
you like a gentleman." 

With a slight bow, the Flames went off; and 
the Snake at bottom was not discontented to get 
rid of them ; partly tliat she might enjoy the 
brightness of her own light, partly satisfy a 
curiosity with which, for a long time, she had 
been agitated in a singular way. 

In the chasm, where she often crawled hither 
and thither, she had made a strange discovery. 
For although in creeping up and down this 
abyss, she had never had a ray of light, she 
could well enough discriminate the objects in it, 
by her sense of touch. Generally she met with 
nothing but irregular productions of nature ; at 
one lime she would wind between the teeth of 
large crystals, at another she would feel the 
barbs and hairs of native silver, and now and 
then carry out with her to the light some strag- 
gling jewels. But to her no small wonder, in a 
rock which was closed on every side, she had 
come on certain objects which betrayed tlie 
shaping hand of man. Smooth walls on which 
she could not climb, sharp regular corners, well- 
formed pillars; and what seemed strangest of 
all, human figures which she had entwined 
more than once, and which appeared to her to 
be of brass, or of the finest polished marble. 
All these experiences she now wished to com- 
bine by the sense of sight, thereby to confirm 
what as yet she only guessed. She believed 
she could illuminate the whole of the subter- 
ranean vault by her own light; and hoped to 
get acquainted with these curious things at 
once. She hastened back ; and soon found, by 
the usual way, the cleft by which she used to 
penetrate the Sanctuary. 

On reaching the place, she gazed around 
with eager curiosity ; and though her shining 
could not enlighten every object in the roiundo, 
yet those nearest her were plain enough. With 
astonishment and reverence she looked up into 
a glancing niche, wliere the image of an august 
King stood formed of pure Gold. In size the 
figure was beyond the stature of man, but by 
its shape it seemed the likeness of a little rather 
than a tall person. His handsome body was 
encircled with an unadorned mantle; and a 
garland of oak bound his hair together. 

No sooner had the Snake beheld this reverend 
figure, than the King began to speak, and asked: 
" Whence comest thou?' — "From the chasms 
where the gold dwells," said the Snake. — 
"What is grander than gold?" inquired the 
King. — "Light," replied the Snake. "What is 
more refreshing than light?" said he. — "Speech," 
answered she. 

During this conversation, she had squinted to 
a side, and in the nearest niche perceived an- 
other glorious image. It was a Silver King in 
a sitting posture ; his shape was long and rather 
languid ; he was covered with a decorated 
robe J crown, girdle, and sceptre were adorned 



with precious stones: the cheerfulness of pride 
was in his countenance ; he seemed about to 
speak, when a vein which ran diinly-colored 
over the marble wall, on a sudden became 
bright, and difi'used a cheerful light throughout 
the whole Temple. By this brilliancy the Snake 
perceived a third King, made of Brass, and 
sitting mighty in shape, leaning on his club, 
adorned with a laurel garland, and more Like a 
rock than a man. She was looking for the 
fourth, which v-'as standing at the greatest 
distance from her ; but the wall opened, while 
the glittering vein started and split, as ligl'.tning 
does, and disappeared. 

A Man of middle stature, entering through 
the cleft, attracted the attention of tiie Snake. 
He was dressed like a peasant, and carried in 
his hand a little Lamp, on whose still flame 
you liked to look, and which in a strange man- 
ner, without casting any shadow, enlightened 
the whole dome. 

"Why comest thou, since we have light?" 
said tlie golden King. — " You know that I may 
not enlighten what is dark." — 'Will my King- 
dom end?" said the silver King. — "Late or 
never," said the old Man. 

With a stronger voice the brazen King began 
to ask: " When shall I arise?" — " Soon," replied 
the Man. — "With whom sliall I combine?" said 
the King. — '' With thy elder brodiers," said the 
Man. — "What will the youngest do?" inquired 
the King. — "He will sit down," replied the 
Man. 

" I am not tiretl," cried the fourth King, with 
a rough faltering voice. 

While this speech was going on, the Snike 
had glided softly round the temple, viewm^; 
everything; she was now looking at the fourtii 
King close by liim. He stood leaning on a pil- 
lar ; his considerable form was heavy rather 
than beautiful. But what metal it was made 
of could not be determined. Closely inspected, 
it seemed a mixture of the three metals which 
its brothers had been formed of But in the 
founding, these materials did not seem to have 
combined together fully; gold and silver veins 
ran irregularly through a brazen mass, and gave 
the figure an unpleasant aspect. 

Meanwhile tlie gold King was asking of the 
Man, "How many secrets knowest thou?"-- 
"Three," replied the Man. — "Which is the 
most important?" said the silver King. — "The 
open one," replied the other. — " Wilt thou open 
it to us also? ' said the brass King. — " When I 
know the fourth," replied the Man. — " What 
care I ?" grumbled the composite King, in an 
under tone. 

" I know the fourth," said the Snake ; ap- 
proached the old Man, and hissed somewhat in 
his ear. "The time is at hand!" cried the old 
Man, with a strong voice. The temple re- 
echoed, the metal statues sounded ; and that in- 
stant the old Man sank away to the westward, 
and the Snake to the eastward ; and both of 



them passed through the clefts of the rock, with 
the greatest speed. 

All the passages, through which the old Man 
tra.'olied, filled themselves, immediately behind 
him, with gold: for his Lamp had the strange 
property of changing stone into gold, wood into 
silver, dead animals into precious stones, and 
of annihilating all metals. But to display this 
power, it must shine alone. If another light 
were beside it, the Lamp only cast from it a 
pure clear brightness, and all living things were 
refreshed by it. 

The old Man entered his cottage, which was 
built on th-.' slope of the hill. He found his 
Wife in extreme distress. She was sitting at 
the fire weeping, and refusing to be consoled. 
" How unhappy am I !" cried she : " Did not I 
entreat thee not to go away to-night?" — " What 
IS the matter, then?" inquired the husband, 
quite composed. 

"Scarcely wert thou gone," said she, sobbing, 
" when there came two noisy Travellers to the 
door: unthinkingly I let them in; they seemed 
to be a co.iple of genteel, very honorable peo- 
ple ; they were dressed in flames, you would 
have taken them for Will-o'-wisps. But no 
sooner were they in the house, than they began, 
like impudent varlets, to compliment me, and 
grew so forward that I feel ashamed to think 
of it." 

" No doubt," said the husband with a smile, 
"the gentlemen were jesting: considering thy 
age, they might have held by general polite- 
ness." 

" Age ! what age f" cried the Wife : " wilt 
thou always be talking of my age 1 How old 
am I then? — General politeness! But I know 
what 1 know. Look round there what a face 
the walls have ; look at the old stones, which I 
have not seen these hundred years; every film 
of gold have they licked away, thou couldst not 
think how fast; and still they kept assuring me 
that it tasted far beyond common gold. Once 
they had swept the walls, the fellows seemed 
to be in high spirits, and truly in that little 
while they had grown much broader and 
brighter. They now began to be impertinent 
again, they patted me, and called me their 
queen, they shook themselves, and a shov.'er 
of gold pieces sprang from them ; see how they 
E-i-e shilling there under the bench! But, ah! 
what misery ! Poor Mops ate a coin or two ; 
and look, he is lying in the chimney, dead. 
Poor Pug! well-a-day! I did not see it till 
they were gone; else 1 had never promised to 
pay the Ferryman the debt they owe him." — 
■' What do they owe him ?" said the Man. — 
"Three Cabbages," replied the Wife, "three 
Artichokes, and three Onions : I engaged to 
go when it was day, and take them to the 
River." 

"Thou mayest do them that civility," said 
the old Man ; " they may chance to be of use 
to us again.' 

" Whether they will be of use to us I know 



not; but they promised and vowed that they 
would." 

Meantime the fire on the hearth had burnt 
low; the old Man covered up the embers with 
a heap of ashes, and put the glittering gold 
pieces aside ; so that his little Lamp now gleam- 
ed alone, in the fairest brightness. The walls 
again coated themselves with gold, and Mops 
changed into the prettiest onyx that could be 
imagined. The alternation of the brown and 
black in this precious stone made it the most 
curious piece of workmanship. 

"Take thy basket," said the Man, "and put 
the onyx into it ; then take the three Cabbages, 
the three Artichokes, and the three Onions ; 
place them round little Mops, and carry them 
to the River. At noon the Snake will take 
thee over ; visit the fair Lily, give her the onyx, 
she will make it alive by her touch, as by her 
touch she kills whatever is alive already. She 
will have a true companion in the little dog. 
Tell her not to mourn ; her deliverance is near ; 
the greatest misfortune she may look upon as 
the greatest happiness : for the time is at hand." 

The old Woman filled her basket, and set 
out as soon as it was day. The rising sun 
shone clear from the other side of the River, 
which was glittering in the distance ; the old 
w^oman walked with slow steps, for the basket 
pressed upon her head, and it was not the onyx 
that so burdened her. Whatever lifeless thing 
she might be carrying, she did not feel the 
v/eight of it; on the other hand, in those cases 
the basket rose aloft, and hovered along above 
her head. But to carry any fresh herbage, or 
any little living animal, she found exceedingly 
laborious. She had travelled on for some time, 
in a sullen humor, when she halted suddenly 
in fright, for she had almost trod upon the 
Giant's shadow, which was stretching towards 
her across the plain. And now, lifting up her 
eyes, she saw the monster of a Giant himself, 
who had been bathing in the River, and was 
just come out, and she knew not how she 
should avoid him. The moment he perceived 
her, he began saluting her in sport, and the 
hands of his shadow soon caught hold of the 
basket. With dexterous ease they picked away 
from it a Cabbage, an Artichoke, and an Onion, 
and brought them to the Giant's mouth, who 
then went his way up the River, and let the 
Woman go in peace. 

She considered whether it would not be bet- 
ter to return, and supply from her garden the 
pieces she had lost ; and amid these doubts, she 
still kept walking on, so that in a little while 
she was at the bank of the River. She sat 
long waiting for the Ferryman, whom she per- 
ceived at last, steering over with a very singular 
traveller. A young, noble-looking, handsome 
man, whom she could not gaze upon enough, 
stept out of the boat. 

" What is it you bring?" cried the old man. 
"The greens which those two Wi Ho'- wisps 
owe you," said the Woman, pointing to her 



GOETHE. 



357 



ware. As the Ferryman found only two of 
each sort, he grew angry, and declared he would 
have none of them. The Woman earnestly 
entreated him to take them ; told him that she 
could not now go home, and that her burden for 
the way which still remained was very heavy. 
He stood by his refusal, and assured her that it 
did not rest with him. "What belongs to me," 
said he, "I must leave lying nine hours in a 
heap, touching none of it, till I have given the 
River its third." After much liiggling, the old 
man at last replied: "There is still another 
way. If you like to pledge yourself to the 
River, and declare yourself its debtor, I will 
take the six pieces ; but there is some risk in 
it." — "If I keep my word, I shall run no risk?" 
— "Not the smallest. Put your hand into the 
stream," continued he, " and promise that within 
four-and-twenty hours you will pay the debt." 

The old Woman did so; but what was her 
affright, when on drawing out her hand, she 
found it black as coal ! She loudly scolded the 
old Ferryman; declared that her hands had 
always been the fairest part of her; that in 
spite of her hard work, she had all along con- 
trived to keep these noble members white and 
dainty. She looked at the hand with indig- 
nation, and exclaimed in a despairing tone: 
" Worse and worse ! Look, it is vanishing en- 
tirely: it is grown far smaller than the other." 
" For the present it but seems so," said the 
old man; "if you do not keep your word, how- 
ever, it may prove so in earnest. The hand 
will gradually diminish, and at length disappear 
altogether, though you have the use of it as 
formerly. Every thing as usual you will be 
able to perform with it, only nobody will see 
it." — " I had rather that I could not use it, and 
no one could observe the want," cried she ; 
"but what of that, I will keep my word, and 
rid myself of this black skin, and all anxieties 
about it." Thereupon she hastily took up her 
basket, which mounted of itself over her head, 
and hovered free above her in the air, as she 
hurried after the Youth, who was walking softly 
and thoughtfully down the bank. His rioble 
form and strange dress had made a deep im- 
pression on her. 

His breast was covered with a glittering coat 
of mail ; in whose wavings might be traced 
every motion of his fair body. From his shoul- 
ders hung a purple cloak ; around his uncovered 
head flowed abundant brown hair in beautiful 
locks: his graceful face, and his well-formed 
feet were exposed to the scorching of the sun. 
With bare soles, he walked composedly over 
the hot sand; and a deep inward sorrow seemed 
to blunt him against all external things. 

The garrulous old Woman tried to lead him 
into conversation ; but with his short answers 
he gave her small encouragement or informa- 
tion ; so that in the end, notwithstanding the 
beauty of his eyes, she grew tired of speaking 
with him to no purpose, and took leave of him 
With these words : " You walk too slow for me, 



worthy sir; I must not lose a moment, for I 
have to pass the River on the green Snake, and 
carry this fine present from my husband to the 
fair Lily." So saying she stept faster forward ; 
but the fair Youth pushed on with equal speed, 
and hastened to keep up with her. " You are 
going to the fair Lily!" cried he; "then our 
roads are the same. But what present is this 
you are bringing her ?" 

" Sir," said the Woman, " it is hardly fair, 
after so briefly dismissing the questions I put 
you, to inquire with such vivacity about my 
secrets. But if you like to barter, and tell me 
your adventures, I will not conceal from you 
how it stands with me and my presents." They 
soon made a bargain ; the dame disclosed her 
circumstances to him ; told the history of the 
Pug, and let him see the singular gift. 

He lifted his natural curiosity from the basket, 
and took Mops, who seemed as if sleeping softly, 
into his arms. "Happy beast!" cried he; "thou 
wilt be touched by her hands, thou wilt be 
made alive by her ; while the living are obliged 
to fly from her presence to escape a mournful 
doom. Yet why say I mournful ! Is it not far 
sadder and more frightful to be injured by her 
look, than it would be to die by her hand ? Be- 
hold me," said he to the Woman; "at my years, 
what a miserable fate have I to undergo. This 
mail which I have honorably borne in war, this 
purple which I sought to merit by a wise reign, 
Destiny has left me ; the one as a useless bur- 
den, the other as an empty ornament. Crown, 
and sceptre, and sword are gone ; and I am as 
bare and needy as any other son of earth ; for 
so unblessed are her bright eyes, that they take 
from every living creature they look on all its 
force, and those whom the touch of her hand 
does not kill are changed to the state of shadows 
wandering alive." 

Thus did he continue to bewail, nowise con- 
tenting the old Woman's curiosity, who wished 
for information not so much of his internal as 
of his external situation. She learned neither 
the name of his father, nor of his kingdom. He 
stroked the hard Mops, whom the sunbeams 
and the bosom of the youth had warmed as if 
he had been living. He inquired narrowly 
about the man with the Lamp, about the in- 
fluences of the sacred light, appearing to expect 
much good from it in his melancholy case. 

Amid such conversation, they descried from 
afar the majestic arch of the Bridge, which ex- 
tended from the one bank to the other, glittering 
with the strangest colors in the splendors of the 
sun. Both were astonished ; for until now they 
had never seen this edifice so grand. " How !" 
cried the Prince! "was it not beautiful enough, 
as it stood before our eyes, piled out of jasper 
and agate f Shall we not fear to tread it, now 
that it appears combined, in graceful complexity, 
of emerald and chrysopras and chrysolite'' 
Neither of them knew the alteration that iiad 
taken place upon the Snake : for it was indeed 
the Snake, who every day at noon curved tieit- 



)5S> 



GOETHE. 



Bolf over the River, and stood forth in the form 
of a bold-swelling bridge. The travellers slept 
apon it with a reverential feeling, and passed 
over It in silence. 

No sooner had they reached the other shore, 
than the bridge began to heave and stir ; in a 
little while, it touched the surface of the water, 
and the green Snake in her proper form came 
gliding after the wanderers. They had scarcely 
thanked her for the privilege of crossing on her 
back, when they found that, besides them three, 
ttjere must be other persons in the company, 
whom their eyes could not discern. They heard 
a hissing, which the Snake also answered with 
a hissing ; they listened, and at length caught 
what follows: "We shall first look about us in 
the fair Lily's Park," said a pair of alternating 
voices ; " and then request you at nightfall, so 
soon as we are anywise presentable, to intro- 
duce us to this paragon of beauty. At the shore 
of the great Lake, you will find us." — "Be it 
so," replied the Snake ; and a hissing sound 
died away in the air. 

Our three travellers now consulted in what 
order they should introduce themselves to the 
fair Lady ; for however many people might be 
in her company, they were obliged to enter and 
depart singly, under pain of sufl^ering very hard 
severities. 

The Woman with the metamorphosed Pug in 
the basket first approached the garden, looking 
round for her Patroness ; who was not diflScult 
to find, being just engaged in singing to her 
harp. The finest tones proceeded from her, first 
like circles on the surface of the still lake, then 
like a light breath they set the grass and the 
bushes in motion. In a green enclosure, under 
the shadow of a stately group of many diverse 
trees, was she seated ; and again did she en- 
chant the eyes, the ear, and the heart of the 
woman, who approached with rapture, and 
swore within herself that since she saw her 
last, the fair one had grown fairer than ever. 
With eager gladness from a distance she ex- 
pressed her reverence and admiration for the 
lovely maiden. " What a happiness to see you, 
what a Heaven does your presence spread 
around you ! How charmingly the harp is lean- 
ing on your bosom, how softly your arms sur- 
round it, how it seems as if longing to be near 
you, and how it sounds so meekly under the 
touch of your slim fingers ! Thrice happy youth, 
to whom it were permitted to be there!" 

So speaking she approached; the fair Lily 
raised her eyes; let her hands drop from the 
harp, and answered: "Trouble me not with 
untimely praise ; I feel my misery but the more 
deeply. Look here, at my feet lies the poor 
Canary bird, which used so beautifully to ac- 
company my ringing; it would sit upon my 
!<aip, and was trained not to touch me; but to- 
day, while I, rnfiKshed by sleep, was raising a 
peacetul mori/ing hymn, and my little singer 
was jJOiH-ing forth his harmonious tones more 
gany than ever, a Hawk darts over my head; 



the poor little creature, in aflJright, takes refuge 
in my bosom, and I feel the last palpitations of 
its departing life. The plundering Hawk indeed 
was caught by my look, and fluttered fainting 
down into the water : but what can his punish- 
ment avail mel my darling is dead, and liis 
grave will but increase the mournful bushes of 
my garden." 

"Take courage, fairest Lily !'" cried the Wo 
man, wiping off" a tear, which the story of the 
hapless maiden had called into her eyes; "com- 
pose yourself; my old man bids me tell you to 
moderate your lamenting, to look upon the 
greatest misfortune as a forerunner of the 
greatest happiness, for the time is at hand ; 
and truly," continued she, "the world is going 
strangely on of late. Do but look at my hand, 
how black it is! As I live and breathe, it is 
grown far smaller : I must hasten, before it 
vanish altogether ! Why did I engage to do the 
Will-o'-wisps a service, why did I meet the 
Giant's shadow, and dip my hand in the River? 
Could you not affbrd me a single cabbage, an 
artichoke, and an onion? I would give them 
to the River, and my hand were white as 
ever, so that I could almost show it with one 
of yours. 

"Cabbages and onions thou mayest still find; 
but artichokes thou wilt search for in vain. No 
plant in my garden bears either flowers or fruit; 
but every twig that I break, and plant upon the 
grave of a favorite, grows green straightway, 
and shoots up in fair boughs. All these groups, 
these bushes, these groves my hard destiny has 
so raised around me. These pines stretching 
out like parasols, these obelisks of cypresses, 
these colossal oaks and beeches, were all little 
twigs planted by my hand, as mournful me- 
morials in a soil that otherwise is barren." 

To this speech the old Woman had paid little 
heed; she was looking at her hand, which, in 
presence of the fair Lily, seemed every moment 
growing blacker and smaller. She was about 
to snatch her basket and hasten off", when she 
noticed that the best part of her errand had 
been forgotten. She lifted out the onyx Pug, 
and set him down, not far from the fair one, in 
the grass. "My husband," said she, "sends 
you this memorial ; you know that you can 
make a jewel live by touching it. This pretty 
faithful dog will certainly aflbrd you much en- 
joyment; and my grief at losing him is bright- 
ened only by the thought that he will be in 
your possession." 

The fair Lily viewed the dainty creature 
with a pleased, and as it seemed, with an asto- 
nished look. "Many signs combine," said she, 
" that breathe some hope into me : but ah ! is it 
not a natural deception which makes us fancy, 
when misfortunes crowd upon us, that a better 
day is near? 

* What can these many signs avail me 

My Singer's Death, thy coal-black Hand ? 
This Dog of OnjTt, that can never fail me 1 
And coniing at the Lamp's commanil ! 



GOETHE. 



ssq 



* From human joys removed forever, 

With sorrows compassed round 1 sit : 
Is there a Temple at the River ? 
Is there a Bridge ? Alas, not yet !* " 

The good old dame had listened with impa- 
tience to this singing, which the fair Lily ac- 
companied with her harp, in a way that would 
have charmed any other. She was on the point 
of taking leave, when the arrival of the green 
Snake again detained her. The Snake had 
caught the last lines of the song, and on this 
matter forthwith began to speak comfort to the 
fair Lily. 

" The Prophecy of the Bridge is fulfilled !" 
cried the Snake: "you may ask this worthy 
dame how royally the arch looks now. What 
formerly was untransparent jasper, or agate, 
allowing but a gleam of light to pass about its 
edges, is now become transparent precious 
stone. No beryl is so clear, no emerald so 
beautiful of hue." 

"I wish you joy of it," said Lily; "but you 
will pardon me if I regard the prophecy as yet 
unaccomplished. The lofty arch of your bridge 
can still but admit foot-passengers; and it is 
promised us that horses and carriages and tra- 
vellers of every sort shall, at the same moment, 
cross this bridge in both directions. Is there 
not something said, too, about pillars, which are 
to arise of themselves from the waters of the 
River ?" 

The old Woman still kept her eyes fixed on 
her hand; she here interrupted their dialogue, 
and was taking leave. "Wait a moment,'' said 
the fair Lily, " and carry my little bird with 
you. Bid the Lamp change it into topaz ; I will 
enliven it by my touch ; with your good Mops 
it shall form my dearest pastime: but hasten, 
hasten ; for, at sunset, intolerable putrefaction 
will fasten on the hapless bird, and tear asunder 
the fair combination of its form forever." 

The old Woman laid the little corpse, wrappivtl 
in soft leaves, into her basket, and hastened 
away. 

"However it may be," said the Snake, rir- 
commencing their interrupted dialogue, "the 
Temple is built." 

" But it is not at the River," said the fair one. 

"It is yet resting in the depths of the Earth," 
said the Snake ; " I have seen the Kings and 
conversed with them." 

"But when will they arise?" inquired Lily. 

The Snake replied : " I heard resounding in 
the Temple these deep words, The time is at 
hand."' 

A pleasing cheerfulness spread over the fair 
Lily's face: " 'T is the second time," said she, 
"that I have heard these happy words to-day : 
when will the day come for me to hear them 
thrice V 

She rose, and immediately there came a 
lovely maiden from the grove, and took away 
her harp. Another followed her, and folded 
up the fine-carved ivory stool, on which the fair 
one had been sitting, and put the silvery cushion 



under her arm. A third then made her ap- 
pearance, with a large parasol worked with 
pearls; and looked whether Lily would require 
her in walking. These three maidens were 
beyond expression beautiful; and yet their 
beauty but exalted that of Lily, for it was plain 
to every one that they could never be compared 
to her. 

Meanwhile the fair one had been looking, 
with a satisfied aspect, at the strange onyx 
Mops. She bent down, and touched him, and 
that instant he started up. Gaily he looked 
around, ran hither and thither, and at last, in 
his kindest manner, hastened to salute his bene- 
factress. She took him in her arms, and pressed 
him to her. " Cold as thou art," cried she, " aijd 
though but a half-life works in thee, thou art 
welcome to me ; tenderly will I love thee, pret- 
tily will I play with thee, softly caress thee, and 
firmly press thee to my bosom." She then let 
him go, chased him from her, called him back, 
and played so daintily with him, and ran about 
so gaily and so innocently with him on the 
grass, that with new rapture you viewed and 
participated in her joy, as a little while ago her 
sorrow had attuned every heart to sympathy. 

This cheerfulness, these graceful sports were 
interrupted by the entrance of the woful Youth. 
He stepped forward, in his former guise and 
aspect; save that the heat of the day appeared 
to have fatigued him still more, and in the pre- 
sence of his mistress he grew paler every mo- 
ment. He bore upon his hand a Hawk, which 
was sitting quiet as a dove, with its body shrunk 
and its wings drooping. 

"It is not kind in thee," cried Lily to him, 
"to bring that hateful thing before my eyes, the 
monster, which to-day has killed my little 
singer.'' 

" Blame not the unhappy bird !" replied the 
Youth; "rather blame thyself and thy destiny; 
and leave me to keep beside me the companion 
of my wo." 

Meanwhile Mops ceased not teasing the fait 
Lily ; and she replied to her transparent favor 
ite, with friendly gestures. She clapped her 
hands to scare him off; then ran, to entice him 
after her. She tried to get him when he fled, 
and she chased him away when he attempted 
to press near her. The Youth looked on in si- 
lence, with increasing anger; but at last, when 
she took the odious beast, which seemed to him 
unutterably ugly, on her arin, pressed it to her 
white bosom, and kissed its black snout wilh 
her heavenly lips, his patience altogether failed 
him, and full of desperation he exclaimed : 
"Must I, who by a baleful fate exist beside thee, 
perhaps to the end, in an absent presence, who 
by thee have lost my all, my very self must I 
see before my eyes, that so unnatural a monster 
can charm thee into gladness, can awaken thy 
attachment, and enjoy thy embrace? Shall I 
any longer keep wandering to and fro, measur- 
ing my dreary course to that side of the Rivei 
and to this 1 No, there is still a spark of '''<) 



360 



GOETHE, 



old heroic spirit sleeping in my bosom ; let it 
start this instant into its expiring flame! If 
stones may rest in thy bosom, let me be changed 
to stone j if thy touch kills, I will die by thy 
hands." 

So saying he made a violent movement; the 
Hawk flew from his finger, but he himself 
rushed towards the fair one; she held out her 
hands to keep him off, and touched him only 
the sooner. Consciousness forsook him ; and 
she felt with horror the beloved burden lying 
on her bosom. With a shriek she started back, 
and the gentle youth sank lifeless from her arms 
upon the ground. 

The misery yiad happened! The sweet Lily 
stpod motionless, gazing on the corpse. Her 
heart seemed to pause in her bosom ; and her 
eyes were without tears. In vain did Mops 
try to gain from her any kindly gesture; with 
her friend, the world for her was all dead as 
tne grave. Her silent dispair did not look round 
for help ; she knew not of any help. 

On the other hand, the Snake bestirred her- 
self the more actively; she seemed to meditate 
deliverance ; and in fact her strange movements 
served at last to keep away, for a little, the im- 
mediate consequences of the mischief. With 
her limber body, she formed a wide circle round 
the corpse, and seizing the end of her tail be- 
tween her teeth, she lay quite still. 

Ere long one of Lily's fair waiting-maids ap- 
peared ; hrought the ivory folding-stool, and 
with friendly becJioning constrained her mistress 
to sit down on it. Soon afterwards there came 
a second ; she had in her hand a fine-colored 
veil, with which she rather decorated than con- 
cealed the fair Lily's head. The third handed 
her the harp, and scarcely had she drawn the 
gorgeous instrument towards her, and struck 
some tones from its strings, when the first maid 
returned with a clear round mirror; took her 
station opposite the fair one; caught her looks 
in the glass, and threw back to her the loveliest 
image that was to be found in nature. Sorrow 
heightened lier beauty, the veil her charms, the 
harp her grace; and deeply as you wished to 
see her mournful situation altered, not less 
deeply did you wish to keep her image, as she 
now looked, forever present with you. 

With a still look at the mirror, she touched 
the harp; now melting tones proceeded from 
the strings, now her pain seemed to mount, and 
the music in strong notes responded to her wo; 
sometimes she opened her lips to sing, but her 
voice failed her ; and ere long her sorrow melted 
into tears, two maidens caught her helpfully in 
their arms, the harp sank from her bosom, 
scarcely could the quick servant snatch the in- 
strument and carry it aside. 

" Who gets us the Man with the Lamp, before 
the sun set?" hissed the Snake, faintly, but au- 
dibly: the maids looked at one another, and 
Lily's tears fell faster. At this moment came 
fhe Woman with the Basket, panting and alto- 
jfther breathless. "I am lost, and maimed for 



life!" cried she; "see how my hand is almost 
vanished ; neither Ferryman nor Giant would 
take me over, because I am the River's debtor ; 
in vain did I promise hundreds of Cabbages 
and hundreds of Onions ; they will take no more 
than three ; and no Artichoke is now to be found 
in all this quarter." 

" Forget your own care," said the Snake, " and 
try to bring help here ; perhaps it may come to 
yourself also. Haste with your utmost speed 
to seek the Will-o'-wisps ; it is too light for you 
to see them, but perhaps you will hear them 
laughing and hopping to and fro. If they be 
speedy, they may cross upon the Giant's sha- 
dow, and seek the Man with the Lamp and 
send him to us." 

The Woman hurried ofl!"at her quickest pace, 
and the Snake seemed expecting as impatiently 
as Lily the return of the Flames. Alas! the 
beam of the sinking Sun was already gilding 
only the highest summits of the trees, in the 
thicket, and long shadows were stretching over 
lake and meadow ; the Snake hitched up and 
down impatiently, and Lily dissolved in tears. 

In this extreme need, the Snake kept looking 
round on all sides ; for she was afraid every 
moment that the Sun would set, and corruption 
penetrate the magic circle, and the fair youth 
immediately moulder away. At last she noticed 
sailing high in the air, with purple-red feathers, 
the Prince's Hawk, whose breast was catching 
the last beams of the Sun. She shook herself 
for joy at this good omen ; nor was she deceived ; 
for shortly afterwards the Man with the Lamp 
was seen gliding towards them across the Lake, 
fast and smoothly, as if he had been travelling on 
skates. 

The Snake did not change her posture ; hut 
Lily rose and called to him; "What good spirit 
sends thee at the moment when we were de- 
siring thee, and needing thee, so much?" 

"The spirit of my Lamp," replied the Man, 
" has impelled me, and the Hawk has conducted 
me. My Lamp sparkles when I am needed, 
and I just look about me in the sky for a signal ; 
some bird or meteor points to the quarter to- 
wards which I am to turn. Be calm, fairest 
Maiden ! whether I can help I know not ; an 
individual helps not, but he who combines him- 
self with many at the proper hour. We will 
postpone the evil, and keep hoping. Hold thy 
circle fast," continued he, turning to the Snake; 
then set himself upon a hillock beside her, and 
illuminated the dead body. "Bring the little 
Bird hither too, and lay it in the circle !" The 
maidens took the little corpse from the basket, 
which the old Woman had left standing, and 
did as he directed. 

Meanwhile the Sun had set, and as the dark- 
ness increased, not only the Snake and the old 
Man's Lamp began shining in their fashion, but 
also Lily's veil gave out a soft light, which 
gracefully tinged, as with a meek dawning red, 
her pale cheeks, and her white robe. The 
party looked at one another, silently reflecting ; 



GOETHE. 



361 



care and sorrow were mitigated by a sure 
iiope. 

It was no unpleasing entrance, therefore, that 
the woman made, attended by the two gay 
Flames, wliich in truth appeared to have been 
very lavish in the interim, for they had again 
become extremely meager; yet they only bore 
themselves the more prettily for that, towards 
Lily and the other ladies. With great tact, and 
expressiveness, they said a multitude of rather 
common things to these fair persons; and de- 
clared themselves particularly ravished by the 
charm which the gleaming veil spread over 
Lily and her attendant. The ladies modestly 
cast down their eyes, and tire praise of their 
beauty made them really beautiful. All were 
peaceful and calm, except the old Woman. In 
spite of the assurance of her husband, that her 
hand could diminish no farther, while the Lamp 
shone on it, she asserted more than once, thai 
if things went on thu.s, before midnight this 
coble member would have utterly vanished. 

The Man with the Lamp had listened atten- 
tively to the conversation of the Lights; and 
was gratified that Lily had been cheered, in 
some measure, and amused by it. And, in truth, 
midnight liad arrived they knew not how. The 
old Man looked to the stars, and then began 
speaking : " We are assembled at the propitious 
hour ; let each perform liis task, let each do his 
duty; and a universal happiness will swallow 
up our individual sorrows, as a universal grief 
consumes individual joys." 

At these words arose a wondrous hubbub; 
for all the persons in the party spoke aloud, 
each for himself, declaring what they had to 
do; only the three maids were silent; one of 
them had fallen asleep beside the harp, another 
near the parasol, the third by the stool ; and you 
could not blame them much, fof it was late. 
The Fiery youths, after some passing compli- 
ments which they devoted to the waiting-maids, 
had turned their sole attention to the Princess, 
as alone worthy of exclusive homage. 

" Take the mirror," said the Man to the Hawk ; 
"and with the first sunbeam illuminate the 
three sleepers, and awake them, with light re- 
flected from above." 

The Snake now began to move ; she loosened 
her circle, and rolled slowly, in large rings, for- 
ward to the River. The two Will-o-wisps fol- 
lowed with a solemn air; you would have taken 
them for the most serious Flames in nature. 
The old Woman and her husband seized the 
Basket, whose mild light they had scarcely ob- 
served till now ; they lilted it at both sides, and 
it grew still larger and more luminous; they 
lifted the body of tlie Youth into it, laying the 
Canary-bird upon his breast; the Basket rose 
into the air and hovered above the old Woman's 
head, and she followed the Will-o-wisps on 
foot. The fair Lily took Mops on her arm, and 
followed the Woman; the Man with the Lamp 
concluiled the procession, and the scene was 
curiously illuminated by these many lights. 
2v 



But it was with no small wonder that the 
party saw, wlien they approached the River, a 
glorious arch mount over it, by which the help- 
ful Snake was affording them a glittering path. 
If by day they had admired the beautiful trans- 
parent precious stones, of which the Bridge 
seemed formed ; by night they were astonished 
at its gleaming brilliancy. On the upper side 
the clear circle marked itself sharp against the 
dark sky, but below, vivid beams were darting 
to the centre, and exhibiting the airy firmness 
of the edifice. The procession slowly moved 
across it ; and the Ferryman who saw it from 
his hut afar off, considered with astonishment 
the gleaming circle, and the strange lights which 
were passing over it. 

No sooner had they reached the other shore, 
than the arch began, in its usual way, to swag 
up and down, and with a wavy motion to ap- 
proach the water. The Snake then came on 
land, the Basket placed itself upon the ground, 
and the Snake again drew her circle round it. 
The old Man stooped towards her, and said : 
" What hast thou resolved on?" 

"To sacrifice myself rather than be sacri- 
ficed," replied the Snake ; " promise me that 
thou wilt leave no stone on shore." 

The old Man promised; then addressing 
Lily: "Touch the Snake," said he, "with thy 
left hand, and thy lover with thy right." Lily 
knelt, and touched the Snake, and the Prince's 
body. The latter in the instant seemed to come 
to life; he moved in the basket, nay, he raised 
himself into a sitting posture ; Lily was about 
to clasp him ; but the old Man held her back, 
and himself assisted the youth to rise, and led 
him forth from the Basket and the circle. 

The Prince was standing; the Canary-bird 
was fluttering on his shoulder ; there was life 
again in both of them, but the spirit had not 
yet returned; the fair youth's eyes were open, 
yet he did not see, at least he seemed to look 
on all without participation. Scarcely had their 
admiration of this incident a little calmed, when 
they observed how strangely it had fared in the 
meanwhile with the Snake. Her fair taper 
body had crumbled into thousands and thou- 
sands of shining jewels ; the old Woman reach- 
ing at her Basket had chanced to come against 
the circle ; and of the shape or structure of the 
Snake there was now nothing to be seen, only 
a bright ring of luminous jewels was lying in 
the grass. 

The old Man forthwith set himself to gather 
the stones into the basket; a task in which his 
wife assisted him. They next carried the 
Basket to an elevated point on the bank ; and 
here the man threw its whole lading, not with 
out contradiction from the fair one and his wife, 
who would gladly have retained some part of 
it, down into the River. Like gleaming twink 
ling stars the stones floated down with the 
waves; and you could not say whether they 
lost themselves in the distance, or sank to thp 
bottom. 

31 



362 



GOETHE. 



" Gentlemen," said he with the Lamp, in a 
respectful tone to the Lights, "I will now show 
you the way, and open you the passage; but 
you will do us an essential service, if you please 
to unbolt the door, by which the Sanctuary must 
be entered at present, and which none but you 
can unfasten." 

The Lights made a stately bow of assent, and 
kept their place. The old Man of the Lamp 
went foremost into the rock, which opened at 
his presence; the Youth followed him, as if 
mechanically; silent and uncertain, Lily kept 
at some distance from him ; the old Woman 
would not be left, and stretched out her hand 
that the light of her husband's Lamp might still 
fall upon it. The rear was closed by the two 
Will-o'-wisps, who bent the peaks of their flames 
towards one another, and appeared to be en- 
gaged in conversation. 

They had not gone far till the procession 
halted in front of a large brazen door, the leaves 
of which were bolted with a golden lock. The 
Man now called upon the Lights to advance ; 
who required small entreaty, and with their 
pointed flames soon ate both bar and lock. 

The brass gave a loud clang, as the doors 
sprang suddenly asunder ; and the stately figures 
of the Kings appeared within the Sanctuary, 
illuminated by the entering Lights. All bowed 
before these dread sovereigns, especially the 
Flames made a profusion of the daintiest 
reverences. 

After a pause, the gold King asked: "Whence 
come ye?' — "From the world," said the old 
Man. — " Whither go ye V said the silver King. 
— "Into the world;" replied the Man. — " What 
would ye with us ?' cried the brazen King.— . 
"Accompany you," replied the Man. 

The composite King was about to speak, 
when the gold one addressed the Lights, who 
had got too near him : " Take yourselves away 
from me, my metal was not made for you." 
Thereupon they turned to the silver King, and 
clasped themselves about him ; and his robe 
glittered beautifully in their yellow brightness. 
" You are welcome," said he, "but I cannot feed 
you ; satisfy yourselves elsewhere, and bring 
me your light." They removed ; and gliding 
past the brazen King who did not seem to 
notice them, they fixed on the compounded 
King. " Who will govern the world ?" cried he 
with a broken voice. — "He who stands upon 
his feet," replied the old Man. — "I am he," 
said the mixed King. — " We shall see," replied 
the Man : " for the time is at hand." 

The fair Lily fell upon the old Man's neck, 
and kissed him cordially. "Holy Sage ! " cried 
she, "a thousand times I thank thee: for I hear 
that fateful word the third time." She had 
scarcely spoken, when she clasped the old Man 
still faster : for the ground began to move be- 
neath them; the Youth and the old Woman 
also held by one another ; the Lights alone did 
not regard it. 

You could feel plainly that the whole Tem- 



ple was in motion; as a ship that softly glides 
away from the harbor, when her anchors are 
lifted; the depths of the Earth seemed to open 
for the Building as it went along. It struck on 
nothing; no rock came in its way. 

For a few instants, a small rain sewned to 
drizzle from the opening of the dome ; the old 
Man held the fair Lily fast, and said to her : 
" We are now beneath the River ; we shall soon 
be at the mark." Ere long they thought the 
Temple made a halt ; but they were in an error : 
it was mounting upwards. 

And now a strange uproar rose above their 
heads. Planks and beams in disordered com- 
bination now came pressing and crashing in, at 
the opening of the dome. Lily and the Woman 
started to a side; the Man with the Lamp laid 
hold of the Youth, and kept standing still. The 
little cottage of the Ferryman, for it was this 
which the Temple in ascending had severed 
from the ground and carried up with it, sank 
gradually down, and covered the old Man and 
the Youth. 

The women screamed aloud, and the Tem- 
ple shook, like a ship running unexpectedly 
aground. In sorrowful perplexity, the Princess 
and her old attendant wandered round the cot- 
tage in the dawn ; the door was bolted, and to 
iheir knocking, no one answered. They knock- 
ed more loudly, and were not a little struck, 
when at length the wood began to ring. By 
virtue of the Lamp locked up in it, the hut had 
been converted from the inside to the outside 
into solid silver. Ere long too its form changed : 
for the noble metal shook aside the accidental 
shapes of planks, posts, and beams, and stretch- 
ed itself out into a noble case of beaten orna- 
mented workmanship. Thus a fair little tem- 
ple stood erected in the middle of the large 
one ; or if you will, an Altar worthy of the 
Temple. 

By a stair which ascended from within, the 
noble Youth now mounted aloft, lighted by the 
old man with the Lamp; and, as it seemed, 
supported by another, who advanced in a white 
short robe, with a silver rudder in his hand; 
and was soon recognised as the Ferryman, the 
former possessor of the cottage. 

The fair Lily mounted the outer steps, which 
led from the floor of the Temple to the Altar ; 
but she was still obliged to keep herself apart 
from her Lover. The old Woman, whose hand 
in the absence of the Lamp had grown still 
smaller, cried : "Am I then to be unhappy after 
alU Among so many miracles, can there be 
notliing done to save my hand ?'' Her husband 
pointed to the open door, and said to her : " See, 
the day is breaking; haste, bathe thyself in the 
River." — "What an advice!" cried she: "it 
will make me all black : it wiii make me vanish 
altogether : for my debt is not yet paid." " Go," 
said the man, " and do as I advise thee ; all 
debts are now paid." 

The old Woman hastened away ; and at that 
moment appeared the rising sun, upon the rim 



GOETHE. 



363 



of the dome. The old Man slept between the 
Virgin and the Youth, and cried with a loud 
voice: "There are three which have rule on 
Earth ; Wisdom, Appearance, and Strength." 
At the first word, the gold King rose; at the 
second, the silver one; and at the third, the 
brass King slowly rose; while the mixed King 
on a sudden very awkwardly plumped down. 

Whoever noticed him could scarcely keep 
from laughing, solemn as the moment was: for 
he was not sitting, he was not lying, he was 
not leaning, but sliapelessly sunk together. 

The Lights, who till now had been employed 
upon him, drew to a side ; they appeared, al- 
though pale in the morning radiance, yet once 
more well-fed, and in good burning condition ; 
with tlieir peaked tongues, they had dexterously 
licked out the gold veins of the colossal figure 
to its very heart. The irregular vacuities which 
this occasioned had continued empty for a time, 
and the figure had maintained its standing pos- 
ture. But when at last the very tenderest fila- 
ments were eaten out, the image crashed sud- 
denly together ; and that, alas, in the very parts 
which continue unaltered when one sits down; 
whereas the limbs, which should have bent, 
sprawled themselves out unbowed and stiff. 
Whoever could not laugh was obliged to turn 
away his eyes; this miserable shape and no- 
shape was offensive to behold. 

The Man with the Lamp now led the hand- 
some Youth, who still kept gazing vacantly 
belbre him, down from the altar, and straight 
to the brazen King. At the feet of this mighty 
Potentate, lay a sword in a brazen sheath. The 
young man girt it round him. "The sword on 
the left, the right free !' cried the brazen voice. 
They next proceeded to the silver King; he 
bent his sceptre to the youth ; the latter seized 
it with his left hand, and the King in a pleasing 
voice, said : "Feed the theep!' On turning to 
the golden King, he stooped with gestures of 
paternal blessing, and pressing his oaken gar- 
land on the young man's head, said: "Under- 
stand what is highest!' 

During this progress, the old Man had care- 
fully observed the Prince. After girding on the 
sword, his breast swelled, his arms waved, and 
hi? feet trod finnrr; when he took the sceptre 
)■! his liand, his strength appeared to soften, and 
by an unspealiabie charm to become still more 
subduing; but as tlie oaken garland came to 
deck his hair, his leatiires kindled, his eyes 
gleamed with inexpressible spirit, and the first 
word of his mouth was " Lily !' 

"Dearest Lily! " cried he, hastening up the 
silver stairs to her, lor she had viewed his pro- 
gress from the pinnacle of the altar; "Dearest 
Lily! what more precious can a man, equipt 
with all, desire lor himself than innocence and 
the still aHection which thy bosom brings me? 
O my friend !" continued he, turning to the old 
Man, and looking at the three statues; "glorious 
and secure is the kingdom of our fathers; but 
thou hast forgotten the fourth power, which 



rules the world, earlier, more universally, more 
certainly, the power of Love." With these 
words, he fell upon the lovely maiden's neck; 
she had cast away her veil, and her cheeks 
were tinged with the fairest, most imperishable 
red. 

Here the old Man said, with a smile: "Lova 
does not rule; but it trains, and that is more." 

Amid this solemnity, this happiness and rap- 
ture, no one had observed that it was now broad 
day; and all at once, on looking through the 
open portal, a crowd of altogether unexpected 
objects met the eye. A large space surrounded 
with pillars formed the fore-court, at the end of 
which was seen a broad and stately Bridge 
stretching with many arches across the River. 
It was furnished, on both sides, with commodi- 
ous and magnificent colonnades for foot-travel- 
lers, many thousands of whom were already 
there, busily passing this way or that. The 
broad pavement in the centre was thronged 
with herds and mules, with horsemen and car- 
riages, flowing like two streams, on their several 
sides, and neither interrupting the other. All 
admired the splendor and convenience of the 
structure ; and the new King and his Spouse 
were delighted with the motion and activity of 
this great people, as they were already happy 
in their own mutual love. 

" Remember the Snake in honor," said the 
man with the Lamp ; " thou owest her thy life, 
thy people owe her the Bridge, by which these 
neighboring banks are now animated and com- 
bined into one land. Those swimming and 
shining jewels, the remains of her sacrificed 
body, are the piers of this royal bridge ; upon 
these she has built and will maintain herself." 

The party were about to ask some explana- 
tion of this strange mystery, when there entered 
four lovely maidens at the portal of the Temple. 
By the Harp, the Parasol, and the folding Stool, 
it was not difficult to recognise the waiting- 
maids of Lily; but the fourth, more beautiful 
than any of the rest, was an unknown fair one, 
and in sisterly sportfulness she hastened with 
them through the Temple, and mounted the 
steps of the Altar. 

" Wilt thou have better trust in me another 
time, good wife? ' said the man with the Lamp 
to the fair one: "Well for thee, and every living 
thing that bathes this morning in the River!" 

The renewed and beautified old Woman, of 
whose former shape no trace remained, em- 
braced with young eager arms the man with 
the Lamp, who kindly received her caresses. 
"If 1 am too old for thee,"' said he, smiling, 
" thou mayest choose another husband to-day ; 
from this hour no marriage is of force which is 
not contracted anew." 

"Dost thou not know, then," answered she, 
"that thou too art grown younger?" — "It de- 
lights me if to thy young eyes [ seem a hand 
some youth : I take thy hand anew, and am 
well content to live with thee another thousand 
years." 



3C4 



GOETHE. 



The Queen welcomed her new friend, and 
went down with her into the interior of the 
altai, while the King stood between his two 
men, looking towards the bridge, and atten- 
tively contemplating the busy tumult of the 
people. 

But his satisfaction did not last; for ere long 
he saw an object whidh excited his displeasure. 
The great Giant, who appeared not yet to have 
awoke completely from his morning sleep, came 
stumbling along the Bridge, producing great 
confusion all around him. As usual, he had 
risen stupified with sleep, and had meant to 
bathe in the well-known bay of the River: in- 
stead of which he found firm land, and plunged 
upon the broad pavement of the Bridge. Yet 
although he reeled into the midst of men and 
cattle in the clumsiest way, his presence, won- 
dered at by all, was felt by none; but as the 
sunshine caine into his eyes, and he raised his 
hands to rub them, the shadows of his monstrous 
fists moved to and fro behind him with such 
force and awkwardness, that men and beasts 
were heaped together in great masses, were 
hurt by such rude contact, and in danger of be- 
ing pitched into the River. 

The King, as he saw this mischief, grasped 
with an involuntary movement at his sword ; 
but he bethought himself, and looked calmly at 
his sceptre, then at the Lamp and the Rudder 
of his attendants. " I guess thy thoughts," said 
the man with the Lamp ; " but we and our gifts 
are powerless against this powerless monster. 
Be calm ! He is doing hurt for the last time, and 
happily his shadow is not turned to us." 

Meanwhile the Giant was approaching nearer ; 
in astonishment at what he saw with open eyes, 
he had dropt his hands ; he was now doing no 
injury, and eame staring and agape into the 
forecourt. 

He was walking straight to the door of the 
Temple, when all at once in the middle of the 
court, he halted, and was fixed to the ground. 
He stood there like a strong colossal statue, of 
reddish glittering stone, and his shadow pointed 
out the hours, which were marked in a circle 
on the floor around him, not in numbers, but in 
noble and expressive emblems. 

Much delighted was the King to see the 
monster's shadow turned to some useful pur- 
pose ; much astonished was the Queen ; who, 
on mounting from within the Altar, decked in 



royal pomp with her virgins, first noticed the 
huge figure, which almost closed the prospect 
from the Temple to the Bridge. 

Meanwhile the people had crowded after the 
Giant, as he ceased to move ; they were walk- 
ing round him, wondering at his metamorphosis. 
From hiin they turned to the Temple, which 
they now first appeared to notice, and pressed 
towards the door. 

At this instant the Hawk with the mirror 
soared aloft above the dome ; caught the light 
of the sun, and reflected it upon the group, 
which was standing on the altar. The King, 
the Queen, and their attendants, in the dusky 
concave of the Temple, seemed illuminated by 
a heavenly splendor, and the people fell upon 
their faces. When the crowd had recovered 
and risen, the King with his followers had 
descended into the Altar, to proceed by secret 
passages into his palace; and the multitude 
dispersed about the Temple to content their 
curiosity. The three Kings that were standing 
erect they viewed with astonishment and re- 
verence ; but the more eager were they to dis- 
cover what mass it could be that was hid behind 
the hangings, in the fourth niche ; for by some 
hand or another, charitable decency had spread 
over the resting-place of the Fallen King a 
gorgeous curtain, which no eye can penetrate, 
and no hand may dare to draw aside. 

The people would have found no end to their 
gazing and their admiration, and the crowding 
multitude would have even suflbcated one an- 
other in the Temple, had not their attention 
been again attracted to the open space. 

Unexpectedly some gold-pieces, as if falling 
from the air, came tinkling down upon the 
marble flags ; the nearest passers-by rushed 
thither to pick them up ; the wonder was re- 
peated several times, now here, now there. It 
is easy to conceive that the shower proceeded 
from our two retiring Flames, who wished to 
have a little sport here once more, and were 
thus gaily spending, ere they went away, tlie 
gold which they had licked from the members 
of the sunken King. The people still ran eagerly 
about, pressing and pulling one another, even 
when the gold had ceased to fall. At length 
they gradually dispersed, and went their way; 
and to the present hour the Bridge is swarm- 
ing with travellers, and the Temple is the inoai 
frequented on the whole Earth. 




Fainted, "by A.Graff 



Engraved by A.B .V\''alter. 



IL LE [^. 



JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER. 



Bom 1759. Died 1805. 



The life and character of this most popular 
of German writers have been made familiar to 
the English and American Public by Mr. Car- 
lyle's excellent biography, republished in this 
country several years since, and still the best, 
if not the only one, in the English language. 
It has the credit of having been translated into 
German at the solicitation of his late Excel- 
lency, von Goethe. To this everyvvhere acces- 
sible and everywhere satisfactory work the 
reader is referred for a fuller account of Schil- 
ler than is compatible with the scope of the. 
present publication. For readers of German, 
there is Boring's well-known work, and later 
and better, Schiller''s Leben, &c., by Frau von 
Wolzogen, sister-in-law of the poet. 

A very brief notice must suffice for these 
pages. Schiller was a native of Marburg, in 
the duchy of Wiirtemberg. His father, Johann 
Caspar Schiller, a military officer in the service 
of the Duke, was piously solicitous to procure 
for his son the best education which his cir- 
cumstances would allow. For this purpose he 
was first placed under the tuition of a private 
instructer, a clergyman by the name of Moser, 
and afterward sent to the Latin school at Lud- 
wigsburg. It was the wish of his parents — 
and his own choice, as he ripened toward man- 
hood, coincided with theirs — that he should 
become a divine ; but the offer of the Duke and 
the preference shown to the sons of military 
officers at the new seminary established by him 
at Stuttgard, induced them to place him at that 
institution, where his studies assumed a dif- 
ferent direction, and where, after devoting him- 
self awhile to law, he finally settled upon me- 
dicine. 

The six years spent at this institution are 
represented as the most wretched of his life. 
"The Stuttgart system of education," says his 
biographer, "seems to have been formed on the 
principle, not of cherishing and correcting na- 
ture, but of rooting it out and supplying its 
place with something better. The process of 
teaching and living was conducted with the 
Bliff formality of military drilling. Everything 



went on by statute and ordinance ; there was 
no scope for the exercise of freewill, no allow- 
ance for the varieties of original structure. A 
scholar might possess what instincts or capa- 
cities he pleased, the 'regulations of the school' 
took no account of this ; he must fit himself 
into the common mould which, like the old 
giant's bed, stood there appointed by superior 
authority to be filled alike by the great and the 
little. The same strict and narrow course of 
reading and composition was marked out for 
each beforehand, and it was by stealth if he 
read or wrote anything beside." * * * * 
" The pupils were kept apart from the conver 
sation or sight of any person but their teachers; 
none ever got beyond the precincts of despotism 
to snatch even a fearful joy. Their very amuse- 
ments proceeded by word of command." 

This sort of discipline was ill adapted to 
educate a poet. Some natures would have 
been utterly perverted or crushed by it. In 
Schiller it produced an intense inwardness. 
His soul was thrust back within itself, and 
found refuge in the world of ideas from the hard 
formalities of his scholastic life. This effect 
was both a benefit and an evil. It is impossible 
to say whether, on the whole, he gained or 
lost by it. On the one hand, it stimulated his 
productiveness and was probably the chief and 
immediate cause of his literary efforts; and on 
the other hand, it gave his poetry that sub- 
jective character, the excess of which is its 
great defect. Perhaps, a more genial nurture 
would have corrected this error by awakening 
an interest in actual life ; and perhaps too, 
such a nurture might have given his faculties 
a different direction and left the poet undeve- 
loped. It is doubtful if any training could have 
supplied that intimate communication with ex- 
ternal nature, that eye for forms, that love of 
things, that sunny realism which constitutes so 
essential a qualification of the true poet, and 
which seems to be a natural endowment, unat- 
tainable and inimitable. 

In 1780 Schiller, having completed his me- 
dical studies, was appointed surgeon to the 
31 * (365) 



36b 



SCHILLER. 



regiment Auge, in the Wurtemberg army. In 
1781 he published his "Robbers," composed, it 
is said, some years before, at the age of nine- 
teen, but mncealed, for fear of offence, until he 
had completed his studies. This juvenile effort 
is, in every point of view, a wonderful produc- 
tion. Considered as a specimen of precocious 
genius, it is one of the most remarkable extant. 
Moreover, it stands decidedly at the head of that 
class of writings to which it belongs, — a class 
characterized by stormy force and passionate 
extravagance 6f sentiment and diction, "a 
savageness of unreclaimed blood." The " Sa- 
tanic school" it is denominated by Mr. Carlyle. 
Most of Byron's works rank in this rubric. 
Even the " Sorrows of Werter," though with 
some latitude of interpretation, has been thus 
classed. Schiller's drama stands pre-eminent 
among works of this description, surpassing 
everything of the sort in that peculiar power 
of fervid declamation which constitutes one of 
its distinguishing features. The "Corsair" and 
"Giaour" are milk-and-water idyls compared 
with it. The " Robbers" forms an era in litera- 
ture. It was soon translated into most of the 
languages of Europe, and everywhere wel- 
comed as Uie word which all men were wait- 
ing to hear. Not only did the pent volcano in 
the author's own breast find vent in those 
" power-words," but he appeared as the spokes- 
man of his time, — the voice of that muttered 
uneasiness and impatience of existing institu- 
tions which marked the epoch immediately 
preceding the French revolution. In strong 
and terrible accents it spoke the hoarded wrath 
of long centuries of misrule and oppression. It 
was an angry scream which pierced every soul 
from the Rhine to the Baltic, and startled the 
eagles of dominion on their ancient sceptres, — 
a prophecy of that tempest which soon after 
burst upon the world and changed the face of 
empires. Popular as it was with the young, 
and on the stage, it is doubtful if the real merits 
of the " Robbers," to this day, have been duly 
appreciated by the critics. Its extravagances 
and puerilities, unhappily but too prominent, 
have thrown a shade over its great excellences 
and biassed the judgment of mature and less 
inflammable readers. It is not, as sometimes 
represented, a mere farrago of power-words 
and rodomontade. It is far more than that. It 
IS a genuine work of genius, a work unsur- 
passed, with the exception of Faust, by any- 
tliing since Shakspeare, in imaginative power, 



in the vivid delineation of vice and passion, and 
in tragic interest Schiller has produced many 
things far superior to the " Robbers," as works 
of art, but nothing that equals it in vigor and 
effect. The promise implied in this Lrst effort, 
which the author himself has stigmatised as a 
"monster born of tlie unnatural union of Genius 
with Thraldom," was never quite realized in 
his subsequent productions. 

Meanwhile the publication of this tragedy 
was attended with some disagreeable conse- 
quences to the author. He drew down upon 
himself the wrath of the people of the Grisons 
by an offensive allusion, aspersing the reputa- 
tion of that district ; he incurred the suspicion 
of the Grand Duke by becoming an author, as 
well as by the specific character of his drama ; 
and finally subjected himself to repeated arrests 
for going to Manheim " without leave" to wit- 
ness its performance at the theatre in that city. 
The result was that Schiller made his escape 
from surgery and persecution at Stuttgart and 
fled to Manheim, where he found a temporary 
support by writing for the stage. After a short 
residence in this city he went to Mayence, 
then to Dresden, then to Leipzig. He also 
resided for a while at the estate of the Frau 
von Wolzogen. In 1784 he was made Counsel- 
lor by the Duke of Weimar, and in 1767 took 
up his residence in that cit)'. Here, after some 
hesitation and coyness, and overcoming of pre- 
judice on both sides, he became acquainted 
and finally intimate with Goethe, whose nature, 
in most respects the antipodes of his own, acted 
with decisive effect on Schiller's genius and 
destiny. Indeed, his acquaintance with Goethe 
seems to have been the most powerful influence 
to which his riper years were subjected. Goethe 
has given an account of the formation of this 
acquaintance, from which it appears how diffi- 
cult it was for these two spirits, the idealist 
and the realist, — each so determined in his 
way, — to amalgamate or even to converse. 
The unbroken friendship subsisting between 
them for nearly twenty years, is a rare and 
beautiful passage in literary history, and highly 
creditable to both parties. In Goethe it re- 
quired a severe struggle with fixed views and 
purposes, and some magnanimity, to make the 
first advances to the young poet whom, on his 
return from Italy, he found in full possession 
of the popular ear and heart, and threatening 
to re-induce a style and tendency which he, 
for his part, had laid aside with the crudities 



SCHILLER. 



307 



of his youth, and was every way endeavoring 
to counteract and supplant. Schiller himself 
thought they should never come together, and 
writes thus of their first interview : " Though 
it did not at all diminish the idea, great as it 
was, which I had previously formed of Goethe, 
I doubt if we shall ever come into close com- 
munication with each other. Much that still 
interests me has already had its epoch with 
him ; his whole nature is from its very origin 
otherwise constructed than mine ; his world is 
not my world, our modes of conceiving things 
appear to be essentially different." Goethe, on 
the other hand, relates that Schiller during 
this interview, in which the conversation 
turned on the metamorphosis of plants, said 
many things which pained him excessively, 
but that he determined to take no notice of 
them, and to discover, if possible, something 
which was common to both, and which might 
serve as the basis of an harmonious relation. 
Long after Schiller's death he remarks of their 
intimacy : " There was something providential 
m my connection with Schiller ; it might have 
happened earlier or later without so much 
significance; but that it should occur just at 
this time, when I had my Italian journey be- 
hind me, and Schiller began to be weary of 
his philosophical speculations, led to very im- 
portant consequences for both." Mr. Carlyle 
remarks: "If we regard the relative situation 
of the parties, and their conduct in this matter, 
we must recognise in both of them no little 
social virtue, at all events, a deep disinterested 
love of worth. In the case of Goethe, more 
especially, who, as the elder and every way 
greater of the two, has little to expect in com- 
parison with what he gives, this friendly union, 
had we space to explain its nature and progress, 
would give new proof that, as poor Jung Stil- 
ling also experienced, ' the man's heart which 
few know, is as true and noble as his genius 
which all know.'" 

In 1789 Schiller was made, through the me- 
diation of Goethe, Professor extraordinary of 
philosophy at Jena, and, the year following, 
was married to Fraulein von Lengefeld. In 
1791 he was attacked with a violent disease 
of the chest, which, for a long while, incapa- 
citated him for literary and professional labor. 
During this interval, he received from the 
hereditary Prince of Denmark and Count von 
Schimmelman, a pension of one thousand rix 
dollars for three years. After his recovery he 



applied himself with renewed and suicidal 
devotion to his former pursuits, compelling 
himself to labor oftentimes, when nature was 
unequal to the effort, and seconding naturb 
with stimulants. " His intolerance of inter- 
ruption," says his biographer, " first put him on 
the plan of studying by night ; an alluring but 
pernicious practice which began at Dresden 
and was never afterwards given up." * * v 
"During summer, his place of study was in 
a garden, which he at length purchased, in 
the suburbs of Jena." * * * In this garden 
" Schiller built himself a small house with a 
single chamber. It was his favorite abode 
during the hours of composition ; a great part 
of the works he then wrote were written here." 

* * * "On sitting down to his desk at night 
he was wont to keep some strong cofiee or 
wine-chocolate, but more frequently a flask of 
old Rhenish or Champagne standing by him, 
that he might repair the exhaustion of nature." 

* * * (I i^jj winter he was to be found at his 
desk till four or even five o'clock in the morn- 
ing, in summer till towards three. He then 
went to bed, from which he seldom rose till nine 
or ten." As might be expected, this insane and 
ruinous mode of life soon used up the feeble 
remains of a constitution originally slender, and 
long impaired by disease. The only wonder is, 
that nature endured the outrage so long. 
Goethe says: "This habit not only injured his 
health but also his productions : the faults 
which some wise heads find in his works, pro- 
ceed, I think, from this source. All the pas- 
sages which they blame may be styled patho- 
logical passages ; for they were written on 
those days when he had not strength to do his 
best." 

In 1801, by the advice of his physician, he 
removed from Jeria to Weimar, where he re- 
sided until his death. The Grand Duke allowed 
him a pension of a thousand dollars yearly, 
and offered to give him twice as much, in case 
he should be hindered by sickness. Schiller 
declined this last offer and never availed him- 
self of it. "I have talents," said he, "and must 
help myself" His chief income was derived 
from his works, and he compelled himself to 
write two dramas yearly, to meet the growing 
expenses of his family. In 1802 he was en- 
nobled by the emperor of Germany. He had 
previously received the rights of citizenship 
from the French Republic, at the commonco- 
ment of the RevolutioK. 



368 



SCHILLER. 



After attending a representation of his own 
" Tell" at Berlin, where he was received with 
great honor, he died at Weimar, May 19th, 
1805, in his forty-seventh year ; having, in the 
language of Goethe, " sacrificed life to the de- 
lineation of life."* 

The forty years which have elapsed since 
his death have not diminished the estima- 
tion in which Schiller is held by his country- 
men. He is still the most popular of German 
writers. Goethe, indeed, is preferred by men 
of the highest culture ; Goethe is the prophet 
of the philosophical and profound; but Schiller 
is the poet of the people, and, in all probability, 
will long continue to hold the supreme rank in 
the popular estimation. In a great measure, 
this popularity is owing to intrinsic merit. 
Schiller's excellences are perfectly intelligible ; 
they commend themselves at first sight ; they 
lie on the surface. Not that he lacks profound- 
ness; but he does not, like so many of his 
countrymen, court obscurity ; he does not hide 
a second meaning behind the first; there is 
nothing esoteric in his writings; he never 
enigmatizes. Goethe maintained that a perfect 
work of art must leave something to conjec- 
ture. This was not Schiller's theory of art. 
At least, it was not his practice. Though emi- 
nently reflective, he is perfectly transparent. 
In part, however, the popularity of Schiller 
may be ascribed to the zeal with which, in 
early life, he advocated the cause of liberty; 
and another reason still, is the dramatic form 
which his genius assumed at the outset, and 
the wide circulation and commanding emphasis 
given to his writings by theatrical exhibition. 
The dramatic poet possesses a great advantage, 
in this respect, over other authors. "In the 
first place, it is evident," says Jean Paul, "how 
far one of the latter class, with his scattered 
recluse-readers, honored but little, and that only 
by Cultivated men, read perhaps twice in suc- 
cession, but not heard forty times in succession; 
— it is evident, I say, how far such an Irus in 
fame, such a John Lackland falls below the 
Btage-poec, who not only wears these laurel- 
gleanings upon his head, but adds to them the 
rich harvest, that prince and chimney-sweep, 

*" He had," says Goethe, " an awful progressiveness. 
When Ihadbeen a week without seeing him.I was amazed 
and knew not where to take hold of him, and found him 
already advanced again. And so he went ever forward 
tn- fo-tv-six years. Then, indeed, he had gone far 
jsnough." 



and every generation and every age get his 
thoughts into their heads and his name into 
their mouths ; that often the most miserable 
market- towns, whenever a more miserable 
strolling actor's company moves into them, 
harness themselves to the triumphal car in 
which such a writer is borne." * * * "There 
are a hundred other advantages which, by the 
figure of permission {Jigura prcBteritionis), I 
might mention, but which I prefer to omit; 
this, e. g., that a dramatic author (and often- 
times he is present and hears it all) employs, 
as it were, a whole corporation of hands in his 
service; * * * furthermore, that he is 
learned by heart, not only by the actors, but, 
after many repetitions, by the hearers also, and 
is continually praised anew in all the standing 
though tedious theatrical notices of the daily 
and monthly journals." * * * " Hence we 
may explain the fact, that our cold Germany 
has exerted itself so much and so well for 

Schiller and so little for Herder."* No 

writer of any nation, at present, fills so large a 
place in the mind of his country, or exercises 
such fascination over it, as Schiller. Scarcely 
less read than Scott, he is far more deeply 
loved, — loved with the passionate interest 
which attaches to a great unfinished life ; with 
that yearning which follows a beautiful spirit 
too soon withdrawn from the earth. To him 
belongs the peculiar charm which made Byron, 
for a while, the idol of the young ; but without 
the moral abatements so lamentable in his 
case, — the charm of intensity. Add to this the 
feminine delicacy of Racine, the masculine sin- 
cerity, if not the austere sanctity, of Milton, 
tlie soaring mind of Tasso, the studied elegance 
of Virgil, the tragic seriousness of Euripides: 
all these combine to render Schiller not only 
the favorite of his own nation, but the delight 
of the world. Frederic Schlegel characterizes 
him as " the true founder of the German dra- 
ma," the man who gave it " its proper sphere 
and its most happy form."| The most elaborate 
eulogy of Schiller is that of Menzel, in his 
survey of German literature, in which the poet 
is not inaptly compared to Raphael. Mr. Long- 
fellow has cited this full-mouthed panegyric in. 
the notice of Schiller contained in " The Poets 
and Poetry of Europe." For this reason, it was 
thought best to omit it here and to substitute 

♦From ^^Katienberger^s Badereise." 

f Lectures on the History of Literature, vol.ii. 



SCHILLER. 



369 



instead the more discriminating, if less lauda- 
tory criticism of Mr. Carlyle.* 

"From many indications, we can perceive 
that to Schiller the task of the Poet appeared 
of far weightier import to mankind in these 
times than that of any other man whatever. 
It seemed to him that he was " casting his 
bread upon the waters, and would find it after 
many days ;" that when the noise of all conju- 
rors, and demagogues, and political reformers 
had quite died away, some tone of heavenly 
wisdom that had dwelt even in him might still 
linger among men, and be acknowledged as 
heavenly and priceless, whether as his or not ; 
whereby, though dead, he would yet speak, and 
his spirit would live throughout all generations, 
when the syllables that once formed his name 
had passed into forgetfulness forever. We are 
told, "he was in the highest degree philan- 
thropic and humane; and often said that he 
had no deeper wish than to know all men hap- 
py." What was still more, he strove, in his 
public and private capacity, to do his utmost 
for that end. Honest, merciful, disinterested, 
he is at all times found : and for the great duty 
laid on him no man was ever more unweariedly 
ardent. It was 'his evening song and his 
morning prayer.' He lived for it; and he died 
for it ; ' sacrificing,' in the words of Goethe, 
' his Life itself to this delineating of Life.' In 
collision with his fellow-men, — for with him as 
with others this also was a part of his relation 
to society, — we find him no less noble than in 
friendly union with them. He mingles in none 
of the controversies of the time; or only like a 
god in the battles of men. In his conduct to- 
wards inferiors, even ill-intentioned and mean 
inferiors, there is everywhere a true, dignified, 
pa,trician spirit. Ever witnessing, and inwardly 
lamenting, the baseness of vulgar Literature in 
his day, he makes no clamorous attacks on it; 
alludes to it only from afar: as in Milton's 
writings, so in his, tew of his contemporaries 
are named, or hinted at; it was not with men, 
but with things that he had a warfare. In a 
word, we can say of Schiller, what can be said 
only of few in any country or time : He was a 
high ministering servant at Truth's altar ; and 
bore him worthily of the office he held. Let 
this, and that it was even in our age, be forever 
remembered to his praise. 

" Schiller's intellectual character has, as in- 



♦ From "Carlyle's Miscellanies.' 
roe and Co., vol. ii. 

2 w 



Boston, James Mun- 



deed is always the case, an accurate conformity 
with his moral one. Here too he is simple in 
his excellence ; lofty rather than expansive or 
varied ; pure, divinely ardent rather than great. 
A noble sensibility, the truest sympathy with 
Nature, in all forms, animates him ; yet scarcely 
any creative gift altogether commensurate with 
this. If to his mind's eye all forms of Nature 
have a meaning and beauty, it is only under a 
few forms, chiefly of the severe or pathetic 
kind, that he can body forth this meaning, can 
represent as a Poet what as a Thinker he dis- 
cerns and loves. We might say, his music is 
true spheral music ; yet only with few tones, 
in simple modulation ; no full choral harmony 
is to be heard in it. That Schiller, at least in 
his later years, attained a genuine poetic style, 
and dwelt, more or less, in the perennial regions 
of his Art, no one will deny : yet still his poetry 
shows rather like a partial than a universal 
gift; the labored product of certain faculties 
rather than the spontaneous product of his 
whole nature. At the summit of the pyre, 
there is indeed white flame ; but the materials 
are not all in flame, perhaps not all ignited. 
Nay, often it seems to us, as if poetry were, on 
the whole, not his essential gift ; as if his genius 
were reflective in a still higher degree than 
creative ; philosophical and oratorical rather 
than poetic. To the last, there is a stiffness in 
him, a certain infiisibility. His genius is not 
an j^olian harp, for the common wind to play 
with, and make wild, free melody ; but a sci- 
entific harmonica, that being artfully touched 
will yield rich notes, though in limited mea- 
sure. It may be, indeed, or rather it is highly 
probable, that of the gifts which lay in him 
only a small portion was unfolded : for we are 
to recollect that nothing came to him without 
a strenuous effort ; and that he was called away 
at middle age. At all events, here as we find 
him we should say, that of all his endowments 
the most perfect is understanding. Accurate, 
thorough insight is a quality we miss in none 
of his productions, whatever else may be want- 
ing. He has an intellectual vision, clear, wide, 
piercing, methodical, — a truly philosophic eye. 
Yet in regard to this also it is to be remarked, 
that the same simplicity, the same want of uni- 
versality again displays itself He looks aloft 
rather than around. It is in high, far-seeing 
philosoohic views that he delights; in specu- 
latioas on Art, — on the dignity and destiny ot 
Man rather than on the common doings and 



370 



SCHILLER. 



interests of Men. Nevertheless these latter, 
mean as they seem, are boundless in signifi- 
cance ; for every the poorest aspect of Nature, 
especially of living Nature, is a type and mani- 
festation of the invisible spirit that works in 
Nature. There is properly no object trivial 
or insignificant: but every finite thing, could 
we look well, is as a window, through which 
solemn vistas are opened into Infinitude itself. 
But neither as a Poet nor as a Thinker, neither 
in delineation nor in exposition and discussion, 
does Schiller more than glance at such objects. 
For the most part, the Common is to him still 
the Common, or is idealized, rather as it were 
by mechanical art than by inspiration : not 
by deeper poetic or philosophic inspection, dis- 
closing new beauty in its every-day features, 
but rather by deducting these, by casting them 
aside, and dwelling on what brighter features 
may remain in it. Herein Schiller, as, indeed, 
himself was modestly aware, difl^ers essentially 
fi-om most great poets; and from none more 
than from his great contemporary, Goethe. 
Such intellectual preeminence as this, valuable 
though it be, is the easiest and the least valu- 
able ; a preeminence that indeed captivates the 
general eye, but may, after all, have little in- 
trinsic grandeur. Less in rising into lofty ab- 
stractions lies the difficulty, than in seeing well 
and lovingly the complexities of what is at 
hand. He is wise who can instruct us and 
assist US in tlie business of daily virtuous living ; 
he who trains us to see old truth under Aca- 
demic formularies may be wise or not as it 
chances ; but we love to see Wisdom in unpre- 
tending forms, to recognise her royal features 
under week-day vesture. — There may be more 
true spiritual force in a Proverb than in a phi- 
losophical system. A King in the midst of his 
body-guards, with all his trumpets, war-horses, 
and gilt standard-bearers, will look great though 
he be little ; but only some Roman Carus can 
give audience to satrap - ambassadors, while 
seated on the ground, with a woollen cap, and 
sopping on boiled peas, like a common soldier. 
"In all Schiller's earlier writings, nay, more 
or less, in the whole of his writings, this aris- 
tocratic fastidiousness, this comparatively bar- 
ren elevation, appears as a leading character- 
istic. In speculation he is either altogether 
abstract and systematic, or he dwells on old, 
conventionally - noble themes; never looking 
abroad, over the many-colored stream of life, 
to elucidate and ennoble it : or only looking on 



it, so to speak, from a college window. The 
philosophy even of his Histories, for example, 
founds itself mainly on the perfectibility of man, 
the effect of constitutions, of religions, and other 
such high, purely scientific objects. In his 
Poetry we have a similar manifestation. The 
interest turns on prescribed, old-established 
matters, common love mania, passionate great- 
ness, enthusiasm for liberty, and the like. This, 
even in Don Karlos, a work of what may be 
called his transition-period, the turning-point 
between his earlier and his later period, where 
we still find Posa, the favorite hero, ' towering 
aloft, far-shining, clear and cold, as a sea bea- 
con.' In after years, Schiller himself saw well 
that the greatest lay not here. With unwea- 
ried eflSart he strove to lower and to widen his 
sphere, and not without success, as many of his 
Poems testify; for example, the Lied der 
Glocke (Song of the Bell), every way a noble 
composition ; and, in a still higher degree, the 
tragedy of Wilhelm Tell, the last, and, so far 
as spirit and style are concerned, the best of 
all his dramas. 

" Closely connected with this imperfection, 
both as cause and as consequence, is Schiller's 
singular want of Humor. Humor is properly 
the exponent of low things ; that which first 
renders them poetical to the mind. The man 
of Humor sees common life, even mean life, 
under the new light of sportfulness and love ; 
whatever has existence has a charm for him. 
Humor has justly been regarded as the finest 
perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, 
be his other gifts what they may, has only half 
a mind ; an eye for what is above him, not for 
what is about him or below him. Now, among 
all writers of any real poetic genius, we cannot 
recollect one who, in this respect, exhibits such 
total deficiency as Schiller. In his whole writ- 
ings there is scarcely any vestige of it, scarcely 
any attempt that way. His nature was without 
Humor ; and he had too true a feeling to adopt 
any counterfeit in its stead. Thus no drollery 
or caricature, still less any barren mockery, 
which, in the hundred cases, are all that we 
find passing current as Humor, discover them- 
selves in Schiller. His works are full of la- 
bored earnestness; he is the gravest of all 
writers. Some of his critical discussions, es- 
pecially in the Aesthelische Briefe, where he 
designates the ultimate height of man's culture 
by the title of Spieltrieb (literally, sport- im- 
pulse), prove that he knew what Humor was, 



SCHILLER. 



371 



and how essential ; as indeed, to his intellect, 
all forms of excellence, even the most alien to 
his own, were painted with a wonderful fidelity. 
Nevertheless, he himself attains not that height 
which he saw so clearly ; to the last the Spiel- 
trieb could be little more than a theory with 
him. With the single exception of Wallen- 
stein's Lager, where, too, the Humor, if it be 
such, is not deep, his other attempts at mirth, 
fortunately very few, are of the heaviest. A 
rigid intensity, a serious enthusiastic ardor, 
majesty rather than grace, still more than 
lightness or sportfulness, characterizes him. 
Wit he had, such wit as keen intellectual in- 
sight can give ; yet even of this no large en- 
dowment. Perhaps he was too honest, too 
sincere, for the exercise of wit ; too intent on 
the deeper relations of things to note their 
more transient collisions. Besides, he dealt in 
Affirmation, and not in Negation ; in which 
last, it has been said, the material of wit chiefly 
lies. 

" These observations are to point out for us 
the special department and limits of Schiller's 
excellence ; nowise to call in question its reality. 
Of his noble sense for Truth, both in specula- 
tion and in action ; of his deep, genial insight 
into nature ; and the living harmony in which 
he renders back what is highest and grandest 
in Nature, no reader of his works need be re- 
minded. In whatever belongs to the pathetic, 
the heroic, the tragically elevating, Schiller is 
at home, a master; nay perhaps the greatest 
of all late poets. To the assiduous student, 
moreover, much that lay in Schiller, but was 
never worked into shape, will become partially 
visible : deep, inexhaustible mines of thought 
and feeling : a whole world of gifts, the finest 
produce of which was but beginning to be real- 
ized. To his high-minded, unwearied efforts, 
what was impossible, had length of years been 
granted him ! There is a tone in some of his 
later pieces, which here and there breathes of 
the very highest region of Art. Nor are the 
natural or accidental defects we have noticed 
in his genius, even as it stands, such as to ex- 
clude him from the rank of great Poets. Poets 
whom the whole world reckons great, have, 
more than once, exhibited the like. Milton, 
for example, shares most of them with him: 
like Schiller he dwells, with full power, only 
in the high and earnest; in all other provinces 
exhibiting a certain inaptitude, a certain ele- 
phantine unpliancy: he too has little Humor; 



his coarse invective has in it contemptuous 
emphasis enough, yet scarcely any graceful 
sport Indeed, on the positive side also, these 
two worthies are not without a resemblance. 
Under far other circumstances, with less mas- 
siveness, and vehement strength of soul, there 
is in Schiller the same intensity; the same 
concentration, and towards similar objects, to- 
wards whatever is sublime in Nature and in 
Art, which sublimities they both, each in his 
several way, worship with undivided heart. 
There is not in Schiller's nature the same rich 
complexity of rhythm, as in Milton's, with its 
depths of linked sweetness; yet in Schiller too 
there is something of the same pure, swelling 
force, some tone which, like Milton's, is deep, 
majestic, solemn. 

" It was as a Dramatic Author that Schiller 
distinguished himself to the world : yet often 
we feel as if chance rather than a natural ten- 
dency had led him into this province ; as if his 
talent were essentially, in a certain style, ly- 
rical, perhaps even epic, rather than dramatic. 
He dwelt within himself, and could not without 
effort, and then only within a certain range, 
body forth other forms of being. Nay, much 
of what is called his poetry seems to us, as 
hinted above, oratorical rather than poetical ; 
his first bias might have led him to be a speaker, 
rather than a singer. Nevertheless, a pure 
fire dwelt deep in his soul ; and only in Poetry, 
of one or the other kind, could this find utter- 
ance. The rest of his nature, at the same 
time, has a certain prosaic rigor: so that not 
without strenuous and complex endeavors, long 
persisted in, could its poetic quality evolve it- 
self Quite pure, and as the all-sovereign ele- 
ment, it perhaps never did evolve itself; and 
among such complex endeavors, a small ac- 
cident might influence large portions in its 

course. Of Schiller's Philosophic talent, 

still more of the results he had arrived at in 
philosophy, there were much to be said and 
thought, which we must not enter upon here. 
As hinted above, his primary endowment seems 
to us fully as much philosophical as poetical ; 
his intellect, at all events, is peculiarly of that 
character ; strong, penetrating, yet systematic 
and scholastic, rather than intuitive ; and ma- 
nifesting this tendency both in the objects it 
treats, and in its mode of treating them. Tlie 
transcendental Philosophy, which arose in Schil- 
ler's busiest era, could not remain without in- 
fluence on him : he had carefully studied Kant's 



SCHILLER. 



system, and appears to have not only admitted 
but zealously appropriated its fundamental doc- 
trines; remoulding them, however, into his 
own peculiar forms, so that they seem no longer 
borrowed, but permanently acquired ; not less 
Schiller's than Kant's. Some, perhaps little 
aware of his natural wants and tendencies, are 
of opinion that these speculations did not profit 

him. 

" Among younger students of German Lite- 
rature, the question often arises, and is warmly 
mooted: whether Schiller or Goethe is the 
greater Poef! Of this question we must be 
allowed to say that it seems rather a slender 
one, and for two reasons. First, because Schil- 
ler and Goethe are of totally dissimilar endow- 
ments and endeavors, in regard to all matters 
intellectual, and cannot well be compared to- 
gether as Poets. Secondly, because if the 
question mean to ask, which Poet is on the 
whole the rarer and more excellent, as probably 
it does, it must be considered as long ago abun- 
dantly answered. To the clear-sighted and 
modest Schiller, above all, such a question 
would have appeared surprising : No one knew 
better than himself, that as Goethe was a born 
Poet, so he was in a great part a made Poet ; 
that as the one spirit was intuitive, all-embrac- 
ing, instinct with melody, so the other was 
scholastic, divisive, only partially and as it were 
artificially melodious. Besides, Goethe has 
lived to perfect his natural gift, which the less 
happy Schiller was not permitted to do. The 



former accordingly is the national Poet; the 
latter is not and never could have been. We 
once heard a German remark, that readers to 
their twenty-fifth year usually preferred Schil- 
ler ; after their twenty-fifth year, Goethe. This 
probably was no unfair illustration of the ques- 
tion. Schiller can seem higher than Goethe 
only because he is narrower. Thus to unprac- 
tised eyes, a Peak of Teneriffe, nay, a Strass- 
burg Minster, when we stand on it, may seem 
higher than a Chimborazo ; because the former 
rise abruptly, without abutment or environment ; 
the latter rises gradually, carrying half a world 
aloft with it; and only the deeper azure of the 
heavens, the widened horizon, the ' eternal 
sunshine' disclose to the geographer that the 
' Region of Change' lies far below him. 

"However,letusnotdivide these two Friends, 
who in life were so benignantly united. With- 
out asserting for Schiller any claim that even 
enemies can dispute, enough will remain for 
him. We may say that, as a Poet and Thinker, 
he attains to a perennial Truth, and ranks 
among the noblest productions of his century 
and nation. Goethe may continue the German 
Poet, but neither through long generations can 
Schiller be forgotten." 

As, of all German writers, Schiller is per- 
haps the best known, or least misunderstood, 
among us ; as he has rank as poet rather than 
prose-writer, the following essay must suffice 
for the present collection. 



UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL 
POETRY.* 

Thehe are moments in our life when we feel 
a kind of love and tender respect for Nature in 
plants, minerals, animals, landscapes, and for 
.human nature in children, in the manners of 
rustics and of the primitive times : not on ac- 
count of its sensuous interest, nor because it 
satisfies our intellect or taste, for the opposite 
may often occur with both, but solely because it 
is Nature. Every cultivated man, not entirely 
deficient in feeling, is sensible of this, when he 
walUs in tlie open air, or is living in the coun- 
try, or linger:* near the monuments of past 
time : in short, w'len ho is overtaken, in the midst 
of artificial rel'ilons and situations, by the sim- 
plicity of nature. It is this interest, often 
amounting to a want, which underlies many of 
* Translated by Rev. J. Weiss. 



our passions for flowers and creatures, for sim- 
ple gardens, for walks, for the country and its 
inhabitants, for many products of distant an- 
tiquity, and the like. But this presupposes that 
neither afiectation nor an otherwise arccidental 
interest comes into play. Then this kind of 
interest in nature occurs only under two con- 
ditions. In the first place it is absolutely neces- 
sary, that the object which excites it should be 
Nature, or taken for such by us: secondly, that, 
in the widest signification of the term, it should 
be naive, that is, that nature should stand in con- 
trast with art, and rebuke it. Nature becomes 
naive as soon as these two conditions are com- 
bined. 

From this point of view nature becomes for 
us nothing more nor less than independent 
Being, the persistence of things by themselves, 
existence according to peculiar and immutable 
laws. 



SCHILLER. 



s?.-^ 



Tliis conception is absolutely prerequisite, if 
we would take interest in like phenomena. 
Could one, with the cornpletest deception, give 
a natural look to an artificial flower, or carry 
the imitation of naive manners to the highest 
point of illusion, the discovery that it was all 
imitation would entirely destroy the feeling of 
which we speak.* Whence it is clear that this 
kind of pleasure in nature is moral and not 
aesthetic : for it is mediated by an idea, and is 
not created by direct contemplation. Besides 
which, it is by no means directed towards 
beauty of form. For instance : what attraction 
would a colorless flower, a fountain, a mossy 
stone, the twitter of birds, the humming of bees, 
have for us in themselves? What could give 
them a claim to our love 1 We do not love the 
objects themselves, but the ideas they represent. 
We love ill each of them the still, creative life, 
the tranquil production out of itself, existence 
according to its own laws, eternal unity with 
icself 

They are what we were ; they are what we 
again should be. Like them, we were Nature; 
and our culture ought to lead us back to Nature, 
by the path of reason and freedom. Then they 
are at the same time the representation of our 
lost childhood, which forever remains the dear- 
est to us : hence, they fill us with a csrlain sad- 
ness ; and at the same time the representation 
of our loftiest completion in the ideal: hence, 
they give us a sublime emotion. 
* But their completeness is not their merit, 
since it is not the work of their own choice. 
They secure for us, then, this entirely peculiar 
pleasure, that without making us ashamed, they 
are our model. They surround us, as a con- 
tinual divine manifestation, but more refreshing 
than dazzling. What makes their character 
complete is exactly that in which our own is 
deficient: what distinguishes us from them is 
exactly that of divinity in which they fail. We 
are free, and they are necessary : we alter, they 
remain one. But the divine or the ideal ob- 
tains, only when the difl'erences are blended, 
when the will follows freely the law of neces- 
sity, and the reason maintains its sway through 
every change of fancy. Then we forever per- 
ceive in them that which we lack, but for which 
we are invited to strive, and to which, even 
tiiough we never attain it, we may yet hope to 
approximate in an infinite progression. We 
perceive in ourselves a superiority, which they 

* Kant, tile first to my kiiouledge who directed reflec- 
tion expressly towards lliis phenomenon, remarks, that 
if we lieard a man imitate with complete success the 
note of a nightingale, and yielded to the impression with 
profound emotion, all our pleasure would vanish with 
the dissipation of this illusion. See the chapter in the 
Critique of Jleslhelic Judgment, upon Intellectual interest 
in the beautiful. Whoever has learned to admire the 
author only as a great thinker, will here be delighted to 
meet with a trace of his heart; and to be convinced, 
by the discovery, of his fitness for this lofty vocation, 
which unquestionably dymands the union of both those 
qiialitieti. 



lack, but whiah they can either never share, 
like the senseless creation, or only as they pro- 
ceed in our path, like the state of childhood. 
Hence, as idea, they create for us the sweetest 
enjoyment of our manhood, although they must 
of necessity humiliate us with respect to each 
determinate condition of our manhood. 

As this interest for nature is based upon an 
idea, it can be shown only in dispositions sus 
ceptible of ideas, that is, in moral ones. By far 
the majority of men only afl"ect it; and the uni- 
versality of this sentimental taste in out times, 
which displays itself, especially since the ap- 
pearance of certain writings, in affected travels, 
gardens of like sort, walks and other fondnesses 
of the kind, is no proof at all for the univer- 
sality of the true sentiment Yet Nature v.'ill 
always exert something of this influence upon 
tlie most insensible, since for that the com- 
mon bias of all men to the moral is adequate; 
and all of us without distinction, however 
great a disproportion there may be between 
our acts and the simplicity and truth of Na- 
ture, are compelled to that in idea. This sen- 
timent for Nature and inciteinent from objects 
standing in a close relation with us, — as for 
example, children and childlike people, — and 
bringing nearer to us both self- retrospection 
and our own unnature, is especially strong and 
universal. It is erroneous to suppose, that it is 
only the appearance of helplessness which 
makes us, at certain times, linger with so much 
emotion near children. Perhaps that may be 
the case with some, who are wont to feel, in the 
presence of weakness, nothing but their own 
superiority. But the feeling of which I speak 
occurring only in entirely moral dispositions, 
and not to be confounded with that excited by 
the playful activity of children, is rather hu- 
miliating than gratifying to self-love; and in- 
deed if any superiority is noticeable at all, it is 
by no means on our side. We experience emo- 
tion, not while we look down upon the child 
from the height of our power and perfection, 
but while we look up, out of the limitation of 
our condition which is inseparable from the 
definite mode to which we have attained, at the 
child's boundless determinablenessand its perfect 
innocence. And, at such a moment, our feeling 
is too plainly mingled with a certain sadness, 
to allow us to mistake its source. The child 
represents the bias and determination, we repre- 
sent the fulfilment, which forever remains in- 
finitely far behind the former. Hence the child 
is an actualization of the ideal, not indeed of 
one fulfilled, but of one proposed; and so it is 
by no means the appearance of its neediness 
and limits which moves us, but, on the con 
trary, the appearance of its free and pure power, 
its integrity, its infinity. For this reason, a child 
will be a holy object to the man of morality 
and feeling, that is, an object which, by the 
magnitude of an idea, abolishes every actual 
magnitude, and which wins again in rich mea- 
sure from the estimation of the reason all thai 
32 



374 



SCHILLER. 



it may lose in the estimation fof the under- 
standing. 

Out of this very contradiction between the 
judgment of the reason and of the understand- 
ing, proceeds the entirely peculiar phenomenon 
of mixed feeling, which a naive disposition ex- 
cites in us. It unites childlike with childish sim- 
plicity. By tlie latter, it gives the understand- 
ing an idea of weakness, and produces that 
laughter by which we make known our (theo- 
retic) superiority. But as soon as we have 
reason to believe that childish simplicity is 
at the same time childlike, and that conse- 
quently its source is not folly, or imbecility, but 
a loftier (^practical') strengtli, a heart full of in- 
nocence and truth, which makes ashamed, by 
its internal greatness, the mediation of art, — 
then that triumph of the understanding is over, 
and a jest at simpleness passes over into admi- 
ration of simplicity. We feel ourselves com- 
pelled to respect the object at which we pre- 
viously laughed, and, while casting a look into 
ourselves, to lament that we are not like it. 
Thus arises the entirely peculiar appearance 
of a feeling, in which are blended gay derision, 
reverence and sadness.* The Naive demands, 

* Kant, in a note to the Analysis of the Sublime 
(Critique of Aesth. Judg., p. 225, 1st Ed.), in like manner 
distinguishes this three-fold composition in the percep- 
tion of the Naive, hut he gives another explanation of 
it. "Something of both (the animal feeling of pleasure, 
and the spiritual feeling of respect) united, is found in 
naivete, which is the outbreak of the originally natural 
uprightness of humanity against the art of dissimula- 
tion become a second nature. We laugh at the simplicity 
which does not yet understand how to dissimulate, and 
still we enjoy that natural simplicity which disappoints 
such arts. If we expected the every-day style of an af- 
fected expression that is prudently established upon 
aesthetic show, beliold, it is unsophisticated, blameless 
nature, which we were not at all prepared to meet, and 
which, it would seem, was not meant to be exposed. 
And because the aesthetic, but false, show, which com- 
monly counts for much in our judgment, here suddenly 
vanishes, and because, so to speak, our waggery Is ex- 
posed, this brings out in two opposite directions, a men- 
tal agiiation, which at the same time gives the body a 
salutary shaking. But because something, which is in- 
finitely better than all assumed style, that is, mental sin- 
cerity (at least the tendency thereto), is not yet entirely 
extinguished in human nature,— this it is which mingles 
seriousness and regard in this play of the judgment. But 
since the phenomenon lasts only for a little while, and 
the veil of dissimulation is soon again drawn before it, 
a regret, which is an emotion of tenderness, mingles al.so 
with our feeling ; and it does not refuse to unite as play 
with a hearty laugli, at the same time relieving the em- 
barrassment of the person who is the object of it, because 
he has not yet learned tbe way of the world." I must 
ronfpss the explanation does not entirely satisfy me, and 
particularly for this reason, that it asserts something of 
the Naive in general, which is chiefly true of one species, 
me Naive of surprise, of which I shall afterwards speak.' 
It certainly excites laughter, when anybody exposes him- 
self by naivete ; and in many cases this laughter may re- 
sult from a pn^vious expectation which is resolved into 
nothing. But also naiveteof the noblest kind, the Naive 
3f disposition, always excites a smile, which can hardly 
lave for its cause an expectation resolved into nothing; 



that Nature should bear away the victory ovet 
Art,* whether it happen without the knowledge 
and will of the person, or with his full con- 
sciousness. In the first case it is the Naive of 
Surprise, and delights : in the other case it is 
the Naive of Disposition, and moves. 

In the Naive of surprise, the person must be 
morally able to deny nature ; in the Naive of 
disposition he need not be so, and yet, if it would 
aflect us as naivete, we need not imagine him 
as physically unable to do so. Hence the talk 
and actions of children give us the pure im- 
pression of naivete, only so long as we do not 
remember their incapacity for art, but merely 
regard the contrast of their naturalness with the 
art in us. A childishness, where it is no longer 
expected, is Naive, and therefore that cannot be 
ascribed, in strictness of meaning, to actual 
childhood. 

But in the cases, both of Naivete of Surprise 
and that of Disposition, nature must be right, but 
art be wrong. 

The conception of the Naive is only com- 
pleted by this final definition. Feeling is also 
nature, and the rule of propriety is something 
artificial ; but yet the victory of feeling over 
propriety is nothing less than naive. If, on the 
other hand, the same feeling overcomes artifice, 
false propriety, dissimulation, we do not hesi- 
tate to call that naive.-j- It is necessary, then, 
that nature should triumph over art, not as a 
dynamic magnitude, by its blind force, but as a 
moral magnitude, by its form. The impropriety, 
and not the insufficing of art, must have atibrded 
the victory to nature ; for nothing which results 

but it is generally to be explained only by the contrast 
of a certain demeanor with the once assumed and ex- 
pected forms. I also doubt, whether the pity, which is 
blended in our feeling at the Naive of the latter kind, 
relates to the naive person, and not rather to ourselves, 
or rather to mankind in general, of whose deterioration 
we are reminded by such a circumstance. It is too 
plainly a moral sadness, which must have a nobler object 
than the physical weakness with which sincerity is 
threatened in the customary routine of life; and this 
object cannot well be other than the decay of truth and 
simplicity in humanity. 

* Perhaps I should briefly say ; truth over Dissimula- 
tion. But the idea of the Naive appears to me to include 
still something more, while the simplicity which prevails 
over artifice, and the natural freedom which conquers 
stiffness and constraint, excite in us a similar percep- 
tion. 

f A child is ill bred, if it resists the precepts of a good 
education from desire, caprice or passion : but it is naive, 
if it releases itself by virtue of a free and healthy nature, 
from the mannerism of an unwise education, from the 
stiff postures of the dancing-master, and the like. The 
same also occurs with that loosely defined naivete which 
results from the transmission of humanity to the irra- 
tional. If the weeds got the upper hand in a badly kept 
garden, no one would find the appearance naive; but 
there is something positively naive when the free growth 
of outspreading branches destroys the laborious work of 
the shears in a French garden. And so it is not at all 
naive when a trained horse repeats his lesson badly out 
of natural fatness, but there is sometliing naive when he 
forgets it out of natural freedom. 



SCHILLER. 



3''.') 



from deficiency can command respect. It is 
true, that in the Naive of Surprise, it is always 
the overplus of feeling and a deficiency of re- 
straint which causes nature to be recognized : 
but this deficiency and that overplus by no 
means create the Naive, for they only afford an 
opportunity for nature to follow unimpeded its 
moral capacity, that is, the law of harmony. 

The Naive of Surprise can only appertain to 
man, and to man alone, in so far as at that mo- 
ment he is no longer pure and innocent nature. 
It presupposes a will which does not harmonize 
with that which nature does spontaneously. 
Such a person, if rendered conscious of it, will 
be frightened at himself: on the contrary, he 
who is naive by Disposition, will be surprised at 
men and at their astonishment. Then, as the 
truth does not here recognize the personal and 
moral character, but only the natural character 
released by feeling, so we attribute no merit to 
the man for his uprightness, and our laughter, 
which is restrained by no personal veneration 
for him, is merited sport. But as here also it 
is the uprightness of nature which breaks through 
the veil of falseness, a satisfaction of a higher 
kind unites with the niiscliievous pleasure at 
having surprised a man. For nature, in oppo- 
sition to artifice, and truth, in opposition to de- 
ception, must always excite respect. We feel, 
then, in the naive of surprise also, an actual 
moral pleasure, though not from a moral cha- 
racter.* 

It is true, we always respect nature in the 
naive of surprise, since we must respect the 
truth. On the contrary, we respect the person 
in the naive of disposition, and then we enjoy 
not only a moral pleasure, but also at a moral 
object. In the one as in the other case nature 
is right, so that she speaks the truth : but in the 
latter case nature is not only right, but the per- 
son is also worthy of respect. In the first case 
the uprightness of nature always redounds to 
the shame of the person, because it is involun- 
tary; in the second it always redounds to his 
merit, even supposing that he incurs odium by 
what it expresses. 

We ascribe a naive disposition to a man, if, 
in his judgments of things, he overlooks their 
artificial and forced relations, and adheres only 
to simple nature. We demand from him all 
the judgments that can be made within the 
limits of healthy nature; and we completely 

* Ag the naive depends only upon the form in which 
something is said or done, this property disappears, as 
soon as the thing itself, either through its causes or 
through its effects, makes a preponderating or indeed 
contradictory impression. By naivete of this kind even 
a crime can he detected, but then we have neither the 
quiet nor the leisure to direct our attention to the form 
of the detection : and aversion for the personal character 
absorbs all our satisfaction at the nature. And as a re- 
volted feeling steals the moral pleasure at the upright- 
ness of nature, as soon as naivete gives knowledge of a 
crime, just so does an excited compassion destroy our 
mischievous pleasure, as soon as we see anybody placed 
n peril by his naivete. 



discharge him only fxoni that which presup- 
poses a separation from, at least a knowledge 
of, nature, whether in feeling or in thought. 

If a father tells his child, that this or that 
man is pining in poverty, and the child hastens 
to carry to the man his father's purse of goUl, 
the action is naive, for healthy nature acts out 
of the child : and it would be perfectly right so 
to proceed in a world where healthy nature 
rules. He only regards the need and the nearest 
method of satisfying it: such an extension of 
the right of property, whereby a part of huma- 
nity are left to perish, is not founded in simple 
nature. The action of the child, then, is a re- 
buke of the actual world, and our heart als*" 
confesses it by the satisfaction which the action 
causes it to feel. 

If a man without knowledge of the world, 
but otherwise of good capacity, confesses hi" 
secrets to another, who betrays him, — but who 
knows how to artfRlly dissimulate, — and by 
this very candor lends him the means of doing 
him an injury, we find it naive. We laugh at 
him, but yet we cannot resist for that reason 
highly prizing him. For his confidence in the 
other results I'rom the honesty of his own inten 
tions : at least he is naive only so far as that is 
the case. 

Hence the naive of reflection can never be a 
property of corrupted men, but can only belong 
to children and men with childlike dispositions. 
The latter often act and think naively in the 
most artificial relations of the great world. Out 
of their own fine humanity they forget that they 
have to do with a corrupted world, and they 
demean themselves at the courts of kings with 
an ingenuous innocence only to be found among 
a race of shepherds. 

Now it is not so easy always correctly to dis 
tinguish childish from childlike innocence, since 
there are actions which waver between the ex- 
treme limits of both, and which actually leave 
us in doubt, whether we ought to laugh at sim- . 
pleness or reverence a noble simplicity. A very 
remarkable instance of this kind is found in the 
political history of Pope Adrian VI., which 
SchrOekh has described for us with the thorough- 
ness and pragmatic truth peculiar to himself 
This Pope, a Netherlander by birth, adminis- 
tered the pontificate at a critical moment for the 
hierarchy, when an embittered party exposed 
without mercy the weak points in the Roman 
church, and the adverse party was deeply in- 
terested to conceal them. What the truly naive 
character, if such a one ever strayed into the 
holy chair of Peter, would have to do in this 
case, is not the question : but rather, how far 
such a naivete of disposition might be compati- 
ble with the function of a Pope. This, by the 
way, was something which by no means em- 
barrassed the predecessors and followers of 
Adrian. With perfect uniformity they adhered 
to the Romish system once for all accepted, no- 
where to concede anything. But Adrian really 
had the simple character of his nation ami tlio 



i'e 



SCHILLER. 



imiccence of his former rank. He was elevated 
from tlie narrow sphere of the student to his 
exalted post, and had never been false to the 
BJtnplicity of tljat character on tlie eminence of 
his new dignity. The abuses in the church 
disturbed him, and he was much too honest 
openly to dissimulate his private convictions. 
In conformity to such a mood he suflered him- 
self, in the instruction with which he furnished 
his legate to Germany, to fall into confessions, 
before unheard of from any pope, and to flatly 
impugn the principles of this court. Among 
other things it says: "We know well that for 
many years past much that is odious has been 
perpetrated in this holy chuir : no wonder if the 
sickness has been transmitted from the head to 
the members, from the Pope to the prelates. 
We have all fallen away, and for a long time 
past there has not been one of us who has done 
a good thing, no, not one." Again, elsewhere, 
be enjoins the legate to declare in his name, 
"that he, Adrian, cannot be blamed on account 
of that which happened through former popes, 
and that such excesses had always displeased 
him, even when he filled an inferior station,'" &c. 
We can easily imagine what reception the Ro- 
man clerisy gave to such naivete on the part of 
the Pojie. The least which they imputed to 
him was that he had betrayed the church to the 
heretics. Now this highly impolitic measure 
of the Pope would compel our whole respect 
and admiration, if we could only be convinced 
that he was actually naive, that is, that he had 
been forced to it only through the natural truth 
of his character, without any regard to the pos- 
sible consequences, and that he would have 
done it none the less if he had anticipated the 
whole extent of its unseemliness. But we have 
some grounds for believing, that he did not 
deem this step so very impolitic, and in his in- 
nocence went so far as to hope, that he might 
gain a very important advantage for the church 
by his condescension toward the opposition. 
He not only presumed that as an honest man 
he ought to take this step, but to be able also as 
Pope to justify it: and while he forgot, that the 
most artificial of all structures could actually be 
sustained by a systematic denial of the truth, he 
committed the unpardonable error of using pre- 
cei)ts in a position completely the reverse of 
those natural relations in which they might 
have been valid. This certainly modifies our 
judgment seriously: and although we cannot 
withhold our respect from the honesty of heart, 
out of which that action flowed, it is not a little 
weakened by the reflection, that nature had in 
art, and the heart in the head, a feeble rival. 

That is not a true genius which is not naive. 
Nothing but its naivete makes it genius; and 
what it is in taste and intellect, it cannot con- 
tradict in its morality. Unacquainted with rules, 
the crutches of weakness and the taskmasters 
of perversity, guided only by nature or by in- 
stinct, its guardian angel, it passes tranquilly 
and safely through all the snares of a vicious 



taste, in which the pseudo-geniui is inevitably 
caught, unless it is acute enough to anticipate 
them from afar. It is only granted to genius to 
be always at home beyond the limits of the 
familiar, and to extend, without transgressing, 
nature. It is true the greatest genius now and 
then commits the latt-r fault, but only because 
it also has its moments of fantasy, when pro- 
tecting nature leaves it: only because the force 
of example wins it, or the corrupt taste of its 
age seduces it. 

Genius must solve the most complicated 
problems with unpretending simplicity and 
skill. The egg of Columbus is a sample of 
every method of true spirit. It legitimates itself 
as genius only by triumphing through simplicity 
over the most factitious art. It proceeds not 
according to familiar principles, but by impulses 
and feelings. But its impulses are suggestions 
of a god, — all which healthy nature does, is 
divine,^and its feelings are laws for all ages 
and for every race of men. 

The childlike character which genius stamps 
upon its works, it also manifests in its manners 
and its private life. It is chaste, because nature 
is always so: but it is not decent, because de- 
cency is only native to depravity. It is intel- 
ligent, for nature can never be the opposite ; 
but it is not cunning, for only art can be so. It 
is true to its character and its inclinations, but 
not so much because it has principles, as be- 
cause nature always returns through every 
vacillation to its first position, always restores 
the old necessity. It is modest, even bashful, 
because genius itself is always a mystery, but 
it is not anxious, because it does not know the 
perils of the road on which it travels. We 
know little of the private life of the greatest 
geniuses, but even that little which has been 
preserved, for example, concerning Sophocles, 
Archimedes, Hippocrates, among the ancients, 
and Ariosto, Dante and Tasso, Raphael, Albert 
Diirer, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Fielding, Sterne, 
and others of modern times, confirms this asser- 
tion. 

And even, a fact which seems to present far 
greater diffiGuIty, the great statesman and gene- 
ral will exhibit a naive character, as soon as 
their genius makes them great. Among the an- 
cients, I will only here allude to Epaminondas 
and Julius Caesar, and to Henry IV. of France, 
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and Peter the 
Great, among the moderns. The Duke of Marl- 
borough, Turenne, Vendome, all display this 
character. And in the other sex, nature has in- 
dicated her highest perfection of naivete. Fe- 
minine coquetry strives for nothing so much as 
for the appearance of naivete : proof enough, if 
we had no other, that the chief power of the 
sex rests upon this quality. But since the pre- 
valent principles of female education are ir 
lasting opposition to this character, it is as hard 
for the woman morally, as for the man intel- 
lectually, to maintain that noble gift of nature 
with the advantages bestowed by generous cul- 



SCHILLER. 



377 



are. The -woman who unites this naivete of 
manners with a demeanor appropriate to the 
world, merits our reverence as much as the 
scholar who combines a genial freedom of 
thought with ail the severity of the schools. 

A naive expression necessarily flows out of 
naive reflection, both in words and gestures: 
and it is the most important element of grace. 
Genius expresses thus naively its sublimest and 
deepest thoughts: they are oracles from the 
mouth of a child. While common sense, always 
afraid of error, nails its words and conceptions 
upon the cross of logic and grammar, while it is 
hard and stiff in order to be definite, multiplies 
words lest it say too much, and prefers to ex- 
tract all the force and keenness from its thought, 
from dread of being inconsiderate. Genius, 
witli a single happy dash of the pencil, gives 
to its thought a firm, forever definite and yet 
■flowing outline. If, on the one hand, the symbol 
and the thing symbolized remain forever foreign 
and heterogeneous, on the other, the speech 
issues from the thought as by an inward neces- 
sity, and is so entirely one with it, that the 
spirit seems exposed even under its material 
veil. In composition, it is expression of this 
kind, where the symbol entirely vanishes in 
the thing symbolized, and where the language 
still leaves the thought which it expressed 
naked, while another never can present with- 
out at tlie same time concealing it, that we 
style by eminence spirited and genial. 

Innocence of heart expresses itself freely and 
naturally in daily life, like genius in its works of 
thought. It is notorious that in social life a man 
eschews simplicity and severe integrity of ex- 
pression in the same proportion as he lacks 
purity of intention : and where offence is so 
readily incurred, and the imagination so easily 
corrupted, a constrained demeanor is a necessity. 
Without being false, we often say what we do 
not think: we invent circumlocutions in order 
to say things which can offend only a sickly 
vanity, or injure only a corrupt imagination. 
An ignorance of these conventional laws, united 
with natural uprightness, which despises every 
labyrinth and show of falsehood (and not rude- 
ness, which only rejects those laws because 
they incommode it), creates a naivete of expres- 
sion in intercourse, which consists in calling 
things, which we either may not designate at 
all or ordy artfully, by their right names and in 
the curtpst way. The customary expressions 
of children are of this kind. Th'-y create 
laughter from their contrast with our customs ; 
and yet in our hearts we confess that the child 
is right. 

It is true that, strictly speaking, a naive dis- 
position can be attributed to man only as a be- 
ing not positively subject to nature, though still 
only so far as pure nature really acts in him. 
And yet, by an effect of the poetising imagina- 
tion, It is often transferred from the rational to 
the irrational. Thus we often attribute a naive 
t'laracter to an animal, a landscape, a building, 
2x 



and to nature generally, in opposition to the 
caprice and fantasy of man. But this always 
demands that we should subjectively lend a 
will to that which has none, and have regard 
to its strict direction according to necessary 
laws. Dissatisfacticwi at our own ill exerci.scd 
moral freedom, and at the lack of moral har- 
mony in our actions, easily induces that kind 
of mood in which we address an irrational 
thing as a person, and imagine its eternal uni- 
formity a merit, and envy its tranquil tenor, as 
if it really had to struggle with a temptation to 
be otherwise. At such a moment it jumps with 
our humor to consider our prerogative of reason 
an evil and a curse, and to deny justice to our 
capacity and destiny, from a vivid sense of the 
meagreness of our actual execution. 

Then we see in irrational nature only a more 
fortunate sister, who remained in the maternal 
house, from which we stormed forth into the 
distance, in the exuberance of our freedom. 
With sorrowful longing we yearn to be back 
a»ajn, as soon as we begin to feel the oppres 
siveness of culture, and to hear in the foreign 
remoteness of art the winning voice of the 
mother. While we were only nature's childrer. 
we were happy and perfect ; we became free 
and ceased to be both. Hence results a two- 
fold and very dissimilar longing for nature, 
longing for her happiness, longing for her per- 
fection. The loss of the former is lamented 
only by the sensuous man ; but the moral man 
alone can mourn over the loss of the latter. 

Ask yourself strictly then, sympathizing friend 
of nature, does your indolence pine for her re- 
pose? does your offended moral sense desire her 
harmony? Ask yourself candidly, does art dis- 
gust you, and do you take refuge in the solitude 
of inanimate nature from the abuses of society? 
do you abhor its privations, its burdens, its dif- 
ficulties, or its moral anarchy, its disorders, its 
caprice? You must meet the former with joy 
and courage, and your compensation must be 
the very freedom out of which they flow. You 
may well propose the tranquil joy of nature for 
your distant goal, but only such as is the prize 
of your own worthiness. Then complain no 
longer of the hardship of life, of the inequality 
of conditions, of the stress of circumstances, of 
the insecurity of property, of ingratitude, oppres 
sion, persecution. You must submit to all the 
evils of culture with free resignation, you must 
respect them as the natural conditions of the 
only Good : you must lament only over its 
wickedness, but not witti unmanly tears. Much 
rather care to act purely amid those contamina- 
tions, freely under that slavery, firmly through that 
fickle mutability, loyally through that anarchy. 
Do not fear external, but interna! confusion : 
strive for unity, but seek it not in uniformity: 
strive for repose, but through the equipoise, not 
through the cessation, of your activity. That 
nature, which you begrudge to the irrational, 
deserves neither longing nor respect. It lies 
behind you : it must forever lie behind you, 
v.* 



378 



SCHILLER. 



When you no longer feel the ladder which up- 
held you, there remains for you no choice but 
to grasp the law with free consciousness and 
volition, or else to fall beyond deliverance into a 
fathomless abyss. 

But if you become consoled for the loss of 
nature's happiness, then let her perfection be 
your heart's ideal. If you step forth unto her 
from your sphere of art, and see her before you 
in her great tranquillity, in her naive beauty, in 
her childlike innocence and simplicity, linger 
before the picture, cherish that feeling: it is 
worthy of your noblest manhood. Do not longer 
indulge the vnsh or fancy to exchange with her, 
but receive her into yourself, and strive to wed 
her infinite superiority to your own infinite pre- 
rogative, and create from that union the divine. 
Let her encompass you like a tender Idyll, in 
which you may always find yourself again out 
of the distractions of art, from which you may 
gather new courage and confidence for the race, 
and kindle afresh in your heart the flame of the 
Ideal, which flickers and sinks so soon in the 
storms of life. 

If we call to mind the beautiful nature which 
surrounded the ancient Greeks, if we recollect 
how confidingly that people could live under 
their fortunate heaven with free nature, how 
much nearer their conception, their sentiment, 
their manners lay to simple nature, and what a 
true reflection of her their works of fancy are, it 
must seem strange to observe that we find so few 
traces among them of that sentimental interest 
with which we moderns can cling to natural 
scenes and characters. It is true, the Greek is in 
the highest degree strict, true, circumstantial, in 
his description of nature, but yet not a whit more 
and with no heartier sympathy, than he is also 
in the description of an array, a shield, a suit of 
armor, a domestic utensil, or of any product of 
mechanics. He seems to make no distinction 
in his love for the object, between that which 
is in itself, and that which is through art and 
human will. Nature seems to interest his in- 
tellect and curiosity more than his moral sense : 
he does not cling to her as we do, with hearti- 
ness, with sensibility, with a sweet sadness. 
And even when he personifies and deifies her 
single manifestations, and represents their effects 
as actions of a free being, he abolishes in her 
that tranquil necessity, by which precisely she 
is so attractive to us. His impatient fancy bears 
him away over her to the drama of human life. 
Nothing satisfies him but the free and living, 
nothing but characters, actions, fates, and man- 
ners. And while we, in certain moral moods of 
mind, could wish to give up the superiority of 
our free volition, which causes us so much strife 
with ourselves, so much unrest and confusion, 
for the choiceless but tranquil necessity of the 
irrational, the Greek fancy, precisely the re- 
verse, is busy making human nature inchoate 
even within the inanimate world, and giving 
influence to Will in the province of blind ne- 
cessity. 



Whence indeed this diversity of spirit? How 
comes it that we who are so far surpassed by 
the ancients in everything that is nature, can 
precisely here honor nature in a higher sense, 
cling to her with heartfulness, and embrace 
even the inanimate world with waimest sensi- 
bility ? It is because with us nature has vanished 
out of humanity, and we meet her again in her 
truth only beyond the latter, in the world of 
matter. It is not our greater conformity with 
nature, but, quite the contrary, the incongruity 
of our relations, conditions and manners, which 
impels us to procure in the physical world that 
which is hopeless in the moral world, namely, 
satisfaction for the growing impulse for truth 
and simplicity, which lies incorruptible and in- 
eflaceable in all human hearts, like the moral 
disposition whence it flows. It is for this reason 
that the feeling with which we cling to nature 
is so nearly akin to the feeling which laments 
the vanished age of childhood and of childlike 
innocence. Our childhood is the only unmuti- 
lated nature which we still find in cultivated 
manhood : then it is no wonder if every vestige 
of external nature conducts us back to our child- 
hood. 

It was very different with the ancient Greeks.* 
Their culture had not so far degenerated that 
nature was abandoned. The whole structure 
of their social life was based upon feelings, and 
not upon a composition of art : their mythology 
itself was the suggestion of a naive sentiment, 
the creation of a joyous fancy, and not of a re- 
fining reason, like the religion of later nations. 
Tlien as the Greek had not lost the nature in 
humanity, he could not be surprised by her be-» 
yond the limits of the latter : and so he could 
have no pressing necessity for objects in which 
he might recover her. In unison with himself, 
and happy in the feeling of his humanity, he 
fain held silently to that as his maximum, and 
approached all else with difficulty: while we, 
not in unison with ourselves, and unhappy in 
our experiences of humanity, have no pressing 
interest except to escape from it, and to thrust 
from our vision a form so unsuccessful. 

The feeling to which we. here allude, is not 
then, that which the ancients had : it is rather 
identical with that which we have for the an- 



* But with the Greeks only : for just such a lively ani- 
mation and such a rich fullness of human life as sur- 
rounded the Greek, was requisite, in order to transfer life 
into the lifeless also, and to pursue with that zeal the 
image of liumanify. bssian's human world, for example, 
was needy and monotonous: the inanimate around him 
was great, colossal, mighty. Thus it was imperative, 
and maintained its rights over man himself: and hence 
inanimate nature (in opposition to man) appears in the 
SOMA'S of this poet much more as aa object of sentiment* 
But Ossian too laments a falling away of humanity ; and 
however small was the circle of his people's culture and 
their corruptions, its experience was still lively and im- 
pressive enough, to repel the singer, with his tenderness 
and purity, back toward the inanimate, and to pour over 
his songs tliat elegiac tone which we fiud bo moving and 
attractive. 



SCHILLER. 



379 



cients. They perceived naturally : we perceive 
the natural. Without doubt, the feeling which 
filled Homer's soul when he let Viis celestial 
swineherd entertain Ulysses, was quite different 
from that which moved the soul of the young 
Werter, when he read the passage after a te- 
dious company. Our sentiment for nature is 
like the feeling of the invalid for health. 

In the same degree that Nature vanished out 
of human life as Experience and as the (active 
and perceptive) Subject, we see her appearing 
in the poetic world as Idea and as Object. That 
nation which has proceeded farthest both in 
unnature and in reflection upon it, must have 
been the first to be most strongly moved by the 
phenomenon of naivete, and to give to it a name. 
This nation, so far as I know, was the French. 
But perception of, and interest in, the naive, is 
naturally much earlier, and dates from the very 
commencement of moral and aesthetic deprava- 
tion. This change in the perceptive mode is 
extremely striking even so early as Euripides ; 
for example, 'when we compare him with his 
predecessors and with jEschylus especially, 
and yet that poet was the favorite of his age. 
The same revolution is apparent also among 
the old historians. Horace, the poet of a culti- 
vated and corrupted age, extols tranquil happi- 
ness in his Tibur; and w^e may designate him 
as the true founder of this sentimental school 
of poetry, while as a model he has not yet been 
surpassed. We also find traces of this percep- 
tion in Propertius, Virgil, and others, but few in 
Ovid, who lacked heartfulness,and who mourns, 
in his Exile at Toini, the loss of that happiness 
which Horace so readily dispenses with in his 
Tibur. 

Poets are universally, by their very concep- 
tion, the guardians of nature. Where they can 
no longer be so, and already feel in themselves 
the destructive influence of capricious and arti- 
ficial forms, or at least have had to struggle with 
it, they will then appear as the witnesses and as 
the avengers of nature. They will either be, or 
they will seek, a lost nature. Thus two very 
ditlerent schools of poetry arise, which cover 
and exhaust the whole province of that art. All 
who are really poets, will belong either to the 
naive or to the sentimental school, according to 
tlie constitution of the age in which they flou- 
rish, or as contingent circumstances aflect their 
general culture and predominating neutral 
tone. 

The early poet of a naive and spiritual world, 
and he, in an age of artificial culture, who is 
nearest to him, is austere and coy, like the 
virgin Diana in her forests. With no familiar 
manners, he eludes the heart that seeks him, 
and the longing that would embrace him. The 
homely truthfulness with which he handles an 
object often seems like insensibility. The ob- 
ject possesses him entirely: his heart does not 
lie, like a base metal, just beneath the surface, 
but will be sought after in the depths, like gold. 
He .stands behind his work like the Infinite be- 



hind the structure of the world. He is the work 
and the work is him. We must first be unwor 
thy of the work, or unequal to it, or weary, onlj 
to ask for him. 

So appears, for example. Homer among the 
ancients and Shakspeare among the moderns 
two very different natures, separated by the 
immeasurable lapse of ages, but in this particu 
lar characteristic completely one. When I firs: 
became acquainted with the latter poet, at a 
very early age, I was troubled at the coldness, 
the insensibility, which permitted him to jest in 
the deepest pathos, to disturb with a clcwn the 
heart-rending scenes in Hamlet, King Lear, 
Macbeth, and others, which now held him fast 
where my feelings hurried on, and now coldly 
hastened forward where the heart would so 
willingly have rested. Led by acquaintance 
with the later writers, to seek for the poet in 
the work, to meet his heart, to reflect familiarly 
with him concerning his object, in short, to con- 
template the object in the subject, — it was into- 
lerable to me that the poet would nowhere suf- 
fer contact, and never deign to talk with me. 
And for many years he had all my reverence 
and my study too, before I learned to win his 
personality. I was yet incapable of under- 
standing nature at first hand. I could only 
tolerate her image reflected through the intel- 
lect and adjusted by the rules; and the senti- 
mental poets both of the French and Germans, 
from 1750 to 1780, were just the proper subjects 
for that end. But I am not ashamed of this 
puerile judgment, since the mature critic passed 
a similar one, and was naive enough to publish 
it to the world. 

The same thing happened to me with respect 
to Homer, also, whom I knew at a still later 
period. I remember now the remarkable place 
in the sixth book of the Iliad, where Glaucus 
and Diomed attack each other, and after one 
recognises the other as his guest, exchange pre- 
sents. This affecting picture of the piety with 
which the laws of hospitality were observed in 
war itself, can be matched with a description 
of knightly magnanimity in Ariosto, where two 
knights and rivals, Ferran and Rinaldo, the one 
a Saracen, the other a Christian, make peace after 
being covered with wounds in a violent con- 
flict, and mount the same horse in order to seek 
and bring back the flying Angelica. Different 
as both examples are, they still coincide in the 
effect upon our hearts, since both depict the 
beautiful triumph of manners over passion, and 
affect us with their naivete of disposition. But 
how difl'erently do the poets undertake the 
description of this same action. Ariosto, the 
citizen of a later age, whose manners had 
deteriorated in simplicity, cannot conceal his 
own admiration and emotion at the relation of 
this event. The feeling of the remoteness ol 
these manners from those which characterise 
his age, overpowers him. He abandons at once 
the delineation of the object and appears iii hit 
own person. The beautiful stanzas are well 



380 



SCHILLER. 



known, and have always excited special admira- 
tion: 

" noble minds, by knights of old possessed I 
Twd fnitlis they knew, one Iciye their hearts profess'd: 
Arid still their liinbs the smarting anguish feel 
Of strokes inflicted by the hostile eleel. 
Thrnugh winding paths and lonely woods they go, 
Yet no suspicion their brave bosoms know. 
At leng.h the horse, with double spurring, drew 
To where diverging ways appeared in view." 

(HooU.) 

And now old Homer ! Hardly does Diomed 
learn from the relation of Glaucus, his rival, 
that the latter is a guest of his family from the 
father's times downward, when he buries his 
spear in the ground, talks cordially with him, 
and they agree in future to avoid each other 
during battle. But hear Homer himself; 

" Henceforth let our spears 
Avoid each other in tumultuous war ; 
For many Trojans and renown'd allies 
Have I to slay, whom to this arm some gf)d 
May bring, or else my speed may overt ike; 
And many Greeks there are for thee to slay, 
"Wliome'er thou canst; but let us arms exchange. 
That all who see our conference may know 
We boast to be hereditary guests. 
This said, both heroes leaping fi-om their cars, 
With mutual kindness joined their hands and pledged 
The faith of friendship !" 

A modern poet (at least one who is so in the 
moral sense of that word) would have hardly 
waited until now, in order to testify his plea- 
sure at the action. And we should the easier 
pardon him for it, since our heart also makes a 
pause in the reading, and withdraws from the 
object, in order to contemplate itself. But no 
trace of all this in Homer: he proceeds in his 
barren truthfulness, as if he had announced an 
every-day affair, nay, as if he bore no heart in 
his bosom : 

'* Then Satnrttian love 
KxaltedGlancns' liberal mind, who gave 
His golden fjr Tydidcs' brazen arms. 
Although a hundred oxen his were worth. 
And those of Biomed no more than nine." 

{Manfords' Tianslation.) 

Poets of this naive kind are properly no 
longer in their place in an artificial age. In 
fact they are hardly possible there, at least only 
if they run wild, and are saved from the crip- 
])ling influence of their times by a fortunate 
destiny. They can never proceed out of society 
itself; but they sometimes appear beyond its 
limits, yet rather as strangers who astonish us, 
and as untamed children of nature who scanda- 
lise us. Beneficial as such phenomena are for 
the artist who studies them, and for the genuine 
connoisseur who knows how to estimate them, 
they prosper little on the whole with their 
period. The .seal of ruler rests upon their 
brow; but we prefer to be rocked and carried 
by the muses. The critics, who are the special 
hedge-trimmers of taste, hate them as bound- 
breakers, and would fain suppress them. For 
Homer himself need thank only the power of 
more than a Millenium of evidence, for the 
toleration of these aesthetic judges : it would 
harass them not a little to maintain their rules 



against his example, and his reputation against 
their rules. 

I said that the poet either is nature, or he 
will seek her. If the former, he is naive ; if the 
latter, he is sentimental. 

The poetic spirit is immortal and inalienable 
in humanity : it cannot fail except simultane- 
ously with that and with the poetic inclination. 
For when the man removes himself, by the 
freedom of his fancy and his understanding, 
from the simplicity, truth, and necessity of 
nature, not only the road to her remains forever 
open to him, but a mightier and more inde- 
structible instinct, the moral, also impels him 
constantly back to her; and the poetic capacity 
stands in the closest relationship with this very 
instinct. That, then, is not also lost together 
with natural simplicity, but only operates in 
another channel. 

Nature is still the only flame which nourishes 
the poetic spirit; it creates its whole energy out 
of her alone, and speaks to her even in the 
artificial man comprised within his culture. 
Every other mode of operation is foreign to the 
poetic spirit; hence, by the way, all so called 
works of humor are improperly styled poetic, 
although, guided by the reputation of French 
literature, we have for a long time confounded 
the two qualities. It is still nature, I say, that 
even in the artificial conditions of culture, gives 
energy to the poetic spirit; only she stands in 
a relation to it entirely new. 

It is evident that, while man continues to be 
pure and not rude nature, he acts as an un- 
divided sensuous unity and as a harmonizing 
whole. Sense and reason, the receptive and 
the creative faculty, are not yet separate in tlieir 
operations, much less do they stand in opposi- 
tion. The perceptions of the one are not the 
formless sport of chance, the ideas of the other 
are not the barren play of fancy ; the former 
result from the law of necessity, the latter from 
reality. When man has passed into the state 
of culture, and art has lain her hand upon him, 
that sensuous harmony within him is removed, 
and he can only express himself as a moral 
unity, that is, as striving after unity. The agree- 
ment between his perception and reflection, 
which took place in the first condition actuallj , 
now exists only ideally. It is no longer in him, 
but out of him ; as a thought which has yet to 
be realized, and no longer as a fact of his life. 
If now we apply the conception of poetry 
which is none other than to give humanity its 
completest possible expression, to both the above 
conditions, the result is, that in the condition of 
natural simplicity, where the man still acts with 
all his powers at once as a harmonious unity, 
and where therefore the totality of his nature 
fully expresses itself in reality, the completest 
possible imitation of the actual must make the 
poet; that on the contrary, in the condition of 
culture, where that harmonious co-operation of 
his whole nature is only an idea, the elevation 
of reality to the ideal or what amouuts to the 



SCHILLER. 



38 



same thing, tlie representation of the ideal must 
make the poet. And these are also the two 
only possible modes in which the poetic genius 
can find expression. They are, as we see, 
entirely distinct; but there is a higher concep- 
tion which comprehends them both, and we 
need not be surprised to find this conception 
coinciding with the idea of humanity. 

This is not the place to pursue farther this 
thought, which only a special discussion can 
place in its fiUl light. But whoever knows how 
to institute a comparison between the ancient 
and modern poets*, not only according to acci- 
dental forms, but according to the spirit, can 
easily be satisfied of its truth. The former afl'ect 
us through their nature, through sensuous truth, 
through living presence : the latter affect us 
through ideas. 

Moreover, this path which the modern poets 
travel, is the same which man must commonly 
pursue, as well in the part as in the whole. 
Nature makes him one with himself. Art sepa- 
rates and divides him, the Iileal restores his 
unity. But since the ideal is an infinity which 
man never reaches, the cultivated man can 
never become perfect in his mode, as the na- 
tural man is able to become in his. Then he 
must be infinitely inferior to the latter in per- 
fection, if regard is had only to the relation in 
which both stand to their mode and their maxi- 
mum. On the contrary, if we compare together 
the modes themselves, it is evident that the goal 
for which the man strives through culture, is 
infinitely superior to that which he attains 
through nature. The one then acquires his 
value through positive attainment of a finite, 
the other desires it through approximation to 
an infinite, magnitude. But since the latter has 
only degree and progress, the relative worth of 
the cultivated man, taken as a whole, is never 
determinable, although when partially regarded 
he is found in necessary inferiority to him in 
v.hom nature acts in her whole perfection. But 
in so far as the final goal of humanity can only 
be reached through that progress, and the na- 
tural man can only proceed according as he 
cultivates himself, and consequently passes over 
into the other condition, — there is no question 
to which of the two the preference is to be 
awarded, with respect to that final goal. 

What has here been said of the two distinct 
forms of humawiity, may also be applied tof both 
those poetic forms corresponding to them. 

For this reason we ought not to comparj to- 

* Perhaps it is not superfluous to mention, that if the 
modern poets are here set opposite to the ancient, we 
are to understHiid not so much the difference in time as 
the difTerence in mimner. We hiive also in modern and 
even in tlie latest times, naive poems iu all classes, tliough 
uo longer of a stylo entirely pure; and there is no want 
of the sentimental amonj;; the old Latin, and even Grecian 
poets. We frequently tin<l liofh kinds united, not only in 
the same jjoet, but even in the same work, as for exam- 
ple in the Sorrows of Werter. Productions of this kind 
will always have a superior effect. 



gether ancient and modern — naive and senti 
mental — poets, or, if we do, only beneath i 
liigher conception common to both : for such an 
one there really is. For certainly, if we have 
once partially abstracted the generic conception 
of poetry from the old poets, nothing is easier, 
but nothing also is more trivial, than to under- 
value the moderns in comparison. If we only 
call that poetry, which has uniformly affected 
simple nature in all times, the only result will 
be to render dubious the name of poet as ap- 
plied to moderns exactly in their highest and 
most peculiar beauty, because it is precisely 
here that they speak only to the disciple of art, 
and have nothing to say to simple nature.* The 
richest contents will be empty show, and the 
highest flight of poetry will be exaggeration to 
him whose mind is not already prepared to 
pass out of reality into the province of ideas. 
The wish can never occur to a reasonable man, 
to set a modern side by side with that in which 
Homer is great ; and it sounds laughable enough 
to hear a Milton or a Klopstock styled the mo- 
dern Homer. And just as little would any an- 
cient poet, least of all Homer, he able to main- 
tain a comparison with the modern poet in his 
characteristics. The former, if I may so express 
it, is powerful through the art of limitation ; the 
latter through the art of illimitation. 

And from the fact that the strength of the 
ancient artist (for what has here been said of 
the poet, can also be applied in general to the 
liberal artist, under the restrictions which na- 
turally occur) consisted in limitation, we may 
explain the high superiority which the plastic 
art of antiquity asserts over that of modern 
times ; and, in general, the unequal relation of 
value in which modern poetry and modern 
plastic art stand to both species of art in anti- 
quity. A work for the eye finds its perfection 
only in limitation : a work for the imagination 
can also attain it through the unlimited. Hence 
a modern's preponderance in ideas helps him 
little in plastic works ; he is compelled here to 
define in space most rigidly the image of his 
fancy, and consequently to measure himself 
with the ancient artist precisely in that quality, 
in which the latter holds the indisputable palm. 
It is otherwise in poetic works ; and though the 
ancient poets conquer here also in the simplicity 
of their means, and in that which is sensuously 



* It became Moliere at any rate, as a naive poet, to 
leave to the decision of his maid-servant, what should 
stand in his comedies and what should be subtracted. It 
were to be wished that the masters of the French cothurn 
had also tried that test upon their tragedies. But I do 
not mean to propose that a similar test should be applied 
to the Odes of Klopstock, to the finest passages in the 
Messiah, in Paradise Lost, in Nathan the Wise, and 
many other pieces. But what do I say ? This test is ac- 
tuallj' applied, and Moliere's maid reasons at full sweep, 
in our critical libraries, philosophical and literary annals 
and travels, npon poetry, art, and the like; only as is 
reasonable, a little more insipidly on German than on 
French soil, and in keeping with the style in the sa- 
Taots'-ball of Germau literature. 



382 



SCHILLER. 



presentable and corporeal, — the modems in their 
turn leave them behind in profusion of material, 
in that which is irrepresentable and ineffable, 
and in short, in that which we call spirit in a 
work of art. 

As the naive poet follows only simple nature 
and perception, and confines himself only to 
imitation of reality, he can only hold a single 
relation to his subject, and in this respect, he 
has no choice in his mode of handling. The 
different impression of naive poems depends 
(presupposing that we abstract all therein which 
pertains to the contents, and regard that impres- 
sion only as the pure effect of the poetic hand- 
ling), only, I remark, upon the different de- 
gree of one and the same perceptive method. 
Even the difference in the external forms can 
make no alteration in the quality of that aesthe- 
tic impression. Let the form be lyric or epic, 
dramatic or descriptive, we may indeed ex- 
perience emotions more or less powerful, but 
never of different kinds, supposing the contents 
abstracted. Our emotion is altogether the same, 
composed entirely of one element, so that we 
can distinguish in it nothing else. Even the 
difference of tongues and times makes no altera- 
tion in this respect ; for this pure unity of their 
origin and their effect is precisely one charac- 
teristic of naive poetry. 

The case is entirely different with the senti- 
mental poet. He reflects upon the impression 
which the objects make upon him, and the emo- 
tion into which he throws us and is thrown 
himself, is only based upon that reflection. 



Here the object is related to an idea, and its 
poetic power only rests upon that relation. 
Hence the sentimental poet is always involved 
with two conflicting representations and per- 
ceptions, with reality as a hmit and with his 
idea as the unhmited: and the mingled feeUng 
which he excites will always betray this two- 
fold source.* Since, then, a plurality of princi- 
ples here occurs, it depends upon which of the 
two predominates in the poet's perception and 
in his representation, and a difference in the 
handling is consequently possible. For now 
the question arises, whether he will be more 
occupied with the real, or more with the ideal, 
whether he will treat the former as an object 
of aversion, or the latter as an object of inclina- 
tion. Then his representation will either be 
satirical, or it will be elegiac (in a wider signi- 
fication of this word, hereafter to be explained). 
Every sentimental poet will conform to one of 
these two methods of perception. 



* Whoever notices the impression which naive poems 
make upon himself, and is able to disconnect tlierefrnm 
the sympathy created by the contents, will find this im- 
pression, even in very pathetic subjects, always cheerful 
always pure, always tranquil: while that of sentimental 
■poems is always somewhat e:rave and intensive. The 
reason is, that while in the case of naive representations, 
be the action what it will, we always rejoice at the truth, 
at the living presence of the object in uur imagination, 
and seek nothing more than this. — in the sentimental, 
on the contrary, we have to unite tlie presentation of the 
imagination with an idea of the reason, which always 
leaves us irresolute between two Jiffereut conditions. 



JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. 



[Born 1762. Died 1814.] 



This brave and devoted spirit claims our in- 
terest as the impersonation of transcendental 
ethics. Among the illustrious four* whose 
names are most intimately associated with the 
recent movement in German philosophy, his 
function is that of moralist; a preacher of 
rig-hteousness. As a character, he is incom- 
parably the most interesting of them all ; as a 
writer, incomparably the most able and im- 
pressive. The eloquence of transcendentalism 
found in him its highest development. 

Fichte recalls more than any modern the 
heroes of the Stoa. The stern Promethean vigor 
of that ancient school flowers anew in his word 
and in his character, which was no less em- 
phatic than his word. Goethe, with customary 
aptness of characterisation, calls him " one of 
the most vigorous personalities"! that ever was 
seen. Few philosophers have, so honored their 
theory with personal illustrations. He carried 
Iiis philosophy into life and his life into philoso- 
phy, acting as he spoke, from an eminence 
above the level of the world. He created for 
himself, out of the fruitful bosom of his own 
i li ality, a world of his own, — a world of great 
thoughts and lofty aims, in which he had his 
being and lived apart from his contemporaries, 
even while he mingled with them in the thick- 
est tumult of life, and threw himself with all 
his presence into the sore conflict of his time. 

In speculation, Fichte was closely and gene- 
tically related to Kant. The Wissenschaftslehre 
would never have been conceived, it is probable, 
had not the Kritik der reinen Vernunft pre- 
ceded. But he differed from his predecessor in 
the practical tendency of his nature ; and this 
it is which gives so decided a moral tone and 
direction to his philosophy. Kant was satisfied 
ivith the bare contemplation of abstract truth. 
Fichte would fain realize the truth in action ; 
he would bring it to bear on the civil and social 
existence of man, or at least, on his own. He 
would make the word flesh in his life. The 
one resembled a mountain-lake embosomed in 

* K;uit, Fichte, Schcllliig, IIe(;eI. 

+ Eineder liichiigslen (duughtiebt) PersonlichktiUn. 



deep solitude, which, he who would know it, 
must make a special pilgrimage to visit. The 
other was like a river, which, springing from 
that lake, precipitates itself with passionate 
force on the plain below, and then, more calmly, 
gathers up its channelled waters and hastens 
with its full heart to make glad the region 
through which it flows. Fichte took a lively 
interest in the social and political questions of 
the day, and, as far as his function permitted, 
an active part in the great movements by which 
those questions were tried. He was an apostle 
of liberty to his countrymen, anci by his "Reden 
an die Deulschen" did much to awaken that 
resistance to Napoleon whicn finally resulted 
in their emancipation from his aominion. 

Notwithstanding this strong practical bias, 
Fichte was a thorough idealist in philosophy. 
A more radical and consistent system of ideal- 
ism than the Wissenschaflslekre was never 
offered to t,he world. What Kant had indicated 
critically and negatively, Fichto endeavored to 
establish constructively; i. e. the subjective- 
ness of all our cognitions and experience. He 
reascends the path by which Kant had descend- 
ed in his analysis, and taking his stand in the 
conscious I, endeavors thence to construct a 
world. Nothing exists but the I ; and all our 
experience, and the external world, as the ob- 
ject of that experience, is a creation of the I, 
but a necessary creation. Fichte endeavors to 
develop the laws by which this creation pro- 
ceeds. The idea of duty in this system is a 
creative principle. Beings exist for us only as 
we have duties toward them. The fact of 
moral obligation is the central fact which de- 
termines all things for moral agents. 

The system was never popular, as, indeed, 
no idealistic system ever was or can be. It 
was made the subject of numberless satires, of 
which the most remarkable is the Clavis Fich- 
tiana of Jean Paul. Bnt Fichte's influence is 
independent of his system; the great thoughts 
which he put forth still heave the heart of Ger- 
many, and his word is one of the powers which 
now mould the world. 

883 



564 



FTCtirE, 



Fichte was the son of a ribbon-manufacturer 
at Rammenau, near Bischoffswerda, in Upper 
Lusatia. The distinguished promise of his 
childhood procured him a patron in a certain 
Herr von Miltitz, and, through him, the means 
of education which his father's poverty would 
not allow. He was placed at the High School, 
SchulpJ&.tC; Uwiii ti Saxon Seminary. He 
studied theology successively at Jena, Leipzig, 
and Wittenberg. In 1788, he accepted the 
office of private tutor to a family in Zurich. 
Here he became acquainted with his future 
wife and was betrothed. In 1790, he returned 
to Leipzig, and devoted himself to study, par- 
ticularly the study of the Kantian philosophy. 
In 1791, he went to Warsaw in compliance 
with an invitation to become a teacher in that 
city. But the situation did not please him, and 
he soon abandoned it. On his return, he tar- 
ried some time in Ktinigsberg, where he became 
ficouainted with Kant, and where, with the hope 
of making himself better known to that great 
philosopher, he published his " Krilik aller 
Offenbarung" (criticism of all revelation). 
The work was anonymous, and was universally 
believed to be Kant's, until he himself pointed 
out the true author. Then Fichte's name blos- 
somed at once into a wide and brilliant reputa- 
tion, as the second great philosopher of Ger- 
many ; and in 1794, he was called to succeed 
Reinhold in the Professorial chair of Philoso- 
phy at Jena. His influence on the students 
was great and beneficent, but misunderstand- 
ings between him and his colleagues, the charge 



of atheism with which it was attempted to pre- 
judice the Government against him, together 
with numerous other vexations, induced him to 
resign his office; and in 1799, he went to Ber- 
lin, where he lived for awhile in literary retire- 
ment. He was afterwards made Professor cl 
Philosophy in Erlangen ; but the war-troubles 
of thtit s.t.cmy period drove him to Konigsberg, 
and later to Copenhagen. In 1807, he return- 
ed to Berlin once more, and with his "Ad- 
dresses to the German Nation," and his lec- 
tures, labored intrepidly ana indefatigably for 
the cause of freedom and uerman indepen- 
dence. In 1809, he was macie Professor of 
Philosophy at the new University of Berlin, to 
which he rendered incalculable service, both as 
lecturer and as counsellor in its affairs. During 
the " war of liberation," as it is called, he dis- 
tinguished himself anew by his courage and 
his patriotism, and died January 27th, 1814, of 
a fever contracted by assiduous watching at the 
sick-bed of his wife, who had contracted the 
same by her own ministrations to the sick and 
wounded, in a time of general distress. 

In the first church-yard from the Oranien- 
burg gate, of Berlin, stands a tall obelisk with 
this inscription : — 

THE TEACHERS SHALL SHINE 

AS THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE FIRMAMENT; 

AND THET THAT TURN MANX TO RIGHTEOUSNESS 

AS THE STARS FOREVER AND ETER. 

It marks the grave of Fichte. The fiiithful 
partner of his life sleeps at his feet 



THE DESTINATION OF MAN. 

INIRODUOTORT REMARK. 

[This work is intended to present, in a popu- 
lar form, certain results of the Transcendental 
Philosophy, or rather of the last Fichtean modi- 
fication of that Philosophy. " Whatever of the 
new philosophy is available out of the School," 
says the author in his preface, " is to constitute 
the subject of this work; presented in that order 
in which it would naturally unfold itself to art- 
less reflection." — " The book is not designed i'or 
philosophers by profession, and they will find 
nothing in it which has not already been set 
forth in the author's previous writings. It was 
meant to be intelligible to all readers who are 
capable of understanding a book at all. Un- 
doubtedly, it will be thought unintelligible by 
those who seek for nothing but a repetition, in 
a somewhat different order, of phrases which 



they have already learned by heart, and who 
mistake this act of memory for an act of the 
understanding." 

The plan of the work is this. The author 
supposes a mind, — as yet unversed in metaphys- 
ical inquiries, but otherwise cultivated, — just 
beginning to speculate on its own nature and 
destiny, and the grounds of all being and know- 
ing. He follows what he supposes to be the 
natural course of such a mind, through three 
successive stages, which constitute the three 
divisions of the work. The first book is headed, 
"Doubt." It leaves the inquirer in a state of 
painful conflict between the instinctive belief 
of the soul and the fatalistic conclusions to which 
his reasonings have brought him. The second 
book, entitled "Knowledge," overthrows the 
whole fabric of sensible experience, and de- 
monstrates that we properly know nothing be- 
yond our momentary consciousness, and that 



FICHTE. 



385 



consciousness, the mere reflection of a reflection, 
•'the dream of a dream." I cannot say: / 
feel, perceive, tliink; but only: "there appears 
a thought'' of somewhat, that I call me, feeling, 
perceiving, thinking. In short, this stage lands 
us in absolute Pyrrlionism. At the same time, 
the author refers us, for our satisfaction, to an- 
other "organ'' than that of Knowledge. That 
other organ, " Faitli,' furnishes the title and 
constitutes the subject of the third book. Faith 
rebuilds, on moral grounds, the fabric which 
speculation had destroyed. Not speculation, 
but action, is the end of being. The call to act 
is instinctive; it is divine. If we accept that 
call in faith and obey it, we resolve ourselves 
of our doubts, so far as our act extends. We 
assure ourselves, at least, of the topics of action. 
Duty restores to us a God, an external world, 
our own identity and continuity of being; and 
unfolds to us, as individuals and as a race, a 
destination worthy all our powers and all our 
love. 

Thus the inquiry ends by legitimating the 
innate convictions of the mind. It reconciles 
us to all that is or shall be, as divinely appointed 
process and end ; and yields an impregnable 
peace, as its practical result. Tr.] 

FROM THE FIRST BOOK. 
DOUBT. 

Now then, at length, I believe myself ac- 
quainted with a good part of the world which 
surrounds me! And indeed I have bestowed 
sufficient pains and care in becoming so. I 
have credited only the consenting testimony of 
my senses, and uniform experience. What I 
saw I have touched, what I touclied I have 
analysed. I have repeated my observations 
and repeated them again. I have compared 
different appearances with each other; and not 
till I had comprehended their precise coimec- 
tion, — not till I could explain and derive the 
one from the other, could calculate beforehand 
the result that was to follow, and the observa- 
tion of the result corresponded to my calcula- 
tion, — have I allowed myself to be satisfied. 
Wherefore I am now as sure of the correctness 
of this portion of my knowledge, as of my own 
existence. I tread with firm step the familiar 
sphere of my world, and am ready at any mo- 
ment to stake my being and well-being on the 
infallibility of my convictions. 

But, — what am I myself, and what is my 
destination ? 

Superfluous question ! It is long ago since 
my instruction on this point was brought to a 
close. It would require time to repeat to my- 
self all that I have heard in detail and learned 
and believed respecting it. 

And in what way did I arrive at this know- 
ledge which I dimly remember to possess ? Did 
I, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge, 
work my way through uncertainty, through 
doubt and contradiction? Did I, when anything 
credible offered itself, suspend my judgment, 
2 Y 



prove what was probable, and prove it again, 
illustrate and compare; until an inward voice, 
unniistakeable and irresistible, called to me: II 
is so, and only so! as surely as thou livest and 
hast thy being ? No! I remember no such state. 
Instruction on those subjects was offered me 
before I desired it. I was answered before I 
had put the question. I listened because I could 
not avoid it. There remained fixed in my me- 
mory so much as it pleased Chance to preserve. 
Without examination, and without interest, I 
let everything be as it was given. 

How then can I persuade myself that I pos- 
sess, in fact, any knowledge on this subject? If 
I can know and be convinced of that alone 
which I myself have discovered, — if I am act- 
ually acquainted with that only which I myself 
have experienced, — then I cannot say, in truth, 
that I possess the least knowledge respecting 
my own destination. I know only what others 
profess to know concerning it; and all that I 
can really affirm is this, that I have heard such 
and such things in relation to it. 

So then, while I have investigated for my- 
self with accurate care the less important, I 
have hitherto relied on the care and fidelity of 
strangers in regard to the most important. I 
have imputed to others an interest in the highest 
concerns of Hujiianity, an earnestness, a preci- 
sion which I had by no means discovered in 
myself. I have estimated them unspeakably 
higher than myself. 

Whatever truth they know, from whence 
can they know it except from their own reflec- 
tion ? And why may not I discover the same 
truth by the same reflection, since I avail as 
much as they? How have I hitherto underva- 
lued and despised myself! 

I will that it be so no longer. With this mo- 
ment I will enter upon my rights and take pos- 
session of the dignity which belongs to me. 
Renounced be everything foreign! I will in- 
vestigate for myself Be it that secret wishes 
as to how the investigation may terminate, — be 
it that a fore-loving inclination to certain tenets 
stirs within me.' I forget and deny it. I will 
allow it no influence on the direction of my 
thoughts. With severe accuracy I will go to 
work. With candor I will confess to myself 
the whole. Whatever I find to be truth, how- 
ever it may sound, shall be welcome to me. 1 
will KNOW. With the same certainty with which 
I reckon that this ground will bear me when I 
tread upon it, that this fire will burn me when 
I come in contact with it, I will be able to com- 
pute what I am and what I shall be. And if 
this shall be found impossible, I will at least 
know that it is impossible. And even to this 
issue of my investigation I will submit myself, 
if it shall discover itself to me as the Truth. — I 
hasten to solve the problem which I have pro 
posed to myself. 

I seize on-speeding Nature in her flight, ar 

rest her for an instant, fix firmly in my eye the 

33 



3S6 



FICHTE. 



present moment, and reflect upon it ! — upon this 
Nature by which my power of thought has 
hitherto been unfokled, and formed for those 
conclusions which are valid in her domain. 

I am surrounded by objects which I am con- 
strained to regard as wholes, existing for them- 
selves, and mutually distinguished from each 
other. I see plants, trees, animals. I ascribe, 
to each individual, qualities and characteristics 
by which I distinguish them from each other; 
to this plant such a form, to another a different 
one ; to this tree leaves of such a figure, to an- 
other tree leaves of a different figure. 

Each object has its determinate number of 
qualities, none over and none under. To every 
question whether it be this or that? one who 
Icnows it thoroughly can always answer with a 
decisive yes or no, which puts an end to all 
vacillation between being and not being. Every- 
thing which exists is this something or it is not 
this something. It is colored or it is not colored ; 
has this hue or has it not, is pleasant to the 
taste or unpleasant, is palpable or impalpable, 
and so on, indefinitely. 

Each object possesses each of these qualities 
in a determinate degree. If there is a scale for 
a certain quality, and if I can apply that scale, 
I shall find a certain measure of that quality 
which it does not in the least degree exceed or 
fall below. If I measure the height of this tree, 
it is determined; it is not one line higher or 
lower than it is. If I consider the green of its 
leaves, it is a determined green, not, in the least 
degree, darker or brighter, fresher or more failed 
than it is; though I may have neither scale nor 
words to define it. If I cast my eye upon this 
plant, it stands at a certain stage between its 
germination and its maturity ; not, in the least 
degree, nearer to or farther from either tlian it 
is. Everything that is, is thoroughly deter- 
mined ; it is what it is, and absolutely nothing 
else. 

But Nature hurries on with her constant 
changes ; and while I speak of the moment on 
which I have seized, it is flown, and everything 
has changed. And before I had seized it, it 
was likewise altogether different. As it was 
when I seized it, it had not always been. It 
became such. 

Why now and from what cause did it be- 
come precisely such as it became? Why, 
among the infinitely various determinations 
which Nature is capable of assuming, did she 
assume, in this moment, precisely these which 
she did assume, and no other? 

For this reason : Because they were preceded 
by precisely those which did precede them, and 
could not have been preceded by any other; 
and because they followed precisely those, and 
could not possibly have followed any other. If, 
in the preceding moment, anything had been, 
in the least degree, other than it was, then, in 
the present, also, something would have been 
other than it is. And why, in the preceding 



moment, was everything such as it was? For 
this reason : Because that which preceded it, 
was such as it was. And that again depended 
on the one which went before it, and that agait 
on its predecessor, and so on, indefinitely up- 
ward. Even so, in the next following moment 
Nature will be determined as she will be, be- 
cause, in the present, she is determined as she 
is. And in this next following moment some- 
thing would necessarily be otherwise than it 
will be, if, in the present, the least thing were 
other than it is. And, in the moment which 
shall follow that, everything will be such as it 
will be, because, in this next following, every- 
thing was as it will be. And so, the successor 
of that will depend upon that, as itself will 
have depended on its antecedent, and so on, 
indefinitely downward. 

Nature travels through the infinite series of 
her possible determinations without pause; and 
the changes in these determinations are not law- 
less, but strictly lawful. Whatever exists in 
Nature is necessarily what it is, and it is abso- 
lutely impossible that it should be otherwise. 
I enter into a complete chain of phenomena, in 
which every link is determined by its prede- 
cessor, and determines its successor; a fixed 
connection of things, in which, from any given 
moment, I might discover by mere reflection, 
all possible states of the universe, ascending 
(a parte ante), if I should explain the given mo- 
ment, descending (a parte post), if 1 should 
infer from it: if ascending, I should seek the 
causes by which alone it could be what it is: 
if descending, I should seek the consequences 
which must necessarily flow from it. In every 
part I receive the whole, because, it is only by 
means of the whole, that each part is what it 
is, and by means of that, it is necessarily what 
it is. * * * * * 

In every moment of her duration. Nature is a 
connected whole. In every moment each in- 
dividual part of her must be what it is, because, 
all the other parts are as they are ; and you could 
not move a grain of sand from its place, with- 
out producing a change, invisible perhaps to 
your eyes, through all parts of the immeasurable 
whole. Every moment of this duration is de- 
termined by all the past moments and deter- 
mines all the coming moments; and you can- 
not, in the moment that now is, suppose the 
position of a grain of sand to be different, with- 
out being obliged to suppose the whole past, 
indefinitely ascending, and the whole future, in- 
definitely descending, to be difl'erent. Make 
the experiment, if you will, with this grain of 
sea-sand, which you behold. Imagine it lying 
some paces farther toward the interior. Tlien, 
the storm-wind which drove it hither from the 
sea, must have been stronger than it actually 
was. But then, too, the preceding weather by 
which this storm-wind and the degree of its 
strength were determined, must have been 
other than it was; and the weather by which 
that, in like manner, was preceded and deter- 



FICHTE. 



3S7 



mined. And so you have, in an unlimited and 
indefinitely ascending series, an entirely dif- 
ferent temperature of tlie air, than that which 
actually existed, and an entirely different cha- 
racter of the bodies wliicli influence that tem- 
perature and are itiiluenced by it. Tliis tem- 
perature has unquestionably a very decided 
influence on the fruitt'ulness or unfruitfulness 
of countries, and by means of these, and even 
immediately, on the duration of human life. 
How can you know, — for, since it is not per- 
mitted us to penetrate into the interior of Na- 
ture, it is sufticient, here, to indicate possibili- 
ties, — how can you know but that, with such a 
quality of weather as would have been required 
to cast this grain of sand farther inward, one 
of your forefathers might have perished with 
hunger, or cold, or heat, before he begat the son 
from whom you have descended, accordingly, 
that you could not be, and that all which you 
think to effect, in the present and for the future, 
could not be, because a grain of sand lies in a 
dirterent place ? 

I myself, with all that I call mine, am a link 
in this chain of Nature's strict necessity. There 
■was a time — so others who lived in that time 
inform me, and I myself am necessitated, by 
reasoning, to suppose such a time, of which I 
am not directly conscious, — there was a time in 
wijich as yet 1 was not, and a moment in which 
1 began to be. I existed only for others, not yet 
for myself Since then, rny self-consciousness 
has gradually unfolded itself, and 1 have dis- 
covered in myself certain faculties and dis- 
positions, necessities and natural cravings. I 
am a determinate existence, which at some lime 
or other began to be. 

I did not originate of myself It would be 
the greatest contradiction to suppose that 1 was 
before I was, in order to bring myself into 
being. I became actual, by means of another 
power, exterior to myself And by what other 
power but tlie universal power of Nature, 
since I am a part of Nature ? The time of my 
origin, and the qualities with which I originated, 
were determined by tliis universal power of 
Nature ; and all the forms, under which these 
inborn ground-qualities have since manifested 
themselves, and will manifest themselves, so 
long as 1 shall continue to be, are determined 
by the same power of Nature. It was impos- 
sible that another than me should have origi- 
nated in rny place. It is impossible that the 
being which has so originated, can, in any mo- 
ment of his existence, be other than he is and 
shall be. 

******* 

It is true I am conscious of myself, in my in- 
nermost being, as self-subsisting and free in 
various particulars of my life. But this con- 
sciousness may be easily explained by the prin- 
ciples which have been established, and be made 
to appear perfectly consistent with the conclu- 
sions which have just been drawn. My im- 
mediate consciousness, — the real apperception, 



— does not extend beyond myself and my con- 
ditions. I know nothing inmiediately, except 
my own states. Whatever I am enabled to 
know, beyond these, I know only by inference, 
in the same way in which I have just now in- 
ferred original forces in Nature, which, by no 
means, come within the circle of my percep- 
tions. But I — that which I call me, — my per- 
son — am not the man-making power of Nature 
itself, but only one of its manifestations. And 
only of this manifestation am I conscious, as of 
myself; not of that power. That is only an 
inference to which I am led by the necessity of 
accounting for my existence. This manifesta- 
tion, however, in its proper essence, is indeed 
the product of an original and self-subsisting 
power ; and must be found such in conscious- 
ness. Hence I appear to myself altogether as 
a self-subsisting being. For the same reason, I 
appear to myself free, in particular passages of 
my life, when these passages are manifestations 
of that self-subsisting power which has fallen 
to my share as an individual. On the other 
hand, I appear to myself restrained and limited, 
when, owing to a concatenation of external cir- 
cumstances, originating in time, — not, however, 
lying in the original determination of my in- 
dividuality, — I cannot do that which I might 
do, so far as my individual capacity is concern- 
ed. I appear to myself to be coerced when 
this individual capacity is compelled, by a su- 
perior power opposed to it, to manifest itself 
contrary to its own law. 

Give a tree consciousness, and let it grow un- 
obstructed, spread forth its boughs and produce 
leaves, buds, blossoms, fruits, according to its 
kind. It certainly will not feel itself restrain- 
ed, because it happens to be a tree, and one of 
this particular species, and this particular in- 
dividual of that species. It will feel itself free, 
because, in all those manifestations, it does 
nothing but what its nature requires. It will 
not choose to do anything else, because it can 
only choose what that nature requires. But let 
its growth be restrained by unfavorable wea- 
ther, by want of nourishment, or other causes; 
it will feel itself limited and thwarted, because 
an impulse, which actually resides in its nature, 
is not satisfied. Bind its freely on all sides 
striving limbs to a trellis; force strange shoots 
upon it by grafting; and it will feel itself co- 
erced in its action. Its limbs indeed continue 
to grow, but not in that direction which its 
forces would have taken, if left to themselves. 
It produces fruits, indeed, but not those which 
its original nature required. In my immediate 
consciousness I appear to myself free. When I 
reflect on tlie whole of Nature, I find that free- 
dom is absolutely impossible. The former 
must be subordinated to the latter, for only by 
means of the latter can it be explained. 

What high satisfaction does this system give 
to my understanding! What order, what firm 
connection, what an easy oversight does it in 
ttoduce into all my knowledge. Consciousne«a, 



388 



FICHTE. 



according to this system, is not that stranger in 
Nature, wliose connection with being is so in- 
comprehensible. It is at home there, and even 
constitutes one of Nature's necessary conditions. 
Nature rises gradually in the fixed gradation of 
her productions. In rude matter she is simple 
being. In organization she returns into herself 
in order to act upon herself internally; — in the 
plant to shape herself, in the animal to move 
herself, and in man, as her highest masterpiece, 
she returns into herself to behold and contem- 
plate herself She redoubles herself, as it were, 
in him, and from simple being, becomes being 
and consciousness in one. 

It is easy to explain, in this connexion, how 
I should know of my own being and its condi- 
tions. My being and knowing have one com- 
mon ground, — my nature in general. There is 
in me no being which does not know of itself, 
for the very reason that it is my being. 



In each individual. Nature beholds herself 
from a different point of view. I call myself/, 
and you you. You call yourself I, and me you. 
I am external to you, as you are external to me. 
Of that which is external to me, I comprehend 
first my nearest limits. You comprehend your 
nearest limits. Starting from this point we 
proceed, each through the next succeeding links, 
and pass on. "We describe very different series, 
which here and there perhaps intersect each 
other, but nowhere run side by side, in the 
same direction. All possible individuals, and, 
accordingly, all possible view -points of con- 
sciousness, become actual. This consciousness 
of all individuals combined, constitutes the per- 
fected selfconsciousness of the universe. And 
there is no other : for only in the individual, is 
there perfect determinateness and actuality. 

The testimony of each individual conscious- 
ness is infallible, provided only, it is actually 
the consciousness hitherto described. For this 
consciousness unfolds itself out of the entire 
course of Nature, proceeding according to fixed 
laws; and Nature cannot contradict herself 
Wherever there is a mental representation, there 
must be also a being corresponding thereto. 
For the representations in the mind are gene- 
rated only contemporaneously with the being 
which corresponds to them. In each individual 
his particular consciousness is throughout deter- 
mined, for it is a product of his own nature. 
No one has other cognitions, or has them in any 
other degree of vividness than he actually has. 
The contents of his cognitions are detennined 
Dy the standpoint which he occupies in the 
imiverse. Tlieir clearness and vividness are 
determined by the more or less of energy, with 
which the power of Humanity can manifest it- 
self in his person. Give Nature a single con- 
dition of a single person, be it never so insigni- 
ficant, die course of a single muscle, the flexure 
of a hair, and she would tell you — if she pos- 
sessed general consciousness, and could answer 



— all the thoughts which this person will think 
during the whole period of his conscious exist- 
ence. 

Equally intelligible, according to this system, 
is that well-known phenomenon in our con- 
sciousness which we call the will. A volition 
is the immediate consciousness of the activity 
of our internal powers of Nature. The imme- 
diate consciousness of a striving of these powers, 
which is not yet effective, because hampered 
by opposing powers, is conscious inclination or 
desire. The struggle of conflicting powers is 
irresolution; the victory gained by one of thein, 
a resolve of the will. If the endeavoring power 
is merely one which is common to us with the 
plant or the brute, there has already ensued, in 
our inner being, a division and a degradation. 
The craving is not consistent with our rank in 
the order of things, but beneath it ; and may, 
with propriety, be called, according to a certain 
custom of speech, a low one. If that which 
endeavors, is the whole undivided power of our 
Humanity, then the craving is in harmony witli 
our nature, and may be called a higher. The 
endeavor of this latter power, considered gene- 
rally, may properly be termed a moral law. 
Its effective action is a virtuous will, and the 
act which flows from it, virtue. The triumph 
of the former, without harmony with the latter, 
is want of virtue. Its victory over the latter, 
and against the opposition of the latter, is vice. 

The power which overcomes, in each case, 
overcomes necessarily. Its overweight is de- 
termined by the connection of the universe. 
Accordingly, the virtue, the want of virtue, the 
vice, of each individual, is also irrevocably de- 
termined by the same connection. Give Nature 
again, the course of a muscle, the flexure of a 
hair, in a certain individual, and if she could 
think in the whole, and could answer your in- 
quiry, she would disclose to you all the good 
actions and all the evil actions of his life, from 
the beginning to the end. But virtue does not 
therefore cease to be virtue, and vice vice. The 
virtuous is a noble, the vicious, an ignoble and 
abominable nature; but one which necessarily 
flows from the connection of the universe. 

There is remorse. It is the consciousness of 
the still continuing struggle of Humanity in me, 
even after it has been vanquished ; combined 
with the unpleasant feeling, that it has been 
vanquished. A disquieting, but still a precious 
pledge of our nobler nature. From this con 
sciousness of our radical impulse, springs con- 
science also, and its greater or less acuteness and 
sensitiveness, — down to the absolute want of it, 
— in different individuals. The less noble are 
incapable of remorse, because Humanity, in 
them, has not even power enough to contend 
against the lower appetites. Reward and pun- 
ishment are the natural consequences of virtue 
and vice, which tend to produce new virtue 
and new vice. By often ani important victo- 
ries, namely, our individual power is extended 
and confirmed. From want of eflectiveness 



FICHTE. 



389 



»nd from frequent defeats it becomes weaker 
and weaker. 

Only the ideas of blame and imputation have 
no meaning, except in relation to external jus- 
tice. He has incurred blame, and to him his 
transgression is imputed, who forces Society to 
use external, artificial forces, in order to hinder 
the activity of those impulses which are preju- 
dicial to the general safety. 

My examination is concluded, and my desire 
for knowledge satisfied. I know what I am in 
general, and wherein consists the essence of 
my kind. I am a manifestation, conditioned 
by the entire universe, of a self- determining 
power of Nature. My particular, personal con- 
ditions it is impossible to discover by means of 
their causes, for 1 cannot penetrate into the inte- 
rior of Nature. But I become directly conscious 
of them in myself I know very well what 1 
am at the present moment. I can remember 
pretty well what I was formerly, and I shall 
certainly experience what I am to be when I 
am it. 

It cannot occur to me to make any use of this 
discovery, in action. For it is not I that act, 
but Nature acts in me. I cannot think of un- 
dertaking to make myself aught else than I am 
destined by Nature to be. For it is not I that 
make myself, but Nature that makes me, and 
all that I shall be. I may repent and be glad 
and make good resolutions, (although strictly 
speaking /cannot even do this, since everything 
njust come to me of itself, il' it is destined to 
come at all :) but I may be sure that all my re- 
pentance and all my resolutions cannot effect 
the least alteration in that which I am, once for 
all, destined to be. I am subject to the inexo- 
rable power of strict Necessity. If that deter- 
mines me to be a fool or vicious, without doubt, 
I shall be a fool and vicious. If that deter- 
mines me to be wise and good, without doubt, 
I shall be wise and good. It is not Necessity's 
fault or merit, nor mine. Necessity is subject 
to its own laws, and I to its. Since I am aware 
of this, it will be best for my peace of mind that 
I should subordinate my wishes also to this 
power, to which n)y being is, once for all, en- 
tirely subject. 

0, these opposing wishes! For why should 
I longer conceal the sorrow, the abhorrence, the 
terror which has seized my inner man, from 
the moment that I perceived how the inquiry 
must terminate. I had made a sacred covenant 
with mysell', that inclination should have no 
influence on the direction of my thought; and 
indeed I have, consciously, allowed it none. 
But shall I not therefore, at the conclusion, con- 
fess to myself, that this result contradicts my 
deepest, innermost presentiments, wishes, de- 
tnands ? And how can I, notwiUistattding the 
correctness and the trenchant sharpness of the 
proofs which appear to me in this deliberation, 
bojjeve in an interpretation of my existence 



which so decidedly conflicts with the most inti- 
mate root of that existence, and with the ends 
for whose sake alone 1 wish to be, and without 
which, I count my existence a curse? 

Wherefore must my heart sorrow and be rent 
for that which so completely satisfies my under- 
standing? While nothing in Nature contradicts 
itself, is man alone a contradictory being? — or, 
perhaps, not man, but only I and those who re- 
semble me. Ought I perhaps to have gone on 
in the pleasant conceit which environed me, 
to have kept within the circle of my being's 
immediate consciousness, and never to have 
raised the question concerning the grounds of 
that being, the answer to which has now ren- 
dered me miserable? But if my answer is cor- 
rect, I could but raise that question. It was 
not 1 that raised it, but thinking Nature in me. 
I was doomed to misery, and I mourn in vain 
the lost innocence of my mind, which can never 
return. 

But courage ! Let everything else forsake me, 
if only this forsake me not. For the sake of a 
mere preference, however deep in my interior 
that preference may lie, and however sacred it 
may seem to me, I caimot indeed relinquish 
what follows from incontrovertible reasons. But 
perhaps I have erred in my investigation. Per- 
haps I have but half considered the sources 
from which I was compelled to draw in con- 
ducting it, and have looked- at them only from 
one side. I ought to repeat the investigation 
from the opposite end, that I may have a point 
from which to begin it. What is it then that so 
mightily repels and offends me in that decision ? 
What is it that 1 wisheil to find instead of it? 
Let me, before all things, make clear to myself 
that preference to which I appeal. 

That I should be destined to be wise or good, 
a fool or vicious, that I should be unable to 
effect any change in that destination, that I 
should be without merit in the former case, and 
without blame in the latter, — this it was that 
filled me with loathing and horror. That 
ground of my being and of the conditions of 
my being external to myself, whose manifesta- 
tion, in turn, is determined by other grounds 
external to itself, — that it was that so violently 
repelled me. That freedom which is not my 
own, but belongs to a foreign power without 
me, and which, even in that power, is only a 
conditioned, only a half-freedom, — that it was 
that failed to satisfy me. / myself, that of 
which I am conscious as of a self, as of my 
own person, and which, in that system, appears 
only as the manifestation of a higher power, 
I myself would be self-subsisting, I would be 
something, not in another and by means of an- 
other, but for myself I would be, in myself 
as such, the ultimate ground of my conditions 
The rank, which, in that system, is occupied by 
an original power of Nature, I would occupy, 
myself; but with this ditference, that the mode 
in which 1 manilest myself, shall not be do 

•3<J * 



390 



FICHTE. 



termitied by foreign powers. I would possess 
an inward power peculiar to myself, of mani- 
festing myself in an infinite variety of ways, 
like those powers of Nature ; a power which 
should manifest itself exactly as it does, for no 
other reason than because it manifests itself thus; 
and not, like those powers of Nature, because 
it is subject to such or such external conditions. 
Where now, according to this my wish, should 
be the pioper seat and centre of that peculiar 
power of the /.^ Evidently, not in my body, v/hich 
I am quite willing sliould pass — at least so far 
as its being is concerned, if not in its ulterior 
conditions — for a manifestation of the powers of 
Nature ; neither in my sensual appetites, which 
I regard as a referring of those powers to my 
consciousness : consequently, in my thinking and 
willing. I would will with freedom, accord- 
ing to a freely proposed aim. And this will, 
as absolute, ultimate ground, determined by no 
possible higher than itself, should move and 
shape, first my body, and then, by means of 
that, the world which surrounds me. My ac- 
tive, natural power should be subject only to 
my will, and not be put in motion by anything 
else but that. So should it be. There should 
be a supreme good, according to spiritual laws. 
I would be able to seek this with freedoin until 
I find it, to acknowledge it as such when I have 
found it; and it should be my fault if I found it 
not. This supreme good 1 would be able to 
will, simply because I will it; and if I willed 
anything else in its stead, it should be my 
fault. 

Freedom, such as that which has been de- 
manded above, is conceivable only in Intelli- 
gences; but without doubt, it is conceivable in 
them. On this supposition, also, man as well 
as Nature is perfectly intelligible. My body 
and my power of operating in the world of the 
senses, in this as in the other system, are a 
manifestation of limited natural powers ; and 
my natural inclinations are the relations of this 
manifestation to my consciousness. The mere 
cognition of that which exists without my ac- 
tion, originates in the same way, on the suppo- 
sition of freeilom, as in the opposite system ; 
and up to this ])oint they both agree. But ac- 
cording to that, — and here begins the conflict of 
the two systems — according to that, my capacity 
of sensuous action continues subject to Nature, 
and is still put in motion by the same power 
which produced it; and thouglit has nothing to 
do in the maiter but to look on. According to 
this, on the contrary, this capacity, when once 
it exists, is under the dominion of a power 
exalted above all Nature, and entirely inde- 
pendent of Nature's laws, the power of con- 
ceived purposes and of the will. Thought in 
this case is not a mere spectator, but itself the 
original of the action. There, it is external 
Ijowers, invisible to me, which put an end to 
my iiresohition and limit my activity, as well 
Is the immediate consciousness of that acti- 



vity, my will, to a single point; just as the ac 
tivity of a plant, undetermined in itself, is 
limited. Here, it is / myself, independent and 
free from the influence of all external forces, 
who put an end to my irresolution and deter- 
mine myself by a recognition, freely produced 
in myself, of the supreme good. 

Which of these two opinions shall I embrace? 
Am I free and self-subsisting, or am I nothing 
in myself, and merely the apparition of a fo- 
reign power? 



The system of liberty satisfies ; the opposite 
deadens and annihilates my heart. To stand 
there cold and dead, a mere spectator of chang- 
ing events, an idle mirror of fleeting forms, — 
such an existence is intolerable to me. I scorn 
and curse it. I would love, I would lose my- 
self in sympathy; I would rejoice and be sad. 
* * * I would do everything for the best; 
would rejoice in myself when I have done right, 
and would sorrow for myself when I have done 
wrong. And even this sorrow should be sweet 
to me, for it is interest in myself, and pledge of 
future amendment. Only in love there is life; 
without it is death and annihilation. 

But cold and impertinent the opposite system 
steps in and mocks at this love. I am not and 
I act not, when I listen to that. The object of 
my intensest desire is a phantom of the brain, 
a palpably demonstrable, coarse illusion. In- 
stead of me there is and acts a foreign, to me 
quite unknown power ; and it becomes a mat- 
ter of perfect indifference to me how that powei 
may unfold itself Ashamed I stand there, with 
my heartfelt affection and my good will, and 
blush at that which I know to be the best in 
me, and for whose sake alone I wish to be, 
as it were a laughable folly. My holiest is de 
livered up to mockery. * * * * 

* * * The same system, dry and heart- 
less, but inexhaustible in explaining, explains 
even this, my interest in liberty, my abhorrence 
for the opposite opinion. It explains everything 
which I bring forward against it out of my < on- 
sciousness; and as often as I say it is so and so, 
it answers me in the same dry and imperturba- 
ble manner : " That is precisely what I say too; 
and I tell thee, moreover, the reasons why it 
must necessarily be so." * * * " Thou ad- 
mittest, without controversy, that notwithstand- 
ing there is, in the plant, an instinct peculiar to 
itself to grow and shape itself, yet the determi- 
nate activity of this instinct depends on forces 
external to itself Give this plant consciousness 
for a moment, and it will feel in itself this in- 
stinct to grow, with interest and love. Convince 
it by arguments drawn from reason, that this 
instinct cannot effect the least thing for itself, 
but that the measure of its manifestation is al- 
ways determined by something external to 
itself, and perhaps it will talk exactly as thou 
hast just been talking. It will behave in a man 



FICUTE. 



391 



ner which may be pardoned in a plant, but 
whicli is altogether uiibecoriiiiig in tliee, as a 
higher product of Nature, capable of embracing 
the wliole of Nature in thy thought." 

Wliat can I object to such representations'? 
* * * Undecided I cannot remain. All my 
peace and all my dignity depends on the an- 
swer to this question. Just as impossible is it 
for me to come to a decision. I have absolutely 
no ground for deciding, one way or the other. 

Intolerable state of uncertainty and irresolu- 
tion, into which I have been forced by the best 
and most courageous resolve of my life! What 
power can deliver me from thee? What power 
can deliver me from myself? 

FROM THE THIHD BOOK. 
FAITH. 

* * * "Not merely to know, but to act 
according to thy knowledge, is thy destination." 
So says the voice which cries to me aloud from 
my innermost soul, so soon as I collect and give 
heed to myself, for a moment. "Not idly to in- 
spect and contemplate thyself, nor to brood over 
devout sensations; — no! thou existest to act. 
Thine act, and only thine act, determines thy 
worth.'' ^ ^ % % % ^ % 

* * * Shall I refuse obedience to that in- 
ward voice? I will not do it. I will give my- 
self voluntarily the determination which that 
impulse imputes to me. And I will embrace, 
togetlier with this resolution, the thought of its 
reality and truth, and of the reality of all that 
it presupposes. I will hold to the stand-point 
of natural thinking, which this impulse assigns 
to me, and renounce all those morhid specula- 
tions and refinements of the understanding which 
alone could make me doubt its truth. I under- 
stand thee now, sublime Spirit!* I have found 
the organ with which I embrace this reality, and 
with it, ])robably, all other reality. Knowledge 
is not that organ. No knowleilge can ground 
and demonstrate itself Every knowledge pre- 
supposes a higher as its ground, and this up- 
ward process has no end. It is Faith, that vo- 
luntary reposing in the view which naturally 
presents itself, because it is the only one by 
which we can fulfil our destination, — this it is 
that first gives assent to knowledge, and exalts 
to certainty and conviction what would other- 
wise be mere illusion. It is not knowledge, but 
a determination of the will to let knowledge 
pass for valid. I hold fast, then, forever to this 
expression. It is not a mere ditfeience of terins, 
but a real deep-grounded distinction, exercising 
a very important infiuence on my whole mental 
disposition. All my conviction is only faith, 
and is derived from a disposition of the mind, 
not from the understanding. * * * 

* * . * There is only one point to which I 
have to direct incessantly all my thoughts: 
What I must do, and how I shall most eflectu- 

» This refers tn lliR soconil Book, which takes the form 
of a dialogue lielweeii the inquirer and a Spirit, 



ally accomplish what is required of me. All 
my thinking must have reference to my doing, 
— must be considered as means, however re- 
mote, to this end. Otherwise, it is an empty, 
aimless sport, a waste of time and power, and 
perversion of a noble faculty which was given 
me for a very different purpose. 

I iTiay hope, I may promise myself with cer- 
tainty, that when I think after this manner, my 
thinking shall be attended with practical results. 
Nature, in which I ain to act, is not a foreign 
being, created without regard to me. It is fa- 
shioned by the laws of my own thought, and 
must surely coincide with them. It must be 
everywhere transparent, cognisable, permeable 
to me, in its innermost recesses. Everywhere 
it expresses nothing but relations and references 
of myself to myself; and as certainly as I may 
hope to know myself, so certainly I may pro- 
mise myself that I shall be able to explore that. 
Let me but seek what I have to seek, and I shall 
find. Let me but inquire whereof I have to in- 
quire, and I shall receive answer. 

I. 

That voice in my interior, which I believe, 
and for the sake of which I believe all else that 
I believe, commands me not merely to act in 
general. That is impossible. All these general 
propositions are formed only by my volunMry 
attention and reflection directed to various facts; 
but they do not exjjress a single fact of them 
selves. This voice of my conscience prescribes 
to me with certainty, in each particular situa- 
tion of my existence, what I must do and what 
I must avoi<l in that situation. It accompanies 
me, if I will but listen to it with attention, 
through all the events of iny life, and never re- 
fuses its reward where I am called to act. It 
establishes immediate conviction, and irresisti- 
bly compels my assent. It is impossible for me 
to contend against it. 

To hearken to that voice, honestly and undis- 
turbedly, without fear and without useless spe- 
culation, to obey it, — this is my sole destination, 
this the whole aiin of my existence. My life 
ceases to be an empty s()ort, without truth or 
meaning. There is something to be done, sim- 
ply because it must be done. That that which 
conscience demands of me in particular, — of me 
who have come into this situation, — may be ful- 
filled, — for this purpose alone do I exist. To 
perceive it, I have understanding; to do it, 
power. 

Through these commandments of conscience 
alone come truth and reality into my concep- 
tions. I cannot refuse attention and obedience 
to them, without renouncing my destination. 

I cannot, therefore, withhold my belief in the 
reality which they bring before me, without, at 
the same tiine, denying my destination. It is 
absolutely true, without farther examination and 
demonstration, — it is the first true, and the 
ground of all other truth and certainty, — that i 
must obey that voice. Consequently, according 



■i9i 



FICIITE. 



to this way of thinking, everything becomes true 
and real for ine, which the possibility of such 
obedience presupposes. 

There hover before me appearances in space, 
to which I transfer the idea of my own being. 
I represent them to myself as beings of my own 
kind. Speculation, carried out, has taught me 
or will teach me that these supposed rational 
beings, without me, are only products of my 
own conception ; that I am necessitated, once 
for all, by laws of thought which can be shown 
to exist, to represent tlie idea of myself out of 
myself, and that, according to the same laws, 
this representation can be transferred only to 
certain determinate intuitions. But the voice 
of my conscience cries to me : " Whatever these 
beings may be in and for themselves, thou slialt 
treat them as subsisting for themselves, as free, 
self-existent beings, entirely independent of 
thyself TaUe it for granted that they are 
capable of proposing to themselves aims inde- 
pendently of thee, by themselves alone. Never 
disturb the execution of these, their designs, but 
further them rather, with all thy might. Re- 
spect their liberty. Embrace with love their 
objects as thine own." So must I act. And 
to such action shall, will, and must all my 
thinking be directed, if I have but formed the 
purpose to obey the voice of my conscience. 
Accordingly, I shall ever consider those beings, 
as beings subsisting for themselves, and forming 
and accomplishing aims independently of me. 
From this stand-point, I cannot consider them 
in any other light; and the above-mentioned 
speculation will vanish like an empty dream 
belbre my eyes. •' 1 think of them as beings of 
my own species:" said I just now' but strictly, 
it is not a thought by which tliey are first repre- 
sented to me as such. It is the voice of con- 
science ; the ooinniand : " here restrain thy 
liberty, bere suppose and respect foreign aims ;" 
this it is which is first translated into the 
thought: "here is surely and truly, subsisting 
for itself, a being like me." To consider them 
otherwise, I must first deny the voice of my 
conscience in life, and forget it in speculation. 

There hover before me other appearances, 
which I do not consider as beings like myself, 
but as irrational objects. Speculation finds it 
easy to show how the conception of such ob- 
jects develops itself purely from my power of 
conception, and its necessary modes of action. 
But I embrace these same tilings also with 
necessity and craving and fruition. It is not the 
conception, no, it is hunger and thirst and the 
satisfaction of these that makes anything food 
and drink to me. Of course, I am constrained 
to believe in the reality of that which threatens 
my sensuous existence, or which alone can pre- 
serve it. Conscience comes in, at once hallow- 
ing and limiting this impulse of Nature. "Thou 
slialt preserve, exercise and strengtlien thyself, 
and tby sensuous power : for this sensuous 
power forms a part of the calculation, in the 
^lan of reason. But thou canst preserve it only 



by a suitable use, agreeable to the peculiar in- 
terior laws of such matters. And beside thy- 
self, there are also others like thee, whose pow- 
ers are calculated upon like thine own, and who 
can be preserved only in the same way. Allow 
to them the same use of their portion which it 
is commanded tliee to make of thine own por- 
tion. Respect what comes to them, as their 
property. Use what comes to thee in a suit- 
able manner, as thy property." So must I act, 
and I must think conformably to such action. 
Accordingly, I am necessitated to regard these 
tilings as standing under their own natural laws, 
independent of me, but which I am capable of 
knowing ; that is, to ascribe to them an existence 
independent of myself I am constrained to 
believe in such laws, and it becomes my busi- 
ness to ascertain them ; and empty speculation 
vanishes like mist when the warming sun ap- 
pears. 

In short, there is for me, in general, no pure, 
naked existence, with which I have no concern, 
and which I contemplate solely lor the sake of 
contemplation. Whatever exists for me, exists 
only by virtue of its relation to me. But there 
is everywhere but one relation to me possible, 
and all the rest are but varieties of tliis ; that 
is my destination as a moral agent. My world 
is the object and sphere of my duties, and ab- 
solutely nothing else. There is no other world, 
no other attributes of my world, for me. My 
collective capacity, and all finite capacity is in- 
sufficient to comprehend any other. Everything 
which exists for me forces its existence and its 
reality upon me, solely by means of this rela- 
tion ; and only by means of tiiis relation, do [ 
grasp it. There is utterly wanting in me an 
organ for any other existence. 

To tlie question, whether then in fact such a 
world exists as 1 represent to myself? I can 
answer nothing certain, nothing which is raised 
above all doubt, but this: I have assuredly and 
truly these definite duties, which represent them- 
selves to me as duties toward such and such 
persons, concerning such and such objects. 
These definite duties I cannot represent to my- 
self otherwise, nor can I execute them other- 
wise, than as lying within the sphere of such 
a world as 1 conceive. Even lie who has 
never thought of his moral destination, if any 
such there could be, or who, if he has thouglit 
about it generally, has never entertained tlie 
slightest purpose of ever, in the indefinite futuie, 
fulfilling it; even he derives his world of tlie 
senses and his belief in the reality of such a 
world, no otfierwise than from his idea of a 
moral world. If he does not embrace it with 
the idea of his duties, he certainly does so with 
the requisition of his rights. What he does not 
require of himself, he yet requires of others, in 
relation to himself; that they treat him with 
care and consideration, agreeably to his nature, 
not as an irrational thing, but as a free and self- 
subsisting being. And so he is constrained, in 
order that they may comply with this demand, 



FICHTE. 



393 



to think of them also, as rational, free, and self- 
subsisting, and independent of tlie mere force 
of Nature. And even tliough he should never 
propose to himself any other aim in the use and 
fruition of the objects which surround him, than 
that of enjoying them, he still demands this en- 
joyment as a right, of which others must leave 
him in undisturbed possession. Accordingly, 
he embraces even the irrational world of the 
senses with a moral idea. No one who lives a 
conscious life can renounce these claims to be 
respected as rational and self-subsisting. And 
with these claims at least there connects itself 
in his soul, a seriousness, an abandonment of 
doubt, a belief in reality; if not with the ac- 
knowledgment of a moral law in his interior. 
Do but assail him who denies his own moral 
destination and your existence and the exist- 
ence of a corporeal world, except in the way 
of experiment, to try what speculation can do, 
— assail him actively, carry his principles into 
life, and act as if he either did not exist, or as 
if he were a piece of rude matter, and he will 
soon forget the joke: he will become seriously 
angry with you, he will seriously reprove you 
for treating him so, and maintain that you ought 
not and must not do so to him; and, in this 
way, he will practically admit, that you possess 
indeed the power of acting upon him, that he 
exists, that you exist, and that there exists a 
medium through which you act upon him ; and 
that you have at least duties toward liim. 

Hence it is not the action of supposed objects 
without us, which exist for us only, and for 
which we exist only, so far as we already know 
of tliem, just as little is it an empty fashioning, 
by means of our imagination and our think- 
ing, — whose products would appear to us as 
such, as empty pictures: — it is not these, but 
the necessary faith in our liberty and our power, 
in our veritable action and in certain laws of 
human action, which serves as the foundation 
of all consciousness of a reality without us, a 
consciousness which is itself but a belief, since 
it rests on a belief, but one which follows ne- 
cessarily from that belief We are compelled 
to assume that we act in general, and that we 
ought to act in a certain way ; we are compelled 
to assume a certain sphere of such action : this 
sphere is the truly and actually existing world 
as we find ii. And vice versa, this world is ab- 
solutely nothing but that sphere, and by no 
means extends beyond it. The consciousness 
of the actual world proceeds from the necessity 
of action, and not the reverse, — i. e. the neces- 
sity o( action from the consciousness of such a 
world. The necessity is first not the conscious- 
ness; that is derived. We do not act because 
we agnize, but we agnize because we are des- 
tined to act. Practical reason is the root of all 
reason. ^ The laws of action for rational beings 
are iiumerJialely cerlain ; their world is certain, 
only because they are certain. Were we to re- 
tiDuiice the former, the world, and, wilri it, we 
ourselves, should sink into absolute nothing. 
2z 



We raise ourselves out of this nothing, and sus- 
tain ourselves above this nothing, solely by 
means of our morality. 

II. 

When I contemplate the world as it is, inde- 
pendently of any injunction, there manifests it- 
self in my interior the wish, the longing, no ! 
not a longing merely, — the absolute demand for 
a better world. I cast a glance at the relations 
of men to each other and to Nature, at the 
weakness of their powers, at the strength of 
their appetites and passions. It cries to me 
irresistibly from my innermost soul: "thus it 
cannot possibly be destined always to remain. 
It must, O ! it must all become other and better !" 
I can in nowise imagine to myself the present 
condition of man as that which is designed to 
endure. I cannot imagine it to be his whole 
and final destination. If so, then would every- 
thing be dream and delusion, and it would not 
be worth the trouble to have lived and to have 
taken part in this ever-recurring, unproductive 
and unmeaning game. Only so far as I can 
regard this condition as the means of something 
better, as a point of transition to a higher and 
more perfect, does it acquire any value for me. 
Not on its own account, but on account of some- 
thing better for which it prepares the way, can 
1 bear it, honor it, and joyfully fulfil my part in 
h. My mind can find no place, nor rest a mo- 
ment, in the present; it is irresistibly repelled 
by it. My w^ole life streams irrepressibly on 
toward the future and better. 

Am I only to eat and to drink that I may 
hunger and thirst again, and again eat and drink, 
until the grave, yawning beneath my feet, swal- 
lows me up, and I myself spring up as food 
from the ground 1 Am I to beget beings like 
myself, that they also may eat and drink and 
die, and leave behind them beings like them- 
selves, who shall do the same that I have done t 
To what purpose this circle which perpetually 
returns into itself; this game for ever re-com- 
mencing, after the same manner, in which 
everything is born but to perish, and perishes 
but to be born again as it was ? This monster 
which forever devours itself, that it may pro- 
duce itself again, and which produces itself that 
it may again devour itself? 

Never can this be the destination of my being 
and of all being. There must be something 
which exists because it has been brought forth, 
and which now remains and can never be 
brought forth again, after it has been brought 
forth once. And this, that is permanent, must 
beget itself amid the mutations of the perishing, 
and continue amid those mutations, and be 
borne along unhurt upon the waves of time. 

As yet our race wrings with difficulty its sus- 
tenance and its continuance from opposing Na- 
ture. As yet the larger portion of mankind are 
bowed down their whole life long by hard 
labor, 10 procure sustenance for themselves and 



S94 



FICHTE. 



the. few who think for them. Immortal spirits 
are compelled to fix all their thinking and 
scheming, and all their efforts, on the soil which 
bears them nourishment. It often comes to 
pass as yet, that when the laborer has ended, 
and promises himself, for his pains, the conti- 
nuance of his own existence and of those pains ; 
that then hostile elements destroy in a moment 
what he had been slowly and carefully prepar- 
ing for years, and delivers up the industrious 
pains-taliing man, without any fault of his own, 
to hunger and misery. It often comes to pass 
as yet, that inundations, storm-winds, volcanoes, 
desolate whole countries, and mingle works 
which bear the impress of a rational inind, as 
well as their authors, with the wild chaos of 
death and destruction. Diseases still hurry 
men into a premature grave, men in the bloom 
of their powers, and children whose existence 
passes away without fruit or result. The pes- 
tilence still stalks throuiih blooming states, and 
leaves the few who escape it, bereaved and 
alone, deprived of the accustomed aid of their 
companions; and does all in its power to give 
back to the wilderness the land which the in- 
dustry of man had already conquered for its 
own. 

So it is, but so it cannot surely have been in- 
tended always to remain. No work which 
bears the impress of reason, and which was 
undertaken for the purpose of extending the 
dominion of reason, can be utterly lost in the 
progress of the times. The sacrifices which 
the irregular violence of Nature draws from 
reason, must at least weary, satisfy and recon- 
cile that violence. The force which has caused 
injury by acting without rule, cannot be intended 
to do so more in that way, it cannot be destined 
to renew itself; it must be used up, from this 
time forth and forever, by that one outbreak. 
All those outbreaks of rude force, before which 
human power vanishes into nothing, — those 
desolating liurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, 
can be nothing else but the final struggle of the 
wild mass against the lawfully progressive, life- 
giving, systematic course to which it is com- 
pelled, contrary to its own impulse. They can 
be nothing but the last concussive strokes in the 
formation of our globe, now about to perfect it- 
self That opposition must gradually become 
weaker, and at last exhausted, since, in the 
lawful course of things, there can be nothing 
that sliould renew its power. That formation 
must at last be perfected, and our destined 
abode complete. Nature must gradually come 
into a condition in which we can count with 
certainty upon her equal step, and in which her 
power shall keep unaltered a determinate rela- 
tion with that power which is destined to govern 
it, that is, the human. So far as this relation 
already exists, and the systematic cultivation 
ol Nature has gained firm footing; the work- 
manship of man, by its mere existence and its 
eriects, indepe-'lont of any design on the part 
of the author, is destined to react upon Nature, 



and to represent in her a new and life-givinj, 
principle. Cultivated lands are to quicken and 
mitigate the sluggish, hostile atmosphere of the 
eternal forests, wildernesses, and morasses. 
Well-ordered and diversified culture is to diffuse 
through the air a new principle of life and fruc- 
tification ; and the sun to send forth its most 
animating beams into that atmosphere which 
is breathed by a healthy, industrious, and in- 
genious people. Science, awakened, at first, by 
the pressure of necessity, shall hereafter pene- 
trate deliberately and calmly into the unchange- 
able laws of Nature, overlook her whole power, 
and learn to calculate her possible develop- 
ments; — shall form for itself a new Nature in 
idea, attach itself closely to the living and ac- 
tive, and follow hard upon her footsteps. And 
all knowledge which reason has wrung from 
Nature, shall be preserved in the course of the 
times, and become the foundation of further 
knowledge, for the common understanding of 
our race. Thus shall Nature become ever more 
transparent and penetrable to human percep- 
tion, even to its innermost secrets. And human 
power, enlightened and fortified with its inven- 
tions, shall rule her with ease, and peacefully 
maintain the conquest once effected. By de- 
grees, there shall be needed no greater outlay 
of mechanical labor than the human body re- 
quires for its development, cultivation and 
health. And this labor shall cease to be a bur- 
den ; for the rational being is not destined to 
be a bearer of burdens. 

But it is not Nature, it is liberty itself, that 
occasions the most numerous and the most fear- 
ful disorders among our kind. The direst enemy 
of man is man. 



It is the destination of our race to unite in one 
body, thoroughly acquainted with itself in all 
its parts, and uniformly cultivated in all. Na- 
ture, and even the passions and vices of man- 
kind, have, from the beginning, drifted towards 
this goal. A large part of the road which leads 
to it is already put behind us, and we may count 
with certainty that this goal, which is the con- 
dition of further, united progress, will be reached 
in due season. Do not ask History whether 
mankind, on the whole, have grown more 
purely moral! They have grown to extended, 
comprehensive, forceful acts of arbitrary will; 
but it was almost a necessity of their condition 
that they should direct that will exclusively to 
evil. 

Neither ask History whether the aesthetic 
education and the culture of the understanding, 
of the fore-world, concentrated upon a few sin- 
gle points, may not have far exceeded, in de- 
gree, that of modern times. It might be that 
the answer would put lis to shame, and that 
the human race woiUd appear, in this regard, 
not to have advanced, but to have lost ground. 

But ask History in what period the existing 
culture was most widely diti'used and distr' 



FICHT£. 



39& 



billed among the greatest number of iniliviJu- 
als? Undoubtedly, it will be found, that from 
the beginning of history down to our own day, 
the few light-points of culture have extended 
their rays farther and farther from their centres, 
have seized one individual after another, and 
one people after another ; and that this diffusion 
of culture is still going on before our eyes. 

And this was the first goal of Humanity, on 
its infinite path. Until this is attained, until 
the existing culture of an age is ditfused over 
the whole habitable globe, and our race is made 
capable of the most unlimited communication 
with itself one nation, one quarter of the 
globe must await the other, on their common 
path, and each must bring its centuries of ap- 
parent stationariness or retrogradation, as a sa- 
crifice to the common bond, for the sake of 
which, alone, they themselves exist. 

When this first goal shall be attained, when 
everything useful that has been discovered at 
one end of the earth, shall immediately be made 
known and imparted to all, then Humanity, 
without interruption, without cessation, and 
without retrocession, with united force, and with 
one step, shall raise itself up to a degree of cul- 
ture which we want power to conceive. 



* * * By the institution of this one true 
State, and the firm establishment of this itjternal 
peace, external war also, at least with true 
States, will, at the same time, be rendered im- 
possible. Even for the sake of its own advan- 
tage, — in order that no thought of injustice, plun- 
der and violence may spring up in its own sub- 
jects, and no possible opportunity be afforded 
them for any gain, except by labor and indus- 
try, in the sphere assigned by law : — every State 
must forbid as strictly, must hinder as carefully, 
must compensate as exactly, and punish as se- 
verely, an injury done to the citizen of a neigh- 
bor State, as if it were inflicted upon a fellow- 
citizen. This law respectiiig the security of its 
neighbors is necessary to every State which is 
not a community of robbers. And herewith the 
possibility of every just complaint, of one Stale 
against arjother, and every case of necessary de- 
fence is done away. 

There are no necessary, continuous, immedi- 
ate relations of States, as such, to each other, 
that could engender warfare. Asa general rule, 
it is only through the relations of single citizens 
of one State with the citizens of anodier, — it is 
otily in the person of one of its members, that 
a State can be injured. But this injury will be 
instantly redressed, and the offended State sa- 
tisfied. ******* 

* * * That a whole nation should deter- 
mine, for the sake of plunder, to attack a neigh- 
boring country with war, is impossible. Since, 
ill a Stale, in which all are equal, the plunder 
would not become the booty of a few, but must 
be divided equally among all, and so divided, 
the portion of exuh individual would never re- 



pay him for the trouble of a war. Only, then, 
when the advantage to be gained falls to the lot 
of a few oppressors, but the disadvantages, the 
trouble, the cost fall upon a countless army of 
slaves, — only then is a war of plunder possible 
or conceivable. Accordingly, these States have 
no war to fear from States like themselves, but 
only from savages or barbarians, tempted to 
prey by want of skill to enrich themselves by 
industry; or from nations of slaves, who are 
driven by their masters to plunder, of which 
they are to enjoy no part themselves. As to the 
first, each single State is undoubtedly superior 
to them in strength, by virtue of the arts of cul 
ture. As to the last, the common advantage of 
all the States will lead tliem to strengthen them- 
selves by union with eacli other. No free State 
can reasonably tolerate, in its immediate vici- 
nity. Polities whose rulers find their advantage 
in subjecting neighbor nations, and which, there- 
fore, by their mere existence, perpetually threat- 
en their neighbors' peace. Care for their own 
security will oblige all free States to convert all 
around them into free States like themselves, 
and thus, for the sake of their own well-being, 
to extend the dominion of culture to the savages, 
and that of liberty to the slave nations round 
about them. And so, when once a few free 
States have been formed, the empire of culture, 
of liberty, and, with that, of universal peace, 
will gradually embrace the globe. * * * 
* * * In this only true State, all tempta- 
tion to evil in general, and even the possibility 
of deliberately determining upon an evil act, 
will be cut off, and man be persuaded as pow- 
erfully as he can be to direct his will to the 
good. There is no man who loves evil because 
it is evil. He loves in it only the advantages 
and enjoyments which it promises, and which, 
in the present state of Humanity, it, for the most 
part, actually affords. As long as this state 
continues, as long as a price is set upon vice, a 
thorough reformation of mankind, in the whole, 
is scarcely to be hoped for. But in a civil Po- 
lity such as it should be, such as reason de- 
mands, and such as the thinker easily describes, 
although as yet he nowhere finds it, and such 
as will necessarily shape itself with the first na- 
tion that is truly disenthralled; — in such a Po- 
lity evil will offer no advantages, but, on the 
contrary, the most certain disadvantages; and 
the aberration of self love into acts of injustice, 
will be suppressed by self-love itself Acconl- 
ing to infallible regulations, in such a State, all 
taking ad vantage and oppressing of others, every 
act of self-aggrandizement at another's expense, 
is not only sure to be in vain, — labor lost, — but 
it reacts upon the author, and he himself inevi- 
tably incurs the evil which he would inflict upon 
others. Within his own State and without it, 
on the whole face of the earth, he finds no one 
whom he can injure with impunity. It is not, 
however, to be expected that any one will re 
solve upon evil merely for evil's sake, noiwiih 
standing he cannot accomplish it, and notiiuia 



396 



FICHTE. 



but liis own injury can result from the attempt. 
The use of liberty for evil ends is done away. 
Man must either resolve to renounce his liberty 
entirely, — to become, with patience; a passive 
wheel in the great machine of the whole, — or 
he must apply his liberty to that which is good. 

And thus, then, in a soil so prepared, the 
good will easily flourish. When selfish aims 
no longer divide mankind, and their powers 
can no longer be exercised in destroying one 
another in battle, nothing will remain to them 
but to turn their united force against the com- 
mon and only adversary which yet remains, 
resisting, uncultivated Nature. No longer sepa- 
rated by private ends, they will necessarily 
unite in one common end, and there will grow 
up a body everywhere animated by one spirit 
and one love. Every disadvantage of the indi- 
vidual, since it can no longer be a benefit to any 
one, becomes an injury to the whole, and to each 
particular member of the same; and is felt in 
each member with equal pain, and with equal 
activity redressed. Every advance which one 
man makes, human nature, in its entireness, 
makes with him. 

Here, where the petty, narrow self of the per- 
son is already annihilated by the Polity, every 
one loves every other one truly, as himself, as 
a component part of that great Self which alone 
remains to his love, and of which he is nothing 
but a component part, that only through the 
Whole can gain or lose. Here the conflict of 
evil with good is done away, for no evil can 
any longer spring up. The contest of the good 
with each otlier, even concerning the good, va- 
nishes, now that it has become easy to them to 
love the good for its own sake, and not for their 
sakes, as the authors of it; — now that the only 
interest they can have is that it come to pass, 
that truth be discovered, that the good deed be 
executed ; not by whom it is accomplished. 
Here every one is prepared to join his power 
to that of his neighbor, and to subordinate it to 
that of his neighbor. Whoever, in the judgment 
of all, shall accomplish the best, in the best 
way, him all will support, and partake with 
•equal joy in his success. 

This is the aim of earthly existence which 
Reason sets before us, and for the sure attain- 
ment of which. Reason vouches. It is not a 
goal for which we are to strive merely that our 
faculties may be exercised on great objects, but 
which we must relinquish all hope of realizing. 
It shall and must be realized. At some time 
or other, this goal must be attained ; as surely 
as there is a world of the senses, and a race of 
reasoiiable beings in time, for whom no serious 
and rational object can be imagined but this, 
and whose existence is made intelligible by this 
alone. Unless the whole life of man is to be 
considered as the sport of an evil Spirit, who 
implanted this ineradicable striving after the 
imperishable in the breasts of poor wretches, 
merely that he might enjov their ceaseless strug- 



gle after that which unceasingly flees from them, 
their still repeated grasping after that which 
still eludes their grasp, their restless driving 
about in an ever- returning circle; — and laugh 
at their earnestness in this senseless sport: — 
unless the wise man, who must soon see through 
this game, and be tired of his own part in it, is 
to throw away his life, and the moment of 
awakening reason is to be the moment of earthly 
death; — that goal must be attained. O! it is 
attainable in life and by means of life ; for Rea- 
son commands me to live. It is attainable, for 
I am. 

III. 

But how, when it is attained ? when Huma- 
nity shall stand at the goal"? What then? There 
is no higher condition on earth than that. The 
generation which first attains to it can do no- 
thing farther thai; to persist in it, aiul maintain 
it with all their powers; die and leave de- 
scendants who shall do the same that they have 
done, and who, in their turn, shall leave de- 
scendants that shall do the same. Humanity 
would then stand still in its course. Therefore, 
its earthly goal cannot be its highest goal. This 
earthly goal is intelligible, and attainable, and 
fitiite. Though we consider the preceding gene- 
rations as means of developing the last and per- 
fected, still we cannot escape the inquiry of 
earnest Reason; " Wherefore then these last?" 
Given a human race on the earth, its existence 
must indeed be in accordance with Reason, and 
not contrary to it. It must become all that it 
can become on earth. But why should it exist 
at all, this human race? Why might it not as 
well have remained in the bosoin of Nothing? 
Reason is not for the sake of existence, but ex- 
istence for the sake of Reason. An existence 
which does not, in itself, satisfy Reason, and 
solve all her questions, cannot possibly be the 
true one. 

Then, too, are the actions commanded by the 
voice of Conscience, whose dictates I must not 
speculate about, but obey in silence, — are they 
actually the means, and the only means, of ac- 
complishing the earthly aim of mankind ? That 
I caimot refer them to any other object but this, 
that I can have no other intent with them, is 
unquestionable. But is this my intent fulfilled 
in every case ? Is nothing more needed but to 
will the best, in order that it may be accom- 
plished? Alas! most of our good purposes are, 
for this world, entirely lost. And some of them 
seem even to have an entirely opposite effect to 
that which was proposed. On the other hand, 
the most despicable passions of men, their vices 
and their misdeeds, seem often to bring about 
the good more surely than the labors of the just 
man. who never consents to do evil that good 
may come. It would seem that the highest goou 
of the world grows and thrives quite independ- 
ently of all human virtues or vices, according to 
laws of its own, by some invisible and unknown 
power; just as the heavenly bodies run through 



FICETE. 



397 



their appointed course, independently of all hu- 
man effort; and that this power absorbs into its 
own higher plan all human designs, whether 
good or ill ; and, by its superior strength, appro- 
priates what was intended for other purposes 
to its own ends. 

If, therefore, the attainment of that earthly 
goal could be the design of our existence, and 
if no farther question concerning it remained to 
Reason, that aim, at least, would not be ours, 
but the aim of that unknown Power. We know 
not at any moment what may promote it. No- 
thing would be left us but to supply to that 
Power, by our actions, so much material, no 
matter what, to work up in its own way, for its 
own ends. Our highest wisdom would be, not 
to trouble ourselves about things in which we 
have no concern; to live, in each case, as the 
fancy takes us, and quietly leave the conse- 
quences to that Power. The moral law within 
us would be idle and superfluous, and wholly 
unsnited to a being that had no higher capacity 
and no higher destination. In order to be at 
one with ourselves, we should refuse obedience 
to the voice of that law, and suppress it as a 
perverse and mad enthusiasm. 



If the whole design of our existence were to 
bring about an earthly condition of our race, all 
that would be required would be some infalli- 
ble mechanism to direct our action; and we 
need be nothing more than wheels well fitted 
to the whole machine. Freedom would then 
not only be useless, but a contiadictory power; 
and good will would be quite superfluous. The 
world, in that case, woidd be very clumsily 
contrived — would proceed to its goal with loss 
of power, and by circuitous paths. Rather, 
mighty World -Spirit, hadst thou taken from us 
this freedom, which, only with difliculty and 
by a difl"erent arrangement, thou canst fit to thy 
plans; and compelled us at once to act as those 
plans require. Thou wouldst then arrive at thy 
goal by the shortest road, as the meanest of the 
inhabitants of thy worlds can tell thee. 

But I am free, and therefore such a concate- 
nation of cause and eflect, in which freedom is 
absolutely su|)erfluons and useless, cannot ex- 
hatist my whole destination. I must be free; 
for not the ineclianical act, but the free deter- 
mination of free-will, for the sake of the coin- 
niand alone, and absolutely, for no other reason, 
so says the inward voice of conscience, — this 
alone determines our true worth. The band 
with which the law binds me is a band for liv- 
ing spirits. It scorns to rule over dead mechan- 
ism, and applies itself aione to the living and 
self-acting. Such obedience it demands. This 
obedience cannot be superfluous. 

And herewith, the eternal world rises more 
brightly before rne, and the ground law of its 
order stands cleai before the eye of my mind. 
In that world the will, purely and only, as it 



lies, locked up from all eyes, in- the secret dark 
of my soul, is the first link in a chain of conse- 
quences which runs through the whole invisible 
world of spirits; as in the eartlily world the 
deed, a certain movement of matter, becomes 
the first link in a material chain which extends 
through the whole material system. The will 
is the working and living principle in the world 
of Reason, as motion is the working and living 
principle in the world of sense. I stand in the 
centre of two opposite worlds, a visible in 
which the deed, and an invisible, altogether 
incomprehensible, in which the will decides. 
I am one of the original forces for both these 
worlds. My will is that which embraces both. 
This will is in and of itself a constituent portion 
of the supersensual world. When I put it in 
motion by a resolution, I move and change 
something in that world, and my activity flows 
on over the whole, and produces something 
new and ever-during, which then exists and 
needs not to be made anew. This will breaks 
forth into a material act, and this act belongs to 
the world of the senses, and efl^ects, in that, 
what it can. 

Not, when I am divorced from the connection 
of the earthly world, do I first gain admission 
into that which is above the earth. I am and 
live in it already, far more truly than in the 
earthly. Even now it is my only firm stand- 
point; and the eternal life, which I have long 
since taken possession of, is the only reason 
why I am willing still to prolong the earthly. 
That which they denominate Heaven, lies not 
beyond the grave. It is already here, diffused 
around our Nature, and its light arises in every 
pure heart. My will is mine, and it is the only 
thing that is entirely mine, and which depends 
entirely upon myself. By it I am already a 
citizen of the kingdom of liberty and of self- 
active Reason. My conscience, the tie by 
which that world holds me unceasingly and 
binds me to itself, tells me at every moment 
what determination of my will (the only thing 
by which, here in the dust, I can lay hold of 
that kingdom) is most consonant with its order ; 
and it depends entirely upon myself to give 
myself tlie deterinination enjoined upon me. I 
cultivate myself then for this world, and, ac- 
cordingly, work in it and for it, while elaborat- 
ing one of its inembers. J pursue in it, and in 
it alone, without vacillation or doubt, according 
to fixed rules, my aim; — sure of success, since 
there no foreign power opposes my intent. 



That our good-will, in and for and through 
itself, must have consequences, we know, even 
in this life ; for Reason cannot require anything 
without a purpose. But what these conse- 
quences are, — nay, how it is possible that a mere 
will can effect anything, — is a question to which 
we cannot even imagine a solution, so lOng as 
we are entangled with this material world , 
and it is the part of wisdom not to undertak" 
34 



398 



FICHTE. 



an inquiry concerning which, we know before- 
hand, that it must be unsuccessful. * * 

* * * This then is my whole sublime 
destination, my true essence. I am member 
of two systems ; a purely spiritual one, in which 
I ride by pure will alone ; and a sensuous one, 
in which I work by my deed. * * * 

* * * X hese two systems, the purely spi- 
ritual and the sensuous, — which last may con- 
sist of an immeasurable series of particular 
lives, — exist in me from the moment in which 
my active reason is developed, and pursue their 
parallel course. The latter system is only an 
appearance, for me and for those v.'ho share 
with me the same life. The former alone gives 
to the latter meaning, and purpose, and value. 
I am immortal, imperishable, eternal, so soon 
as I form the resolution to obey the law of Rea- 
son; and am not first to become so. The super- 
sensuous world is not a future world, it is pre- 
sent. It never can be more present, at any one 
point of finite existence, than at any other point. 
After an existence of myriad lives, it cannot be 
more present, than at this moment. Other con- 
ditions of my sensuous existence are to come; 
but these are no more the true life, than the 
present condition. By means of that resolution, 
I lay hold on eternity, and strip off this life in 
the dust, and all other sensuous lives that may 
await me, and raise myself far above them. I 
become to myself the sole fountain of all my 
being and of all my phenomena; and have 
henceforth, unconditioned by aught without me, 
life in myself My will, which I myself, and 
no stranger, fit to the order of that world, is this 
fountain of true life and of eternity. 

But only my will is this fountain ; and only 
when I acknowledge this will to be the true 
seat of moral excellence, and actually elevate 
it to this excellence, do I attain to the certainty 
and the possession of that supersensuous world. 
* * * 4c * 4c * 

The sense by which we lay hold on eternal 
life we acquire only by renouncing and offering 
up sense, and the aims of sense, to the law which 
claims our will alone, and not our acts; — by 
renouncing it with the conviction that to do so 
is reasonable and alone reasonable. With this 
renunciation of the earthly, the belief in the 
eternal first enters our soul, and stands isolated 
there, as the only stay by which we can still 
sustain ourselves, when we have relinquished 
everything else, as the only animating principle 
that still heaves our bosom and still inspires 
our life. Well was it said, in the metaphors 
of a sacred doctrine, that man must first die to 
the world and be born again, in order to enter 
into the kingdom of God. 

I see, O! I see now, clear before mine eyes, 
the cause of my former heedlessness and blind- 
ness concerning spiritual things. Filled with 
earthly aims, and lost in them with all my 
scheming and striving; put in motion and im- 
pelled only by the idea of a result, which is to 



be actualized without us, by the desire of such 
a result and pleasure in it; — insensible and 
dead to the pure impulse of that Reason which 
gives the law to itself which sets before us a 
purely spiritual aim, the immortal Psyche re- 
mains chained to the earth ; her wings are 
bound. Our philosophy becomes the history of 
our own heart and life. As we find ourselves, 
so we imagine man in general and his destina- 
tion. Never impelled by any other motive than 
the desire of that which can be realized in this 
world, there is no true liberty for us, no liberty 
which has the ground of its determination ab- 
solutely and entirely in itself Our liberty, at 
the utmost, is that of the self-forming plant; no 
higher in its essence, only more curious in iti 
result; not producing a form of matter with 
roots, leaves and blossoms, but a form of mind 
with impulses, thoughts, actions. Of the true 
liberty we are positively unable to comprehend 
anything, because we are not in possession of 
it. Whenever we hear it spoken of, we draw 
the words down to our own meaning, or briefly 
dismiss it with a sneer, as nonsense. With the 
knowledge of liberty, the sense of another world 
is also lost to us. Everything of this sort floats 
by like words which are not addressed to us; 
like an ash-grey shadow without color or mean- 
ing, which we cannot by any end take hold of 
and retain. Without the least interest, we let 
everything go as it is stated. Or if ever a ro- 
buster zeal impels us to consider it seriously, 
we see clearly and can demonstrate that all 
those ideas are untenable, hollow visions, which 
a man of sense casts from him. And, according 
to the premises from which we set out, and 
which are taken from our own innermost expe- 
rience, we are quite right; and are alike unan- 
swerable and unteachable, so long as we remain 
what we are. The excellent doctrines which 
are current among the people, fortified with 
special authority, concerning freedom, duty and 
eternal life, change themselves for us into gro- 
tesque fables, like those of Tartarus and the 
Elysian fields; although we do not disclose the 
true opinion of our hearts, because we think it 
more advisable to keep the people in outward 
decency by means of these images. Or if we 
are less reflective, and ourselves fettered by the 
bands of authority, then we sink, ourselves, to 
the true plebeian level. We believe that which, 
so understood, is foolish fable; and find, in those 
purely spiritual indications, nothing but the 
promise of a continuance, to all eternity, of the 
same miserable existence which we lead here 
below. 

To say all in a word : Only through a radi- 
cal reformation of my will does a new light 
arise upon my being and destination. Without 
this, however much I may reflect, and however 
distinguished my mental endowments, there is 
nothing but darkness in me and around me. 
The reformation of tlie heart alone conducts to 
true wisdom. So then, let my whole life stream 
incontinently toward this one end I 



FICHTE. 



399 



IV. 

My lawful will, simply as such, in and through 
'.tself. must have consequences, certain and 
without exception. Every dutiful determina- 
tion of my will, although no act should flow 
from it, must operate in another, to me incom- 
prehensible, world; and, except this dutiful de- 
termiijation of the will, nothing can take effect 
in that world. What do I supjiose when I sup- 
pose this? What do I take for granted ? 

Evidently, a law, a rule absolutely and with- 
out exception valid, according to which the du- 
tifid will must have consequences. Just as in 
the earthly world which environs me, I assume 
a law according to which this ball, when im- 
pelled by my hand with this given force, in this 
given direction, must necessarily move in such 
a direction, with a determinate measure of ra- 
pidity; perhaps impel another ball with this 
given degree of force; which other ball then 
moves on with a determinate rapidity; and so 
on indefinitely. As in this case, with the mere 
direction and movement of my hand, I know 
and comprehend all the directions and move- 
ments which shall follow it. as certainly as if 
they were already present and perceived by 
me ; — even so I comprehend, in my dutiful will, 
a series of necessary and infallible consequences 
in the spiritual world, as if they were already 
present; — only that I cannot, as in the material 
world, determine them ; i. e., I merely know 
that they shall be, not how they shall be. I sup- 
pose a law of the spiritual world, in which my 
mere will is one of the moving forces, just as 
my hand is one of the moving forces in the ma- 
terial world. My firm confidence in the re- 
sults of my volition and the thought of a law 
of the spiritual world are one and the same 
thing; — not two thoughts of which one is the 
consequence of the other, but precisely the same 
thought. Just as the certainty with which I 
count upon a certain motion, and the thought of 
a mechanical law of Nature, are the same. The 
idea of Law expresses generally nothing else 
but the fixed, imtnovable reliance of Reason 
on a proposition, and the impossibility of sup- 
posing the contrary. 

I assume such a law of a spiritual world, 
which my own will did not enact, nor the will 
of any finite being, nor the will of all finite be- 
ings together; but to which my will ajid the 
will of all finite beings is subject. 



Agreeably to what has now been advanced, 
the law of the supersensuous world should be 

a mil. 

'a Will which acts purely and simply as will, 
by its own agency, entirely without any instru- 
njent or sensuous medium of its efficacy; which 
is absolutely, in itself, at once action and result; 
which wills and it is done, which commands 
and it stands fast; in which, accordingly, the 
demand of reason, to be absolutely free and 



self-active, is represented. A Will which is 
law in itself; which determines itself, not ac- 
cording to humor and caprice, not after pre- 
vious deliberation, vacillation and doubt, but 
which is forever and unchangeably determined, 
and upon which one may reckon with infallible 
security ; as the mortal reckons securely on tlie 
laws of his world. A Will in which the law- 
ful will of finite beings has inevitable conse- 
quences, but only their will, which is immov- 
able to everything else, and for which every- 
thing else is as though it were not. 

That sublime Will, therefore, does not pursue 
its course for itself, apart from the rest of Rea- 
son's world. There is between Him and all 
finite, rational beings, a spiritual band, and him- 
self is this spiritual band of Reason's world. I 
will purely and decidedly my duty, and He then 
wills that I shall succeed, at least in the world 
of spirits. Every lawful resolve of the finite 
will enters into him, and moves and determines 
him — to speak after our fashion — not in conse- 
quence of a momentary good pleasure, but in 
consequence of the eternal lav/ of his being. 

With astounding clearness it now stands be- 
fore my soul, the thought which hitherto had 
been wrapped in darkness, the thought, that 
my will, merely as such, and of itself, has con- 
sequences. It has consequences because it is 
infallibly and immediately taken knowledge of 
by another, related will, which is itself an act, 
and the only life-principle of the spiritual world. 

In that Will it has its first consequence, and 
only through that, in the rest of the spiritual 
world which, in all its parts, is but the product 
of thast infinite Will. 

Thus I flow, — the mortal must speak accord- 
ing to his dialect, — thus I flow in upon that Will ; 
and the voice of conscience in my interior, which, 
in every situation of my life, instructs me what 
I have to do in that situation, is that by means 
of which He, in turn, flows in upon me. That 
voice is the oracle from the eternal world, 
made sensible by my environment, and trans- 
lated, by my reception of it, into my language; 
which announces to me how I must fit myself 
to my part in the order of the spiritual world, 
or to the infinite Will, which itself is the order 
of that spiritual world. I cannot oversee or see 
through this spiritual order; nor need I. I am 
only a link in its chain, and can no more judge 
of the whole, than a single tone in a song can 
judge of the harmony of the whole. But what 
I myself should be, in the harmony of Spirits, I 
must know; for only I myself can make myself 
that. And it is immediately revealed to me by 
a voice which sounds over to me from that 
world. Thus 1 stand in connection with the 
only being that exists, and partake of its being. 
There is nothing truly real, permanent, impe- 
rishable in me, but these two ; — the voice of my 
conscience and my free obedience. By means 
of the first, the spiritual world bows down to 
me and embraces me, as one of its meirbers. 
By means of the second. I raise myself into diis 



too 



FICHTE: 



world, lay hold of it, and work, in it. But that 
infinite Will is the mediator between it and me; 
for, of it and me, liiniself is the primal fountain. 
This is the only true and imperishable, toward 
which my soul moves from its inmost depth. 
All else is only phenomenon, and vanishes and 
returns again, with new seeming. 

This Will connects me with itself. The same 
connects me with all finite beings of my spe- 
cies, and is the universal mediator between us 
all. That is the great mystery of the invisible 
world, and its ground-law, so far as it is a world, 
or system of several individual wills: Union 
and direct reciprocal action of several self -subsisting 
and independent wills among each other. A mys- 
tery which, even in the present life, lies clear 
before all eyes, without any one's noticing it or 
thinking it worthy his admiration. The voice 
of Conscience, which enjoins upon each one his 
proper duty, is the ray by which we proceed 
from the Infinite, and are set forth as individual 
particular beings. It defines the boundaries of 
our personality; it is, therefore, our true origi- 
nal constituent, the ground and tlie stuflf of all 
the life which we live. 

That eternal Will, then, is indeed world-cre- 
ator, as he alone can be, — in the finite reason. 
(The only creation which is needed.) They 
who suppose him to build a world out of an 
eternal sluggish matter, which world, in that 
case, could be nothing else but inert and life- 
less, like implements fashioned by human 
hands, and not an eternal process of self-deve- 
lopment; or who think they can imagiiie the 
going forth of a material something out of no- 
thing, know neither the world nor him. If 
matter only is something, then there is nowhere 
anything, and nowhere, in all eternity, can 
anything be. Only Reason is, the infinite, in 
itself, the finite in that and by that. Only in 
our minds does he create the world ; or, at least, 
that from which we untold it, and that whereby 
we unfold it; — the call to duty, and the feel- 
ings, perceptions and laws of thought, agreeing 
therewith. It is his light whereby we see light, 
and all that appears to us in that light. In our 
minds he is continually fashioning this world, 
and interposing in it by interposing in our minds 
with the call of duty, whenever another free 
agent effects a change therein. In our minds 
he maintains this world, and, therewith, our 
finite existence, of which alone we are capable, 
■n that he causes to arise out of our states new 
states continually. After he has proved us suf- 
liciently for our next destination, according to 
uis higher aim, and when we shall have culti- 
vated ourselves for the same, he will annihilate 
this world for us by what we call death, and 
introduce us into a new one, the product of 
our dutiful action in this. All our life is his 
life. We are in his hand, and remain in it, and 
lo one can pluck us out of it. We are eternal 
'>e-;ause He is eternal. 



Sublime, living Will! whom no name can 
name, and whom no conception can grasp ! 
well may I raise my mind to thee, for thou and 
I are not divided. Thy voice sounds in me, and 
mine sounds back, in thee ; and all my thoughts, 
if only they are true and good, are thought in 
thee. In thee, the incomprehensible, I become 
comprehensible to myself, and entirely compre- 
hend the world. All the riddles of my exist- 
ence are solved, and the most perfect harmony 
arises in my mind. 

Thou art best apprehended by childlike Sim- 
plicity, devoted to thee. To her thou art the 
heart-searcher who lookest through her inner- 
most; the all -present, faithful witness of her 
sentiments, who alone knowest that she meaneth 
well, and who alone understandest her, when 
misunderstood by all the world. Thou art to 
her a Father, whose purposes toward her are 
ever kind, and who will order everything for 
her best good. She submitteth herself wholly, 
with body and soul, to thy beneficent decrees. 
Do with me as thou wilt, she saith, I know that 
it shall be good, so surely as it is thou that dost 
it. The speculative understanding, which has 
only heard of thee, but has never seen thee, 
would teach us to know tliy being in itself, and 
sets before us an inconsistent monster, which 
it gives out for thine image, ridiculous to the 
merely knowing, hateful and detestable to the 
wise and good. 

I veil my face before thee and lay my hand 
upon my mouth. How thou art in thyself, and 
how thou appearest to thyself, I can never know, 
as surely as I can never be thou. Afier thou- 
sand times thousand spirit-lives lived through, 
I shall no more be able to comprehend thee 
than now, in this hut of earth. That which I 
comprehend becomes, by my comprehension of 
it, finite; and this can never, by an endless 
process of magnifying and exalting, be changed 
into infinite. Thou differest from the finite, not 
only in degree but in kind. By that magnilying 
process they only make thee a greater and still 
greater man, but never God, the Infinite, inca- 
pable of measure. ***** 

* * * 1 vvill not attempt that which is 
denied to me by my finite nature, and which 
could avail me nothing. I desire not to know 
how thou art in thyself. But thy relations and 
connections with me, the finite, and with all 
finite beings, lie open to mine eye, when I be- 
come what I should be. They encompass me 
with a more luminous clearness than the con- 
sciousness of my own being. Thou workest in 
me the knowledge of my duty, of niy destina- 
tion in the series of rational beings. How? I 
know not, and need not to know. Thou know- 
est and perceivest what I think and will. How 
thou canst know it, — by what act thou bringest 
this consciousness to pass, — on that point I 
comprehend nothing. Yea! I know very well 
that the idea of an act, of a special act oC con- 
sciousness, applies only to me but not to thee, 
the Infinite. Thou wiliest, because thou will- 



FICHTE. 



401 



est, tliat my free obedience sliall have conse- 
fjuenoes in all eternity. The act of thy will I 
vannot comprehend. I only know that it is not 
like to mine. Thou doest, and thy will itself is 
deed. But thy method of action is directly 
contrary to that of which, alone, I can form a 
conception. Thou Uvest and art, for thou know- 
est, and wiliest, and workest, all present to 
finite Reason. But thou art not such as through 
all eternity I shall alone be able to conceive of 
Being. 

In the contemplation of these thy relations to 
me, the finite, I will be calm and blessed. I 
know immediately, only what I must do. This 
will I perform undisturbed and joyful, and 
without philosophising. For it is thy voice 
which commands me, it is the ordination of the 
spiritual world-plan concerning me. And the 
power by which I perform it is thy power. 
Whatsoever is commanded me by that voice, 
whatsoever is accomplished by this power, is 
surely and truly good in relation to that plan. 
I am calm in all the events of this world, for 
they occur in thy world. Nothing can deceive, 
or surprise, or make me afraid, so surely as thou 
livest, and I behold thy life. For in thee and 
througli thee, infinite One! I behold even my 
present world in another light. Nature and 
natural consequences in the destinies and ac- 
tions of free beings, in view of thee, are empty, 
unmeaning words. There is no Nature more. 
Thou, thou alone art. 

It no longer appears to me the aim of the 
present world, that the above-mentioned state 
of universal peace among men, and of their un- 
conditioned empire over the mechanism of Na- 
ture, should be brought about, — merely that it 
may exist; but that it should be brought about 
by man himself And, since it is calculated for 
all, that it should be brought about by all, as 
one great, free, moral comn. unity. Nothing new 
and better for the individual, except through his 
dutiful will, nothing new and better for the 
community, except through their united, duti- 
ful will, is the ground-law of the great moral 
kingdom, of which the present life is a part. 

'J'he reason why the good-will of the indivi- 
dual is so often lost for this world, is that it is 
only the will of the individual, and that the 
will of the majority does not coincide with it. 
Therefore, it has no consequences but those 
which belong to a future world. Hence, even 
the passions and vices of men appear to co-ope- 
rate in the promotion of a better state, not in 
atid for themselves ; — in this sense good can never 
come out of evil, — but by furnishing a counter- 
poise to opposite vices, and finally annihilating 
those vices and themselves, by their preponde- 
rance. Oppression could never have gained 
the iipper hand, unless cowardice, and base- 
ness, and mutual distrust had prepared the way 
for it. It will continue to increase, until it era- 
dicates cowardice and the slavish mind ; and 
•■)''^pair re-awakens the courage that was lost. 
riien the two antagonist vices will have de- 
3a 



stroyed each other, and the noblest in all human 
relations, permanent freedom, will have come 
forth from them. 

The actions of free beings have, strictly speak- 
ing, no other consequences than those which 
affect other free beings. For only in such, and 
for such, does the world exist ; and that, wherein 
all agree, is the world. But they have conse- 
quences in free agents only by means of the 
infinite Will, hiy which all individuals exist. 
A call, a revelation of that Will to us, is always 
a requirement to perform some particular duty. 
Hence, even that which we call evil in tlie 
world, the consequence of tlie abuse of free- 
dom, exists only through Him ; and it exists for 
all, for whom it exists, only so far forth as it 
imposes duties upon them. Did it not fall 
within the eternal plan of our moral education 
and the education of our whole race, that pre- 
cisely these duties should be laid upon us, they 
would not have been imposed ; and that where- 
by they are imposed, and which we call evil, 
would never have been. In this view, every- 
thing which takes place is good, and absolutely 
accordant with the best ends. There is but one 
world possible, — a thoroughly good one. Every- 
thing that occurs in this world, conduces to the 
reformation and education of man, and, by 
means of that, to the furtherance of his earthly 
destination. 

It is this higher world-plan that we call Na- 
ture, when we say Nature leads men through 
want to industry, through the evils of general 
disorder to a righteous polity, through the mise- 
ries of their perpetual wars to final, ever-during 
peace. Thy will, Infinite! thy providence 
alone is this higher Nature. This too is best 
understood by artless simplicity, which regards 
this life as a place of discipline and education, 
as a school for eternity; which, in all the for- 
tunes it experiences, the most trivial as well as 
the most momentous, beholds thy ordinations 
designed for good ; and which firmly believes 
that all things will work together for good to 
those who love their duty and know thee. 

O ! truly have I spent the former days of my 
life in darkness. Truly have I heaped errors 
upon errors, and thought myself wise. Now 
first I fully understand the doctrine which 
seemed so strange to me, out of thy mouth, 
wondrous Spirit!* ahhough my understanding 
had nothing to oppose to it. For now first I 
overlook it, in its whole extent, in its deepest 
ground, and in all its consequences. 

Man is not a product of the world of sense ; 
and the end of his existence can never be at- 
tained in that world. His destination lies be- 
yond time and space and all that pertains to 
sense. He must know what he is and what 
he is to make himself. As his destination is 
sublime, so liis thought must be able to lift it- 
self up above all the bounds of sense. This 

* An allusion to the second book 
34* 



403 



FICHTE. 



must be his calling. Where his being is do- 
mesticated, there his thought must be domesti- 
cated also; and the most truly human view, 
that which alone befits him, that in which his 
whole power of thought is represented, is the 
view by which he lifts himself above those 
limits, by wliich all that is of the senses is 
changed for him into pure nothing, a mere re- 
flection of the alone enduring, supersensual, in 
mortal eyes. 

Many have been elevated to this view witVi- 
out scientific thought, simply by their great 
heart and their pure moral instinct; because 
they lived especially with the heart, and in the 
sentiments. They denied, by their conduct, the 
efficacy and reality of the world of sense ; and 
in the shaping of their purposes and measures, 
they esteemed as nothing that, concerning which, 
they had not yet learned by thinking, that it is 
nothing, even to thought. They who could say, 
"our citizenship is in heaven; we have here no 
continuing place, but seek one to come ;" — they 
whose first principle was, to die to the world 
and to be born anew, and even here, to enter 
into another life, — they, truly, placed not the 
slightest value upon all the objects of sense, and 
were, to use the language of the School, practi- 
cal transcendental Idealists. 

Others who, in addition to the sensual acti- 
vity which is native to us all, have, by their 
thought, confirmed themselves in sense, be- 
come implicated, and, as it were, grown toge- 
ther with it; — they can raise themselves per- 
manently and perfectly above sense only by 
continuing and carrying out their thought. 
Otherwise, with the purest moral intentions, 
they will still be drawn down again by their 
understaniling; and their whole being will re- 
main a continued and insoluble contradiction. 
For such, that philosophy, which I now first 
entirely understood, is the power by which 
Psyche first strips off her caterpillar-hull, and 
unfolds the wings on which she then hovers 
above herself, and casts one glance on the slough 
she has dropped, thenceforth to live and work 
in higher spheres. 

Blessed be the hour in which I resolved to 
meditate on myself and my destination! All 
my questions are solved. I know what I can 
know, and I am without anxiety concerning 
that which I cannot know. I am satisfied. 
There is perfect harmony and clearness in my 
spirit, and a new and more glorious existence 
for that spirit begins. 

My v/hole, complete destination, I do not 
comprehend. What I am called to be and shall 
be, surpasses all my thought. A part of this 
destination is yet hidden within myself, visible 
only to him, the Father of Spirits, to whom it 
is committed. I know only that it is secured 
to me, and that it is eternal and glorious as him- 
self But that portion of it which is committed 
to me, I know. I know it entirely, and it is the 
root of all niy other knowledge. I know, in 



every moment of my life, with certainty, what 
I am to do in that moment. And this is my 
whole destination, so far as it depends upon 
me. From this, since my knowledge goes no 
farther, I must not depart. I must not desire 
to know anything beyond it. I must stand fast 
in this one centre, and take root in it. All my 
scheming and striving, and all my faculty, must 
be directed to that. My whole existence must 
inweave itself with it. * * * * 

* * * I raise myself to this stand-point, 
and am a new creature. My whole relation to 
the existing world is changed. The ties by 
which my mind was heretofore bound to this 
world, and by whose secret attraction it followed 
all the movements of this world, are forever 
divided, and I stand free ; myself, my own 
world, peaceful and unmoved. No longer 
with the heart, with the eye alone, I seize the 
objects about me, and, through the eye alone, 
am connected with them. And this eye itself, 
made clearer by freedom, looks through error 
and deformity to the true and the beautiful ; 
as, on the unmoved surface of the water, forms 
mirror tliemselves pure, and with a softened 
light. 

My mind is forever closed against embarrass- 
ment and confusion, against doubt and anxiety; 
my heart is forever closed against sorrow, and 
remorse, and desire. There is but one thing 
that I care to know: What I must do? And 
this I know, infallibly, always. Concerning all 
beside I know nothing, and I know that I know 
nothing; and I root myself fast in this my igno- 
rance, and forbear to conjecture, to opine, to 
quarrel with myself concerning that of which I 
know nothing. No event in this world can 
move me to joy, and none to sorrow. Cold and 
unmoved I look down upon them all; for I 
know that t cannot interpret one of them, nor 
discern its connection with that which is my 
only concern. Everything which takes place 
belongs to the plan of the eternal world, and is 
good in relation to that plan; so much I know. 
But what, in that plan, is pure gain, and what 
is only meant to remove existing evil, accord 
ingly, what I should most or least rejoice in 1 
know not. In His world everything succeeds. 
This suflSces me, and in this faith I stand firm 
as a rock. But what in His world is only germ, 
what blossom, what the fruit itself, I know not. 

The only thing which can interest me is the 
progress of reason and virtue in the kingdom 
of rational beings; and that purely for its own 
sake, for the sake of the progress. Whether / 
am the instrument of this progress or another, 
vi^hether it is my act which succeeds or is 
thwarted, or whether it is the act of another, is 
altogether indifferent to me. I regard myself 
in every case but as one of the instruments of q 
rational design, and I honor and love myself, 
and am interested in myself, only as such ; and 
wish the success of my act, only so far as it goes 
to accomplish that end. There'bre I regard ali 
the events of this world in the same manner : 



FICHTE. 



403 



only with exclusive reference to this one end ; 
whether they proceed from me or from another, 
whether they relate to me immediately, or to 
others. My breast is closed against all vexa- 
tion on account of personal mortifications and 
affronts; against all exaltation on account of 
personal merits; for my entire personality has 
long since vanished, and been swallowed up in 
the contemplation of the end. 

Bodily sufferings, pain and sickness, should 
such befall me, I cannot avoid to feel, for they 
are events of my nature, and I am and remain 
nature here below. But they shall not trouble 
me. They affect only the Nature, with which 
I am, in some strange way, connected; not 
myself, the being which is elevated above all 
Nature. The sure end of all pain, and of all 
susceptibility of pain, is death ; and of all which 
the natural man is accustomed to regard as 
evil, this is the least so to me. Indeed, I shall 
not die for myself, but only for others, for those 
that remain behind, from whose connexion I 
am severed. For myself, the hour of death is 
the hour of birth to a new and more glorious 
life. 

Since my heart is thus closed to all desire 
for the earthly, since, in fact, I have no longer 
any heart for the perishable, the universe ap- 
pears to my eye in a transfigured form. The 
dead, inert mass which but choked up space 
has vanished ; and instead thereof flows, and 
waves, and rushes the eternal stream of life, and 
power, and deed ; — of the original life, of thy 
life, O Infinite! For all life is thy life, and only 
the religious eye pierces to the kingdom of veri- 
table beauty. 

I am related to Thee, and all that I behold 
around me is related to me. All is quick, all is 
soul, and gazes upon me with bright spirit-eyes, 
and speaks in spirit-tones to my heart. Most 
diversely sundered and severed, I behold, in 
all the forms without me, myself again, and 
beam upon myself from them, as the morning 
sun, in thousand dew-drops diversely refracted, 
glances toward itself 

Thy life, as the finite can apprehend it, is a 
willing which shapes and represents itself by 
means of itself alone. This life, made sensible 
in various ways to mortal eyes, flows through 
me and from me downward, through the im- 
measurable whole of Nature. Here it streams, 
as selfcreating, self-fashioning matter, through 
my veins and musrles, and deposites its fulness 
out of me, in the tree, in the plant, in the grass. 
One connected stream, droj) by drop, the form- 
ing life flows in all shapes and on all sitles, 
wherever my eye can follow it, and looks upon 
me, from every point of the universe, with a 
different aspect, as the same force which fa- 
shions my own body in darkness and in secret. 
Yonder it waves free, an<t leaps and dances as 
self-forming motion in the brute; and, in every 
new body, represents itself as another separate, 
self-subsisting world; — the same power which, 



invisible to me, stirs and moves in my own 
members. All that lives follows this universal 
attraction, this one principle of all movement, 
which conducts the harmonious shook from one 
end of the universe to tlie other. The brute 
follows it without freedom. I, from whom, in 
the visible world, the movement proceeds, 
(without, therefore, originating in me,) follow 
it freely. 

But pure and holy, and near to thine own es- 
sence as aught, to mortal apprehension; can be : 
this thy life flows forth as a band which binds 
spirits with spirits in one ; as air and ether of 
the one world of Reason, inconceivable and in- 
comprehensible, and yet lying plainly revealed 
to the spiritual eye. Conducted by this light- 
stream, thought floats unrestrained and the same 
from soul to soul, and returns purer and trans- 
figured from the kindred breast. Through this 
mystery the individual finds, and understands, 
and loves himself only in another; and every 
spirit detaches itself only from other spirits; 
and there is no man, but only a Humanity; — 
no isolated thinking, and lovi.ig, and hating, but 
only a thinking, and loving, and hating in and 
through one another. Through this mystery the 
affinity of Spirits, in the invisible world, streams 
forth into their corporeal nature, and represents 
itself in two sexes, which, though every spiritual 
band could be severed, are still constrained, as 
natural beings, to love each other. It flows forth 
into the affection of parents and children, of 
brothers and sisters ; as if the souls were sprung 
from one blood as well as the bodies; — as if 
the minds were branches and blossoms of the 
same stem. And from thence it embraces, in 
narrower or wider circles, the whole sentient 
world. Even the hatred of spirits is grounded 
in thirst for love ; and no enmity springs up, 
except from friendship denied. 

Mine eye discerns this eternal life and motion, 
in all the veins of sensible and spiritual Nature, 
through what seems to others a dead mass. And 
it sees this life forever ascend and grow, and 
transfigure itself into a more spiritual expres- 
sion of its own nature. The universe is no 
longer, to me, that circle which returns into 
itself, that game which repeats itself without 
ceasing, that monster which devours itself in 
order to reproduce itself, as it was before. It is 
spiritualized to my contemplation, and be^rs the 
peculiar impress of the Spirit: continual pro- 
gress toward perfection, in a straight line which 
stretches into infinity. 

The sun rises and sets, the stars vanish and 
return again, and all the spheres hold their 
cycle-dance. But they never return precisely 
such as they disappeared ; and in the shining 
fountains of life there is also life and progress. 
Every hour which they bring, every morning 
and every evening sinks down with new bless- 
ings on the world. New life and new love drop 
from the spheres, as dew-drops from the cloud, 
and embrace Nature, as the cool night embraces 
the earth. 



404 



FICHTE. 



All death in Nature is birth ; and precisely 
in (lying, the sublimation of life appears most 
conspicuous. There is no death-bringing prin- 
ciple in Nature, for Nature is only life, tlirough- 
out. Not death kills, but the more living life, 
which, hidden behind the old, begins and un- 
folds itself. Death and birth are only the strug- 
gle of life with itself to manifest itself in ever 
more transfigured form, more like itself 

And my death, — can that be anything differ- 
ent from this ? I, who am not a mere repre- 
sentation and copy of life, but who bear within 
myself the original, the alone true, and essential 
life? It is not a possible thought that Nature 
should annihilate a life which did not spring 
from her; Nature, which exists only for my 
sake, not I for hers. 

But even my natural life, even this mere 
representation of an inward invisible life to 
mortal eyes, Nature cannot annihilate; other- 
wise she must be able to annihilate herself. — 
She who exists only for me and for my sake, 
and who ceases to exist, if I am not. Even be- 
cause she puts me to death she must quicken 
me anew. It can only be my higher life, un- 
folding itself in her, before wliicli my present 
life disappears; and that which mortals call 
death is the visible appearing of a second vivi- 
fication. Did no rational being, who has once 
beheld its light, perish from the earth, there 
would be no reason to expect a new heaven 
and a new earth. The only possible aim of 
Nature, that of representing and maintaining 
Reason, would have been already fulfilled here 
below, and her circle would be complete. But 
the act by which she puts to death a free, self- 
subsisting being, is her solemn, — to all Reason 



apparent, — transcending of that act, and of 
the entire sphere which she thereby closes. 
The apparition of death is the conductor by 
which my spiritual eye passes over to the new 
life of myself, and of Nature, for me. 

Every one of my kind who passes from earthly 
connexions, and who cannot, to my spirit, seem 
annihilated, because he is one of my kind, draws 
my thought over with him. He still is, and to 
him belongs a place. 

While we, here below, sorrow for him with 
such sorrow as would be felt, if possible, in the 
dull kingdom of unconsciousness, when a hu- 
man being withdraws himself from thence to 
the light of earth's sun ; — while we so mourn, 
on yonder side there is joy, because a man is 
born into their world ; as we citizens of earth re- 
ceive with joy our own. When I, sometime, shall 
follow them, there will be joy for me ; for sorrow 
remains behind, in the sphere which I quit. 

It vanishes and sinks before my gaze, the 
world which I so lately admired. With all the 
fulness of life, of order, of increase, which I be- 
hold in it, it is but the curtain by which an in- 
finitely more perfect world is concealed from 
me. It is but the germ out of which that infi- 
nitely more perfect shall unfold itself. My faith 
er.ters behind this curtain, and warms and 
quickens this germ. It sees nothing definite, 
but expects more than it can grasp here below, 
than it will ever be able to grasp in time. 

So I live and so I am ; and so I am unchange- 
able, firm and complete for all eternity. For 
this being is not one which I have received 
from without; it is my own only true being and 
essence. 



JOHANN PAUL FEIEDRICH RICHTER. 



Bora 1763. Died 1825. 



Next to Schiller there is no writer whom 
Germany cherishes with more enthusiastic at- 
tachment than Jean Paul, — so he called him- 
self, while livings, and is still called since his 
death. Confined to a narrower circle than 
Schiller, he is even more intensely loved within 
that circle than the great dramatist himself; 
for he is a writer to be loved, if tolerated. 
There is that in him which allows of no indif- 
ference. He must either attach or repel. 
Where he does not create an irreconcilable 
aversion, he binds with indissoluble friendship. 
Those who read him much, come into personal 
relations with him, and sympathize with him 
as with no other. Indeed, there is no other like 
him in the history of literature. He is incorr>- 
mensurable, and refuses to be classed ; com- 
bining the most contradictory characters and 
gifts; the humorist and the prophet; the wild- 
est fun with the steepest elevation of thought 
and an infinite pathos; the sharpest satire with 
an all-embracing love; a feeling for all little- 
ness and little ones, with the loftiest sentiments 
and aspirations; a prevailing subjectiveness, 
with clear and original intuitions of men and 
things. 

The humorist predominates; and such hu- 
mor ! It is not the humor of Cervantes, though 
sunny and wholesome as his. It is not the 
humor of Rabelais, having nothing of the satyr 
or the swine; and yet Rabelais himself is not 
more wildly fantastic. It is not the humor of 
Swift, though it lacks nothing of his irony ; nor 
is it the humor of Sterne, though not less kind 
and contemplative, and stuffed with conceits. 
It is a humor quite his own, "compounded of 
many simples and extracted from many ob- 
jects." In this, as in other things, he resembles 
no one else in the world but just Jean Paul. 
He is Jean Paul, " the only." 

He was sumptuously, marvellously endowed, 
and if he wanted many essential qualifications 
of a great poet, or even of a good writer, there 
are others which he possessed in unrivalled 
perfection. He has but one rival, and that is 
Shakspeare, in exuberance of fancy. The in- 



continent, the inconceivable, the overwhelm- 
ing affluence of images and illustrations, is 
what first strikes us in his writings. The pa- 
ragraph labors and staggers with meanings 
and double meanings, and after-thoughts and 
side-thoughts, conceits appended to every third 
word, and ornaments stuck in, some sufficient- 
ly bizarre, and others of supernal beauty , mak- 
ing altogether " a piece of joinery so crossly 
indented and whimsically dovetailed, a cabinet 
so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified 
Mosaic," as no other writing can parallel. He 
has absolutely no rival in wnat may be called 
the inborn poetry of the heart, that sympathy 
and identification of himself with all forms and 
ways of being, that secret understanding with 
Nature, that profound humanity which, in an 
inferior degree, so happily distinguishes Words- 
worth among English poets. Some of his 
pieces, for example, Fibel and Quintus Fixlein, 
constitute a new and higher order of idyl ; 
combining the subjective piquancy of modern 
thought with the classic outwardness of the 
ancient model. 

In power of imagination, also, he takes rank 
among the first. Many of his characters are 
wholly new creations, and have an individu- 
ality and a self-subsistence which only true 
genius can impart. It is in his visions, how- 
ever, with which his works abound, that Rich- 
ter's imagination is most active, producing an 
apocalypse of the most extravagant and un- 
heard-of portents, a swarming phantasmagory 
of beautiful and terrible apparitions, which 
make the application more appropriate to him 
than to any other, of those lines which describe 
one of his contemporaries : 

*' Within that mind's abyss profound, 
As in some limbo vast, 
More shapes and monsters did abound 
To set the wondering world ag;hast, 
Than wave- worn Noah fed or starry Tuscan found." 

His faults as a writer are sufficiently promi- 
nent, but, for the most part, so blended and 
complicated with his peculiar merits, that we 
cannot imagine them removed without destroy- 
ing some characteristic excellence. An utter 

(405) 



406 



RICHTER. 



want of grace and form, an habitual lugging 
in of irrelevant learning, an excessive delight 
in verbal quibbles and other conceits, obscurity, 
constant iteration of one or two types of cha- 
racter, exaggeration of one or two features of 
society, want of action in his narratives, a su- 
perfluity of tears and ecstasies not sufficiently 
motived, a passion for extremes — these are 
faults which have often been pointed out, and 
which his warmest admirers will hardly deny. 
On the other hand, the charge of affectation is 
unjust. A mannerist he certainly is, but it is 
the mannerism of idiosyncrasy, a bias in the 
nature of the man, a kink in his genius, a mag- 
got in his brain, without which he would not 
be Jean Paul. 

It is the moral qualities of Richter, far more 
than his intellectual, which endear him to his 
countrymen. To that true and loyal soul the 
deep heart of Germany responds with all its 
music. So loving, and believing, and hoping, 
and aspiring, so innocent of all guile, and free 
from all wrath, and bitterness, and evil speak- 
ing, so full of all fine sentiments and generous 
views, so abounding in compassion for all the 
suffering, willing to clasp them all to his great 
heart, which throbbed evermore with unebbing 
and unspeakable affection for all his kind ; so 
devout, and pure, and good ; he commends him- 
self not only to his own people, but to humanity 
everywhere ; to all that is best in the nature 
of man. It is good to converse with him. His 
word is sound and sanative, " pure as the heart 
of the waters," and " pure as the marrow of 
the earth." 

The life's history of Jean Paul is gathered 
partly from his autobiography, commenced not 
many years before his death, and extending to 
his thirteenth year; partly from an appendix 
to that beginning by Herr Otto, a friend of the 
deceased ; and partly from his correspondence 
with friends and contemporaries. A " Life of 
Jean Paul," in 2 vols. 12mo., embodying a 
translation of the autobiographical fragment, 
and continuing the narrative from the other 
sources above mentioned, was published in 
Boston,* a few years since, by a lady who 
seems to have spared no pains to make herself 
acquainted with her subject. To these two 

* Life of Jean Paul Frederic Richter, compiled from 
various sources, together with his autobiography, trans- 
lated from tiie German. Boston: Charles C. Little & 
taiaea Brown. 



volumes the editor of this work refers with 
pleasure, as the best biography of Richter 
known to him. 

Richter was born at Wunsicdel, in that part 
of Germany called the Fichtelgebirge, or Pine- 
mountain. His father, then organist and under- 
teacher at the gymnasium in that town, was 
soon after appointed pastor (Lutheran) of a 
church, in the small village of Joditz, and, 
some years later, promoted to the larger living 
of Schwarzenbach, on the Saale. From his 
father Richter received his first instruction in 
the languages. At sixteen, he was placed at 
the gymnasium in Hof, a nei^^hboring small 
city. At eighteen, he entered the university 
of Leipzig, where he began the study of theo- 
logy, but soon gave himself up to general cul- 
ture, and began his career as author, with the 
publication of the "Greenland Lawsuits." His 
father had died meanwhile, and he was thrown 
entirely upon himself. His first attempts at 
authorship were not successful, his situation 
was perplexing, and the future looked grimly 
on the penniless youth. •' Fortune seemed to 
have let loose her bandogs, and hungry Ruin 
had him in the wind."* His mother had re- 
moved to Hof, her birth-place, and there Jean 
Paul joined her, in a house which had but one 
apartment, pursuing his studies amid " the jin- 
gle of household operations ;" writing books 
which would not sell, and tasting all the bit- 
terness of extreme penury. " The prisoner's 
allowance," he says, " is bread and water, but 
I had only the latter." — " Nevertheless, I can- 
not help saying to Poverty : Welcome ! so thou 
come not at quite too late a time! Wealth 
bears heavier on talent than Poverty. Under 
gold-mountains and thrones who knows how 
many a spiritual giant may lie crushed down 
and buried ! When among the flames of youth, 
and above all, of hotter powers, the oil of Riches 
is also poured in — little will remain of the 
phoenix but his ashes; and only a Goethe has 
force to keep, even at the sun of good fortune, 
his phoenix-wings unsinged."* For ten years 
and upwards he fought this fight, during which 
time his only support was the money earned 
by the occasional but rare admission of one of 
his contributions to the public journals. Never- 
theless he refused the situation of a private 
tutor, determined to succeed as autlior, or starve 
in the attempt. And he triumphed, at last. 

♦ Carlyle's Miscellanies, vol. IL 



RICHTER. 



407 



After repeated failures, the publication of the 
" Invisible Lodge," in 1793, brought money, 
fame, troops of friends, and, altogether, decided 
his future. After the death of his mother, he 
resided successively in several different places, 
and finally fixed upon Baireuth, in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Fichtelgebirge, as his home. 
In 1801 he married Caroline Mayer, daughter 
of a professor of medicine in Berlin. In 1801 
he received from the Prince Primate, Von Dal- 
berg, a small pension, which was afterward 
paid to him by the King of Bavaria until his 



death. In 1824 the failure of his eyesight im- 
paired his activity, without arresting it entirely. 
He continued to labor with the help of his ne- 
phews, revising his works in order to a uniform 
edition, and making the most of his declining 
strength, until, for all literary purposes, it failed 
him utterly. He died November 14, 1825. 
He was buried by torch-light; the unfinished 
manuscript of his Selina (a work on immor- 
tality) was borne upon his coffin, and Klop- 
stock's Ode, " Thou shalt arise, my soul," was 
sung by the students of the Gymnasium. 



ROME.* 

Half an hour after the earthquake the hea- 
vens swathed themselves in seas, and dashed 
them down in masses and in torrents. The 
naked Campagna and heath were covered with 
the mantle of rain. Gaspard was silent — the 
heavens black — the great thought stood alone 
in Albaiio that he was hastening on toward tlie 
bloody scaffold and the tlirone-scaffolding of 
humanity, the heart of a cold, dead heathen- 
world, the eternal Rome; and when he heard, 
on the Ponte Blolk, that he was now going across 
the Tiber, tlien was it to him as if tlie past had 
risen from the dead, as if the stream of time 
ran backward and bore him with it; under the 
streams of heaven he heard the seven old 
mountain-streams, rushing and roaring, which 
once came down from Rome's hills, and, with 
seven arms, uphove the world from its founda- 
tions. At length the constellation of die moun- 
tain city of God, that stood so broad before him, 
opened out into distant nights; cities, with scat- 
tered lights, lay up and down, and the bells 
(which to his ear were alarm-bells) sounded 
out the fourth hour;j when the carriage rolled 
through the triumphal gate of the city, the Porta 
del Popolo; then the moon rent her black hea- 
vens, and poured down out of the cleft clouds 
the splendor of a whole sky. There stood the 
Egyptian Obelisk of the gateway, high as the 
clouds, in the night, and three streets ran gleam- 
ing apart. " So," (said Alliano to himself, as 
they passed through the Itjng Corso to the tenth 
wanl) "thou art veritably in the camp of the 
God of war; here, where he grasped the hilt 
of the monstrous war-sword, and with the point 
maile the three wounds in three quarters of the 
world !'' — Rain and splendor gushed through 
the vast, brrjad streets — occasionally he passed 
suddenly along by gardens, and into broad city- 
deserts and market-places of the past. The 
rolling of the chariot amidst the rush and roar 
of the rain, resembled the thunder, whose days 

• From an unpiihlisliiMl translation (complete) of "The 
Titan" of J. Paul Kicliler, by Rev. C. T. Brooka. 
1 Ten o'clock. 



were once holy to this heroic city, like the 
thundering heaven to the thundering earth; 
muffled-up forms, with little lights, stole through 
the dark streets; often there stood a long palace 
with colonnades in the light of the moon, often 
a solitary gray column, often a single high fir- 
tree, or a statue behind cypresses. Once, when 
there was neither rain nor moonshine, the car- 
riage went round the corner of a large house, 
on whose roof a tall, blooming virgin, with an 
uplooking child on her arm, herself directed a 
little hand-light, now toward a white statue, 
now toward the child, and so, alternately, illu- 
minated each. This friendly- group made its 
way to the very centre of his soul, now so 
highly exalted, and brought with it, to him, 
many a recollection; particularly was a Roman 
child to him a wholly nev/ and mighty idea. 

They alighted at last at the Prince di Lau- 
ria's, Gaspard s father-in-law and old friend. 
* * * Alhano, dissatisfied with all, kept his 
inspiration sacrificing to the unearthly gods of 
the past round about him, after the old fashion, 
namely, with silence. Well might he, and 
could he, have discoursed, but otherwise; in 
odes, with the whole man, with streams which 
mount and grow upwards. He looked ever 
more and more longingly out of the window at 
the moon in the pure rain-blue, and at single 
columns of the Forum; out of doors there 
gleamed for him the greatest world. — At last 
he rose up, indignant and impatient, and stole 
down into the glimmering glory, and stepped 
before the Forum ; but the moonlit night, that 
decoration-painter, which works with irregular 
strokes, maile almost the very stage of the scene 
irrecognisable to him. 

What a dreary, broad plain, loftily encom- 
passed with ruins, gardens and temples, covered 
with prostrate capitals of columns, and with 
single, upright pillars, and with trees and a 
dumb wilderness ! The heapedup ashes out 
of the emptied urn of Time — and the potsherds 
of a great world flung around ! He passed by 
three temple columns,* which the earth had 

* Of Jupiter Tonans. 



408 



RICHTER. 



drawn down into itself even to the breast, and 
along through the broad triumphal arch of Sep- 
timus Severus ; on the right, stood a chain of 
columns without their temple; on the left, at- 
tached to a Christian church, the colonnade of 
an ancient heathen temple, deep sunken into 
the sediment of time ; at last the triumphal arch 
of Titus, and before it, in the middle of the 
woody wilderness, a fountain gushing into a 
granite basin. 

He went up to this fountain, in order to sur- 
vey the plain, out of which the thunder-mouths 
of the earth once arose ; but he went along as 
over a burnt-out sun, hung round with dark, 
dead earths. "O Man, the dreams of Man!" 
something within him unceasingly cried. He 
stood on the granite margin, turning toward the 
Coliseum, whose mountain ridges of wall stood 
high in the moonlight, with the deep gaps which 
had been hewn in them by the scythe of Time 
— sharply stood the rent and ragged arches of 
Nero's golden house close by, like murderous 
cutlasses. The Palatine Hill lay full of green 
gardens, and, in crumbling temple -roofs, the 
blooming death -garland of ivy was gnawing, 
and living ranunculi still glowed around sunken 
capitals. — The fountain murmured babblingly 
and forever, and the stars gazed steadfastly 
down, with transitory rays, upon the still battle- 
field, over which the winter of time had passed 
without bringing after it a spring — the fiery soul 
of the world had flown up, and the cold, crum- 
bling giant lay around — torn asunder were the 
gigantic spokes of the main-wheel, which once 
the very stream of ages drove. And in addition 
to all this, the moon shed down her light like 
eating silver-water upon the naked columns, and 
would fain have dissolved the Coliseum and 
the temples and all into their own shadows! 

Then Albano stretched out his arm into the 
air, as if he were giving an embrace and flow- 
ing away as in the arms of a stream, and ex- 
claimed, "O ye mighty shades, ye, who once 
strove and lived here, ye are looking down from 
Heaven, but scornfully, not sadly, ibr your great 
fatherland has died and gone after you! Ah, 
had I, on the insignificant earth, full of old eter- 
nity, which you have made great, only done 
one action worthy of you ! Then v/ere it sweet 
to iTie and allowed me, to open my heart by a 
wound, and to mix earthly blood with the hal- 
lowed soil, and, out of the world of graves, to 
hasten away to you, eternal and immortal ones! 
But I am not worthy of it!" 

At this moment there came suddenly along 
up the Via Sacra, a tall man, deeply enveloped 
in a mantle, who drew near the fountain, with- 
out looking round, threw down his hat, and held 
a coal-black, curly, almost perpendicular, hind- 
head under the stream of water. But hardly 
had he, turning upward, caught a glimpse of 
the profile of Albano, absorbed in his fancies, 
when he started up, all drijiping, — stared at the 
fount — fell into an amazement — threw his arms 
high into the air — and said, ^^Jimkof — Albano 



looked at him. — The stranger said, "Albano!" 
"MyDian!" cried Albano; they clasped each 
other passionately and wept for love. 

Dian could not comprehend it at all ; he said 
in Italian; "But it surely cannot be you, you 
look old." He thought he was speaking Ger- 
man all the time, till he heard Albano answer 
in Italian. Both gave and received only ques- 
tions. Albano found the architect merely 
browner, but there was the lightning of the 
eyes and every faculty in its old glory. With 
three words he related to him the journey, and 
who the coiTipany were. "How does Rome 
strike you?" asked Dian, pleasantly. "As life 
does," replied Albano, very seriously, "it makes 
me too soft and too hard." — " I recognise here 
absolutely nothing at all," he continued: "do 
those columns belong to the magniflcent temple 
of Peace?" "No," said Dian, "to the temfjle 
of Concord; of the other there stands yonder 
nothing but the vault." " Where is Saturn's 
temple?" asked Albano. "Buried in St. Adri- 
an's church;" said Dian, and added hastily, 
"close by stand the ten columns of Antouine's 
temple; — over beyond there the baths of Titus 
— behind us the Palatine hill, and so on. Now 
tell me — !" 

They walked up and down the Forum, be- 
tween the arches of Titus and Severus. Albano 
— especially, near the teacher who, in the days 
of childhood, had so often conducted him hither- 
ward, — was yet full of the stream which had 
swept over the world, and the all-covering 
water sunk but slowly. He went on and said, 
"to-day, when he beheld the Obelisk, the soft, 
tender brightness of the moon had seemed to 
him eminently unbecoming for the giant city; 
he would rather have seen a sun blazing on its 
broad banner; but now the moon was the pro- 
per funeral -torch beside the dead Alexander, 
who, at a touch, collapses into a handful of 
dust." — "The artist does not get far with feel- 
ings of this kind," said Dian, " he must look 
upon everlasting beauties on the right hand and 
on the left." — " Where," Albano went on ask- 
ing, "is the old lake of Curtius — the Rostrum — 
the pila Horatia — the temple of Vesta — of Ve- 
nus, and of all those solitary columns ?" — " And 
where is the marble Forum itself?" said Dian ; 
" it lies thirty span deep below our feet." — 
" Where is the great, free people, the senate of 
kings, the voice of the orators, the procession to 
the Capitol? Buried under the mountain of 
potsherds. O Dian, how can a man who loses 
a father, a beloved, in Rome shed a single tear 
or look round him with consternation, when he 
comes out here before this battle-field of time, 
and looks into the charnel-house of the nations? 
Dian, one would wish here an iron heart, for 
fate has an iron hand !" 

Dian, who nowhere stayed more reluctantly 
than upon such tragic clitfs, hanging over as it 
were into the sea of eternity, almost leaped otf 
from them with a joke ; like the Greeks, he 
blended dances with tragedy j " Many a thing 



RICHTER. 



409 



is preserved here, friend !" said he : " in Adrian's 
church yonder they will still show you the bones 
of the three men that walked in tVie fire." 
"That is just the frightful play of destiny," re- 
plied Albano, " to occupy the heights of the 
mighty ancients with monks shorn down into 
slaves." 

" The stream of time drives new wheels," 
said Dian : " yonder lies Raphael twice buried. '* 
* * * And so they climbed silently and 
speedily over rubbish and torsos of columns, 
and neither gave heed to the mighty emotion 
of the other. 

Rome, like the Creation, is an entire wonder, 
which gradually dismembers itself into new 
wonders, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, St. Peter's 
church, Raphael, &c. 

With the passage through the church of St. 
Peter, the knight began the noble course through 
Immortality. The Princess let herself, by the 
tie of Art, be bound to the circle of the men. As 
Albano was more smitten with edifices than 
with any other work of man ; so did he see from 
afar, with holy heart, the long mountain-chain 
of Art, which again bore upon itself hills; so 
did he stop before the plain, around which the 
enormous colonnades run like Corsos, bearing a 
people of statues; — in the centre shoots up the 
obelisk, and on its right and left an eternal 
fountain, and from the lofty steps, the proud 
Church of the world, inwardly filled with 
churches, rearing upon itself a temple toward 
Heaven, looks down upon the earth. — But how 
wonderfully, as they drew near, had its columns 
and its rocky wall mounted up and flown away 
from the vision ! 

He entered the magic church, which gave the 
world blessings, curses, kings and popes, with 
the consciousness, that, like the world-edifice, it 
was continually enlarging and receding more 
and more the longer one remained in it. They 
went up to two children of white marble, who 
held an incense-muscle-shell of yellow marble; 
the children grew by nearness, till they were 
giants. At length they stood at the main altar 
and its hundred perpetual lamps. What a still- 
ness! Above them the heaven's arch of the 
dome, resting on four inner towers ; around them 
an over-arched city of four streets in which 
stood churches. — The temple became greatest 
by walking in it; and when they passed round 
one column, there stood a new one before them, 
and holy giants gazed earnestly down. 

Here was the youth's large heart, after so 
long a time, filled. "In no art," said he to his 
father, "is the soul so miglitily possessed with 
the sublime as in architecture; in every other 
the giant stands within and in the depths of the 
soul, but here he stands out of and close before 
it." Dian, to whom all images were more clear 
than abstract ideas, said he was perfectly right. 

• The body in the Pantheon, the head in St. Luke's 
church. 

3b 



FraischdOrfer replied, " The sublime also her 
lies only in the brain, for the whole church 
stands after all in something greater, namely, in 
Rome, and under the heavens, in the presence 
of which latter, we certainly should not feel 
anything." He also complained that the place 
for the sublime in his head was very much 
narrowed by the innumerable volutes and mo- 
numents which the temple shut up therein at 
the same time with itself" Gaspard, taking 
everything in a large sense, remarked, " When the 
sublime once really appears, it then, by its very 
nature, absorbs and annihilates all little circum- 
stantial ornaments." He adduced as evidence 
the tower of the Minster,* and Nature itself, 
which is not made smaller by its grasses and 
villages. 

Among so many connoisseurs of art, the Prin- 
cess enjoyed in silence. 

The ascent of the dome, Gaspard recom- 
mended to defer to a dry and cloudless day, in 
order that they might behold the queen of the 
world, Rome, upon and from the proper throne ; 
he therefore proposed, very zealously, the visit- 
ing of the Pantheon, because he was eager to 
let this follow immediately after the impression 
of St. Peter's church. They went thither. How 
simply and grandly the hall opens! Eight yel- 
low columns sustain its brow, and majestically 
as the head of the Homeric Jupiter its temple 
arches itself. It is the Rotunda or Pantheon. — 
" O the pigmies," cried Albano, " who would 
fain give us new temples ! Raise the old ones 
higher out of the rubbish, and then you have 
built enough !"'-(• They stepped in ;— there rose 
itself around them a holy, simple, free world- 
structure, with its heaven-arches soaring and 
striving upward, an Odeum of the tones of the 
Sphere-music, a world in the world! And 
overhead,:^ the eye-socket of the light and of 
the sky gleamed down, and the distant rack of 
clouds seemed to touch the lofty arch over which 
it shot along! And round about them stood 
nothing but the temple-bearers, the columns! 
The temple of all gods endured and concealed 
the diminutive altars of the later ones. 

Gaspard questioned Albano about his impres- 
sions. He said he preferred the larger church 
of St. Peter. The knight approved, and said 
that youth, like nations, always more easily 
found and better appreciated the sublime than 
the beautiful, and that the spirit of the young 
man ripened from strong to beautiful, as the 
body of the same ripens from the beautiful into 
the strong; — however, he himself preferred the 
Pantheon. "How could the moderns," said the 
Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdorfer, "build any- 
thing, except some little Bernim's Towers?'' 
" That is why," said the off'ended Provincial 
Architect, Dian, (who despised the Counsellor 

* Strassburg. 

t The hall of the Pantheon seems too low, because a 
part of its steps is hidden hy the rubbish. 

t This opening in the roof is twenty-seven feel in 
diameter. 

35 



410 



RICHTER. 



Df Arts, because he never made a good figure, 
except in the aesthetic hall of judgment as 
critic, never in the exhibition-hall as painter), 
" we moderns are, witliout contradiction, stronger 
in criticism; tliough in practice we are, collect- 
ively and individually, blockheads." Bouverot 
remarked, the Corinthian columns might be 
higher. The Counsellor of Arts said, after all 
lie knew rjothing more like this fine hemisphere 
than a much smaller one, which he had found 
in Hercnlaneum moulded in ashes, of the bosom 
of a fair fugitive." The knight laughed, and 
Albano tnrned away in disgust and went to 
the Princess. 

He asked her for lier opinion about the two 
temi)les. "Sophocles here, Sliakspeare there; 
but I comprehend and appreciate Sophocles 
more easily," she replied, and looked with new 
eyes into liis new coimtenance. For the super- 
tratiiral ilhnnina'tion through the zenith of Hea- 
ven, not through a hazy horizon, transfigured, 
in her eyes, the beautiful and excited counte- 
nance of the youth ; and she took for granted 
that the saintly halo of the dome must also exalt 
Jier form — when he answered her, " Very good ! 
But in Sliakspeare, Sophocles also is contained, 
liot, however., Shakspeiire in Sophocles — and in 
Peters Church stands Angelo's Rotunda !" Just 
then the lofty cloud, all at once, as by the blow 
of a hand out of the ether, broke in two, and 
the ravished Sun, like the eye of a Venus float- 
ing through her ancient heavens, — for she once 
stood even here, — looked mildly in from the 
upper deep; then a holy radiance filled the 
temple, and burned on the porphyry of the 
pavement, and Albano looked around him in 
an ecstasy of wonder and delight, and said with 
low voice: "How transfigured at this moment 
is everything in this sacred place! Raphael's 
spirit comes forth from his grave in this noon- 
tide hour, and everything which its reflection 
touches, brightens into godlike splendor!" The 
Princess looked upon him tenderly, and he 
tightly laid his hand upon hers, and said, as one 
vanquished, "Sophocles!" 

On the next moonlit evening, Gaspard be- 
spoke torches, in order that the Coliseum, with 
its giant-circle, might the first time stand in fire 
before them. The knight would fain have gone 
around alone with his son ditnly through the 
dim work, like two spirits of the olden time, 
but the Princess forced herself upon him, from 
a too lively wish to share with the noble youth 
his great moments, and perhaps, in fact, her 
heart and his own. Women do not sufiiciently 
comprehend that an idea, when it fills and ele- 
vates man's mind, shuts it, then, against love, 
and crowds out persons; whereas with woman 
all ideas easily become human beings. 

They passed over the -Forum, by the Via 
sacra, to the Coliseum, whose lofty, cloven fore- 
heai looked down pale under the moonlight. 
They stood before the gray rock-walls, which 
reared themselves on four colonnades one above 



another, and the torchlight shot up into the arches 
of the arcades, gilding the green shrubbery high 
overhead, and deep in the earth had the noble 
monster already buried his feet. They stepped 
in and ascended the mountain, full of fragments 
of rock, from one seat of the spectators to an- 
other. Gaspard did not venture to the sixth or 
highest, where the men used to stand, but Al- 
bano and the Princess did. Then the youth 
gazed down over the cliff's, upon the round, 
green crater of the burnt-out volcano, which 
once swallowed nine thousand beasts at once, 
and which quenched itself with human blood. 
The lurid glare of the torches penetrated into the 
clefts and caverns, and among the foliage of the 
ivy and laurel, and among the great shadows 
of the moon, which, like recluses, kept them- 
selves in cells. Toward the South, where the 
streams of centuries and barbarians had stormed ' 
in, stood single columns and bare arcades. 
Temples and three palaces had the giant fed 
and lined with his limbs, and still, with all 
his wounds, he looked out livingly into the 
world. 

" What a people!" said Albano. "Here curled 
the giant snake five times about Christianity. 
Like a smile of scorn lies the moonlight down 
below there upon the green arena, where once 
stood the Colossus of the Sun-god. The star of 
the north* glimmers low through the windows, 
and the Serpent and the Bear crouch. What a 
world has gone by !" — The Princess answered, 
" that twelve thousand prisoners built this the- 
atre, and that a great many more had bled 
therein." "O! we too have building prisoners," 
said he, " but for fortifications ; and blood, too, 
still flows, but with sweat! No, we have no 
present; the past, without it, must bring forth 
a future." 

The Princess went to break a laurel-twig and 
pluck a blooming wall -flower. Albano sank 
away into musing: the autumnal wind of the 
past swept over the stubble. On this holy emi- 
nence he saw the constellations, Rome's green 
hills, the glimmering city, the Pyramid of Ces- 
tius, — but all became Past, and on the twelve 
hills dwelt, as upon graves, the lofty old spirits, 
and looked sternly into the age, as if they -were 
still its kings and judges. 

"This to remember the place and time!" said 
the approaching Princess, handing him the 
laurel and the flower. — " Thou mighty One ! a 
Coliseum is thy flower-pot ; to thee is nothing 
too great, and nothing too small!" said he, and 
threw the Princess into considerable confusion, 
till she observed that he meant not her, but 
nature. His whole being seemed newly and 
painfully moved, and, as it were, removed to a 
distance : he looked down after his father, and 
went to find him ; he looked at him sharply, 
and spoke of nothing more this evening. 

* The Pole-star, as well as other northern constella- 
tions, stands lower in the south. 



RICHTER. 



411 



LEIBGEBER TO SIEBENKAS* 

Bairetttb, 21st September, 1785. 

" Mt dear brother, and cousin, and uncle, and 
father, and son, — The two ears and chambers 
of your heart, are my whole genealogical tree ; 
wherein you resemble Adam, who, when he 
went out walking, carried with him the whole 
future race of his relations, and bis long line of 
successors (which even yet is not all drawn out 
and unwound), until he became a father, and 
his wife bore a child. Would to God I had 
been the first Adam i * * * Siebenkas, I 
adjure you, let me follow up this thought as 
though I were crazed ; and don't expect another 
word in this letter except such as may assist in 
painting my portrait as the first father of man- 
kind. 

"Those scholars misunderstood me greatly 
who may suppose that I was to be Adam, be- 
cause, according to Puffendorf and many others, 
the whole earth would then belong to me of 
right; — like a European possession in the India 
of the universe, — as my patrimonium Petri, Pauii, 
Judce, inasmuch as I, the only Adam and man, 
consequently as the first and last universal mo- 
narch (though as yet without subjects), could 
and might lay claim to the whole earth. The 
Pope, as holy father, though not as first father, 
may think of such things; or rather, he did not 
think about them centuries ago, when he ap- 
pointed himself guardian and heir of all the 
lands incorporated into the earth; nay, and did 
not even blush to pile upon his earthly crown 
yet two others — a heavenly crown and a crown 
of hell. 

"How little I desire! My sole motive for 
wishing to have been the old and oldest Adam, 
is, that on my marriage-evening I might have 
walked up and down with Eve outside the 
espalier of Paradise, in our green honeymoon 
aprons and skins, and have held a Hebrew 
wedding-oration to the mother of mankind. 

"Before I begin my speech, I must preface 
with the remark, that before my fall the extra- 
ordinarily I'elicitons idea suggested itself to me 
of noiing down the cream of my omniscience; 
for in my state of innocence, I possessed a know- 
ledge of all the arts and sciences, universal as 
well as scholastic history, the several penal and 
other cod-es of law, and all the old dead lan- 
guages, as well as the living: I was, as it were, 
a living Pindus and Pegasus, a movable lodge 
of sublime light, a royal literary society, a pocket- 
seat of the Muses, and a short golden siecle de 
Louis XIV. With the understanding 1 then 
possessed, it was therefore less to be wondered 
at, than to be considered as a piece of good 
luck, that in my leisure moments I consigned 
the best of my omniscience to paper ; so that 
when I afterwards fell, and became silly, I had 



* From " Flower, Fruit, and Tliorn Pieces." Trans- 
lated \iy Edw. Henry Noel. Boston : James Munroe Sl Co. 
1845. 



extracts, or a resume, of my former knowledge 
at hand, to which I was eriabled to refer. 

"'Virgin,' thus, beyond the gates of Paradise, 
did I begin my discourse; 'Virgin, we are in- 
deed the first parents, and have a mind to beget 
other parents; but you think of nothing, as long 
as yon can only stick your spoon into a forbid- 
den mess of sweetmeat. 

" ' I, as man and protoplast, reflect and pon- 
der ; and to-day, as I walk up and down, I will 
be the marriage-priest and preacher (I wish I 
had begotten another for this purpose) at our 
holy ceremony, and represent to you and my- 
self, in a short wedding-discourse, the grounds 
of doubt and decision, the rationes dubitandi and 
decidendi of the protoplasts, or first married pair 
(i.e. myself and thee), in the act of reflecting 
and considering; and, moreover, Aoiti they con- 
sider, in the first Pars, the grounds and reasons 
not to fructify the earth, but this very day to 
emigrate, the one into the old, the other into the 
new world ; and, in the second Pars, the rea- 
sons nevertheless to leave it alone, and to mar- 
ry; whereupon a short elench, or usus epanor- 
thoticus, shall appear and conclude the night. 

PARS I. 

" ' Pious hearer ! such as thou now beholdest 
me in my sheep-skin, full of earnest and deep 
thought, I am nevertheless full, not so much of 
follies as of fools, between whom a wise man 
is occasionally inserted by way of a parenthesis. 
It is true, I am small of stature,* and the ocean 
rose some way above my ankles, and wet my 
new wild-beast skin; but, by heaven! I walk 
up and down here, girded with a seed-bag, 
containing the seeds of all nations, and I carry 
the repertorium and treasury-chest of the whole 
human race, a little world, and an orbis pictus, 
before me, as pedlars carry their open ware- 
house on their stomach ; for Bonnet, who lives 
within me, when he comes forth, will seat him- 
self down at his writing-desk, and show that 
all things are comprised one within the other, 
one parenthesis or box within the other; that 
the son is contained in the father, both in the 
grandfather, and consequently in the great- 
grandfather both the grandfather and his inser- 
tions lie waiting; in the great-great-grandfather 
the great-grandfather with the insertion of the 
insertion, and with all his episodes, and so on 
Are not all religious sects — for I cannot make 
myself too intelligible to thee, beloved bride — 
incorporated in thy bridegroom here present, 
and with the exception of the Preadamites, even 
the Adamites,t — all giants, the great Christopher 
himself, — the people of all nations, all the ship- 
loads of negroes destined for America, and the 
red-marked packages, among which is the An- 

* The French Academician Nicolas Henrion stretched 
out Adam to the lengili of 123 feet, 9 inches ; Herarn, 118 
feel, 9 3-4 inches, 'J'he above is related by the KJhbis, 
viz., that Adam after (he fnil ran through the ocean vide 
the 4th Bibl. Disc. ofSuurin. 

t The well-known sect which went naked to church 



412 



RICHTER. 



spach and Baireuth soldiery, bespoken by the 
English 1 When you contemplate my interior, 
Eve, do I not stand before you as a living street 
of Jews, a Louvre of governors and kings, all of 
whom I can beget if I please, supposing I am 
not decided to the contrary by this first Pars? 
You must admire me, though at the same time 
you may laugh, if you look at me attentively, 
and placing your hand upon my shoulder, just 
consider: Here ia this man and protoplast lie 
side by side, without quarrelling, all the facul- 
ties and the whole race of man, — all the schools 
of philosophy, sewing-schools, and spinning- 
schools ; the best and most ancient princely 
houses, though not yet cleanly picked out from 
the common ships' companies; the whole free 
imperial order of knightliood, though still packed 
up with their vassals, cottiers, and tenants ; 
convents of nuns, bound up with convents of 
monks; barracks, and county -deputies, not to 
mention the ecclesiastical chapters of provosts, 
deacons, priors, sub-priors, and canons! What 
a man and Anak ! wilt thou say. Right, dear 
one, so I am indeed ! I am, in fact, the nest- 
dollar of the whole human cabinet of coins; the 
tribunal of all the courts of justice, which are, 
moreover, all full without the absence of a single 
member; the living corpus juris of all civilians, 
canonists, feudalists, and publicists. Have I 
not Meusel's learned Germany, and JOchers 
learned school -lexicon, complete within me? 
and, more than that, Joclier and Meusel in per- 
son, not to speak of supplementary volumes? 

" ' I should like to show you Cain. Supposing 
I am persuaded by the second Pars, he would 
be our first seedling and tendril, our prince of 
Wales, of Calabria, of Asturia, and of the Bra- 
zils. If he were transparent, as I believe, you 
would see how every thing fits in him one 
within the other, like beer-glasses ; all ecumenic 
councils, and inquisitions, and propaganda, and 
the devil and his grandmother. But, lovely one, 
you did not note down any of your sdentia media 
before your fall, as I did, and consequently you 
gaze into futurity as blind as a beetle ; but I, 
who see through it quite clearly, perceive by 
my chreslomatliy thai if I really avail myself 
of my Biumeiibach's nisus formativus, and cast 
to-day a few protoplastic glances into the jus 
luxanduE coxa, or prima 7ioctis,'*' I shall not beget 
ten fools, like another person, but whole bil- 
lions of tens, and the units besides, when one 
thinks of all the arrant Bohemians, Parisians, 
inhabitants of Vienna, Leipzic, Baireuth, Hof, 
Dublin, Kuhschnappel (together with their 
wives and daughters), who will come into life 
through me; amongst whom there are always 
a million for every five hundred who neither 
listen to reason nor possess it. Duenna, as yet 
vou know but little of mankind; you only know 
two, for the snake is not one ; but I know what 
I am about, and that with my limbus infantum 
* Literally the "first ni^'ht," because, according to 
many scholars, Eve became the fruit-thief on the very 
morning ol her creation. 



I shall at the same time open a bedlam. By 
heaven! I tremble and groan when I take but 
a cursory glance between the leaves of the 
course of centuries, and see nothing there but 
stains of blood and patchwork quodlibets of fools ; 
when I think of the trouble it will cost before 
an age learns to write a legible hand as good 
as that of an elephant's trunk or of a mini.ster^ 
before poor humanity has passed through pre- 
paratory schools, and hedge-schools, and private 
French governesses, and can enter with honor 
the Latin lyceum, royal and Jesuit schools— 
before it can attend the fencing school, the 
dancing floor, a drawing academy, and a dog- 
maticum and clinicum. The devil ! It makes 
me hot only to think of it! It is true nobody 
will call you the brooil-hen of the future flight 
of starlings, the cod-fish spawner, wherein Leu- 
enhock counts nine million and a half of stock- 
fish eggs ; it will not be laid at your door, my 
little Eve; but your husband will bear all the 
blame. He ought to have been wiser, people 
will say, and rather not have begotten anything 
at all than such a rabble as the greater number 
of these robbers are ; such, for instance, as the 
crowned emperors on the Roman throne, and 
also the vicegerents on the Roman chair ; the 
former of whom will name themselves after 
Antoninus and Caesar, the latter after Christ and 
Peter, and amongst whom may be found some 
whose throne is a Liineburgchair of torture for 
humanity, and a birth-chair of the scaflbid, if it 
be not indeed a Place de Greve reversed, serving 
at one and the same time as a place of execu- 
tion for the mass, and of pleasure for the indi- 
vidual.* I shall also have Borgia, Pizarro, St. 
Domenico, and Potemkin, brought up against 
me ; and even granting that I could free my- 
self from the reproach of these black exceptions, 
I must nevertheless concede (and anti-Adams 
will take hold o£ it utiliter') that my descendants 
and colonists cannot exist half an hour without 
either thinking or committing some folly; that 
in their giant war of passions they never esta- 
blish a peace, seldom a truce; that the chief 
fault of man consists in his having so many 
little faults that his conscience scarcely serves 
him for anything else but to hate his neighbor, 
and to have a morbid sensitiveness for the faults 
of others; that he will never part with his evil 
habits until he is on his death-bed, alongside 
which is pushed a confessional, much as child- 
ren are made to go to stool before they are put 
to bed ; that he learns and loves the language 

* It seems almost emblematic of the incorporation of 
the fierce earnest tiger and the playful ape, that the 
Place de Greve in Paris is at once the place of execution 
for criminals, and the pleasure-ground for the public fes- 
tivaJs ; that on one and the same spot a king's assassin 
is lorn asunder by horses, ajul a king's fete is celebrated 
by the citizens; and that the fire-wheels of the viciima 
broken on the wheel and the fire-wheels of the fire-works 
play together in close fellowship. Horrible conirasls! 
which we must not accumulate, lest we fall into the 
error of those who liave given occasion for this rebuke. 



RICKTER. 



413 



pf virtue, while lie shows enmity to the virtuous 
— resembling in this the citizens of London, 
who hate the French, while they keep French 
masters to learn their language. Eve, Eve! 
we shall gain little honor by our marriage. 
According to the fundamental text, Adam sig- 
nifies red earth; and verily my cheeks will be 
entirely composed thereof, and blush when I 
think of the inexpressible and uninterrupted 
vanity and self-conceit of our great-grandchild- 
ren, — a vanity growing with every century. 
No one will pull his own nose but he who 
shaves himself; the high nobility will burn the 
family -escutcheon at the door of their secret 
chambers, and interweave the cruppers of their 
horses into their initials: reviewers will set 
themselves above the authors, the latter above 
the former; the Heimlicher von Blaise will 
present his hand for the orphan's kiss ; the la- 
dies theirs to every one; and the highest will 
kiss the hem of the embroidered garment. Eve, 
I had barely finished writing down my pro- 
phetic extracts of the world's history up to the 
sixth millennar/, when you bit into the apple 
under the tree; and I, like an ass, followed 
your example, and then everything escaped me. 
God knows what may be the semblance of the 
male and female fools of the other millennaries. 
Virgin ! wilt thou now use the sternodeidonias- 
toideum, as tiommering calls the nod of the head, 
and therewith say thy yea, when I ask thee, 
Wilt thou have this marriage-preacher to thy 
wedded lord and husband? 

"'You will answer, without doubt: We will 
at least listen to the second Pars, wherein the 
affair is considered in another point of view ; 
and truly, pious reader, we had almost forgotten 
to proceed to 



and altogether to weigh the grounds which in- 
duce protoplasts and first parents to be such, 
and to marry, serving Destiny in the capacity 
of sewing and spinning machines of linseed and 
hemp, of flax and tow, which she may wind in 
infinite coils and net-work round the earthly 
sphere. My chief motive, and I hope thine 
also, is my conception of the last day; for in 
case we two becoine the entrepreneurs of the 
human race, I shall behold all my descendants 
steaming up on the last day from the calcined 
eartli into the nearest neighboring planet, and 
arranging themselves in order for the last re- 
view ; and in this blessed harvest of children 
and grandchildren I shall meet some who are 
gifted with understanding, and with whom one 
can exchange a word or two — men whose whole 
life passed under a thunder-cloud, and who lost 
it in a storm, as, according to the belief of the 
Romans, the favorites of the gods were struck 
dead by lightning — men who, nevertheless, 
neither bound their eyes or their ears in the 
lempest. Furthermore, I behold there the four 
glorious heathen evangelists, Socrates, Cato, 
Epictelus, and Antoninus, who went about to 



every house applying their throats, like the 
pipes of fire-engines 200 feet in length, to every 
damnable conflagration of the passions, and ex- 
tinguishing them with the best and purest alpine 
water. In short, we shall, if we so please, be 
— I the grandpapa, and you the grandmamma, 
of the most excellent people. I tell thee, Eve, 
it is noted down here in my tracts and collecta- 
nea, black upon white, that I shall be the fore- 
father, the ancestor, the Bethlehem, and plastic 
nature of an Aristotle, a Plato, a Shakspeare, 
Newton, Rousseau, Goethe, Kant, and Leibnitz, 
besides others who are still cleverer than their 
protoplast himself. Eve! thou acting and im- 
portant member of this present fruit-bearing 
society, or productive class in the state, consist- 
ing of you and the wedding-orator, I swear to 
you that I shall enjoy an hour of some blissful 
etertiities when I stand upon the neighboring 
planet, and cast my eyes flightily over the circle 
of classic and new-born men, and then kneel 
down in rapture upon the satellite, and exclaim, 
"Good morning, my children!"' 

" Ye Jews formerly had the habit of uttering 
an ejaculatory prayer when ye met a wise man ; 
but what prayer can I utter long enough, when 
I behold at one glance all the wise men and 
members of faculties, all of them, moreover, 
my relations, who, in spite of the wolfish hunger 
of the passions, yet knew how to renounce the 
forbidden apple and pear and ananas, and who, 
in their thirst after truth, committed no garden- 
robbery from the tree of knowledge, like their 
first parents, who seized the forbidden fruit, 
though they felt no hunger, and attacked the 
tree of knowledge, although they already pos- 
sessed all knowledge, excepting that of the 
snake's nature. Then I shall rise from the 
ground, and rush among the crowd of my de- 
scendants, and fall on the bosom of one chosen 
one, and throw my arms round him, and say, 
'Thou true, good, contented, gentle son, if, in 
the second Pars of my wedding-discourse, I 
could have shown my Eve, the queen-mother 
of the present swarm of bees around us, none 
other but thee, sitting in thy breeding-cell, verily 
the woman would have taken it to heart, and 
listened to reason :' and the true good son art 
thou, Siebenkas; and thou wilt ever lie on the 
rough hairy breast of 

"Thy Friend." 



SECOND EXTRACT FROM "FLOWER, FRUIT AND 
THORN PIECES." 

Man lies under the yoke of a twofold neces- 
sity ; that of the day, which he bears without 
murmur, and that of the year, which, though 
more rare, he cannot endure without wrangling 
and complaint. The daily and ever-renewed 
necessity is, that no wheat grows in winter; 
that we are not gifted with wings, like so many 
of the animal tribe; that we cannot set our foot 
upon the ring-shaped mountains of the moon 
and thence gaze on the descending sun glor' 
35* 



414 



RICHTER. 



ously illumining the mile-deep abysses. Thie 
yearly and more rare necessity is, that it rains 
when the corn is in blossom ; that we cannot 
walk conveniently in many a marshy meadow 
of earth ; and that occasionally, because of corns 
or our want of shoes, we cannot walk at all. 
But the yearly necessity is, in fact, as great as 
the daily one; and it is just as foolish to resist 
and murmur at a paralysis of the limbs, as at 
our want of wings. All the past, and this alone 
is the subject of our sorrow, is so much a matter 
of iron-necessity, that in the eyes of a superior 
being it is an equal folly, on the part of an apo- 
thecary, whether he complain of his shop hav- 
ing been burnt down, or of his inability to go 
botanizing in the moon, though in the phials 
there he would find many things which are 
wanting in his. 

I will here insert a little extra leaf upon the 
consolations in our windy, cold, damp life. Let 
those who are exceedingly vexed, and almost 
inconsolable, at this short digression, seek con- 
solation in the 

EXTRA LEAF ON COIfSOLATIOir. 

A time will come, that is, must come, when 
we shall be commanded by morality not only 
to cease tormenting others, but also ourselves. 
A time must come when man, even on earth, 
shall wipe away most of his tears, were it only 
from pride. 

Nature, indeed, draws tears out of the eyes, 
and sighs out of the breast, so quickly, that the 
wise man can never wholly lay aside the garb 
of mourning from his body ; but let his soul 
wear none. For if it is over a merit to bear a 
small sutfering with cheerfulness, so must the 
calm and patient endurance of the worst be a 
merit, and will only ditfer in being a greater 
one ; as the same reason which is valid for the 
forgiveness of small injuries is equally valid for 
the forgiveness of the greatest. 

The first thing that we have to contend 
against and despise, in sorrow as in anger, is 
its poisonous enervating sweetness, which we 
are so loath to exchange for the labor of consol- 
ing ourselves, and to drive away by the effort 
of reason. 

We must not exact of philosophy, that with 
one stroke of tlie pen it shall reverse the trans- 
formation of Rubens, who, with one stroke of 
his brush, changed a laughing child into a 
weeping one. It is enough if it change die fuU- 
moiu-ning of the soul into half-mourning; it is 
enough if I can say to myself, — I will be con- 
tent to endure the sorrow that philosophy has 
left me; without it, it would be greater, and 
the gnat's bite would be a wasp's sting. 

Kven physical pain shoots its sparks upon us 
out of the eleiuical condenser of the imagina- 
tion. We could rndure tlie most acute pangs 
calmly if they i-.j,y lasted the sixtieth part of a 
second ; but, in fact, we never have to endure 
an hour of pain, but only a succession of die 
sixtieth parts of a second, the sixty beams of 



which are collected into the burning focus of a 
second, and directed upon our nerves by the 
imagination alone. The most painful part of 
our bodily pain is that which is bodiless, or 
immaterial, namely, our impatience, and the 
delusion that it will last forever. 

There is many a loss over which we all know 
for certain that we shall no longer grieve in 
twenty — ten — two years. Why do we not say 
to ourselves : I will at once then, to-day, throw 
away an opinion which I shall abandon in 
twenty years ? Why should I be able to aban- 
don errors of twenty years' standing, and not 
of twenty hours? 

When I awake from a dream which an Ota- 
heite has painted for me on the dark grounil of 
the night, and find the flowery land melted 
away, I scarcely sigh, thinking to myself, " It 
was only a dream." Why is it that if I had 
really possessed this island while awake, and 
it had been swallowed up by an earthquake, 
why is it that I do not then exclaim, " The 
island was only a dream?" Wherefore am I 
more inconsolable at the loss of a longer dream 
than at the loss of a shorter — for that is the dif- 
ference ; and why does man find a great loss 
less probable and less a inatter of necessity, 
when it occurs, than a small one? 

The reason is, that every sentiment and every 
emotion is mad, and exacts and builds its own 
world. A man can vex himself that it is al- 
ready, or only, twelve o'clock. What folly! 
The mood not only exacts its own world, its 
own individual* consciousness, but its owu time. 
I beg every one to let his passions, for once, 
speak out plainly within himself, and to probe 
and question them to the bottom, as to what 
they really desire. He will be terror-struck at 
the enormity of these hitherto only half-muttered 
wishes. Anger wishes that all mankind had 
only one neck; love, that it had only one heart; 
grief, tv/o tear-glands; and pride, two betit 
knees. 

When I read in Widman's " Court Chronicle" 
of the terrible bloody times of the Thirty Years' 
War, and as it were lived them over again ; 
when I heard once more the cries of the tor- 
tured for help, as they struggled in the Danube- 
whirlpools of their age, and again beheld the 
clasping of hands, and the delirious wandering 
to and fro on the several pillars of the crum- 
bling bridges, against which struck foaming 
billows and fiefcely-driven fields of ice — and 
thus reflected, "All the waves have subsided, 
the ice has melted, the storm is mute, and the 
human beings also with their sighs," I was filled 
with a peculiar melancholy feeling of consola- 
tion for all times; and I asked, "Was and is, 
then, this fleeting misery beneath the church- 
yard-gate of life, which three steps into the 
nearest cavern could put an end to, worth ali 
this cowardly lamentation?" Verily, if there 
be, as I believe there is, true constancy under 



* "Sein eignes ich." Tr. 



RICHTER. 



419 



an eternal sorrow, then is patience undei a fleet- 
ing one scarcely worthy of the name. 

A great and unmerited national calamity 
should not humble us, as the theologians de- 
mand, but rather make us proud. When the 
long heavy sword of war falls upon humanity, 
and when a thousand pale hearts are riven and 
bleeding; or when, on a blue serene evening, 
the hot smoky cloud of a city, cast on the fune- 
real pyre, hangs darkly on tlie sky, — as though 
it were the cloud of ashes of a thousand con- 
sumed hearts and joys, — then be thy spirit lifted 
up in pride, and let it contemn the tear and 
that for which it falls, saying, "Thou art much 
too insignificant, thou every-day life, for the in- 
consolableness of an immortal, — thou tattered, 
misshapen, wholesale existence! Upon this 
sphere, which is rounded with the ashes of 
thousands of years, amid the storms of earth, 
made up of vapors, it is a disgrace that the sigh 
should only be dissipated together with the 
bosom that gives it birth, and not sooner; and 
that the tear should not perish except with the 
eye whence it flows." 

But then, moderate thy sublime indignation, 
and put this question to thyself: If the hidden 
Infinite One, who is encompassed by gleaming 
abysses without bounds, and who himself cre- 
ates the bounds, were now to lay immensity 
open to thy view, and to reveal himself to thee 
in his distribution of the suns, the lofty spirits, 
the little human hearts, and our days and some 
tears therein, — wouldst thou rise up out of thy 
dust against him, and say, "Almighty! be other 
than Tliou art !" 

But be one sorrow alone forgiven thee, or 
made good to thee — the sorrow for thy dead 
ones; lor this sweet sorrow for the lost is itself 
but another form of consolation. When the 
heart is full of longing for them, it is but an- 
other mode of continuing to love them; and we 
shed tears as well when we think of their de- 
parture, as when we picture to ourselves our 
joyful re-union — and the tears, methinks, differ 
not. 



DREAM.* 

The object of this composition must serve as 
the excuse of its boldness. 

Man denies the existence of God with as little 
feeling as most of us grant it. Even in our true 
systems, we only collect words, counters and 
medals, as the avaricious accumulate cabinets 
of coins; and it is not until long after, that we 
exchange the words for sentiments, our coins 
for enjoyments. A man may believe in the 
immortality of the soul for twenty years, but 
only in the twenty-first, in some great moment, 
is he astonished at the rich substance of this 
belief, at the warmth of this naphtha-spring. 

* From the same. 



Even so was I horror-struck at the poisonous 
vapor which meets the heart of one who enters 
for the first time into the atheistic seminary, as 
though it would sutfocate it. It would cause 
me less pain to deny immortality than the ex- 
istence of the Deity. In the former case, I lose 
nothing but a world concealed by a fog; in the 
latter case, I lose the present world, namely, its 
Sun. The whole spiritual universe is split and 
shattered by the hand of Atheism into countless 
quicksilver points of individual existences,* 
which twinkle, melt into one another, and wan- 
der about, meet and part, without unity and 
consistency. No one is so much alone in the 
universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned 
heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he 
stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse 
of nature, no longer moved or sustained by the 
Spirit of the universe, but growing in its grave ; 
and he mourns, until he himself crumbles away 
from the dead body. 

The whole world lies before him like the 
great Egyptian sphinx of stone, which is half- 
buried in the sand, and the universe is the cold 
iron mask of the shapeless eternity. 

Another aim of my composition is, to frighten 
some of the reading or deep-read professors; 
for verily these people, since they have become 
day -laborers, after the manner of condemned 
criminals, in the waterworks and mining ope- 
rations of the critical philosophy, weigh the ex- 
istence of God as apathetically and as cold- 
hearted ly as though it were a question of the 
existence of the kraken or the unicorn. 

To others, who are not so far advanced as 
these deep-read professors, I may observe, that 
it is no inconsistency to unite a belief in immor- 
tality with a belief in Atheism ; for the same 
necessity which, in this life, threw the bright 
dewdrop of my individual existence into a 
flower-cup, and beneatli a sun, can repeat it in 
a second life ; indeed, it is easier to embody me 
a second time than the first time. 

When we are told in childhood, that at mid- 
night, when our sleep reaches near unto the 
soul, and even darkens our dreams, the dead 
rise out of their sleep and mimic the religious 
service of the living in the churches, we shud- 
der at death on account of the dead ; and in the 
loneliness of night we turn away our gaze from 
the long narrow windows of the silent church, 
fearing to examine whether their glitter pro- 
ceeds from the moonbeams, or not. 

Childhood and especially its terrors and rap- 
tures once more assume wings and brightness 
in our dreams, and play like glow-worms in the 
little night of the soul. Crush not these little 
fluttering sparks! Leave us even our dark 
painful dreams, as relieving middle tints of 
reality! And what could compensate us for 
our dreams, which bear us away from beneath 
the roar of the waterfall into the mountain- 
heights of childhood, where the stream of lift* 

* German, " icks." 



yet silent in its little plain, and a mirror of hea- 
ven, flowed towards its precipices? 

Once on a summer evening I lay upon a 
mountain in the sunshine, and fell asleep ; and 
] dreamt that I awoke in the church-yard, hav- 
ing been roused by the rattling wheels of the 
tower-clock, which struck eleven. I looked for 
the sun in the void night-heaven ; for I thought 
that it was eclipsed by the moon. All the 
graves were unclosed, and the iron doors of the 
charnel-house were opened and shut by invisi- 
ble hands. Shadows cast by no one flitted 
along the walls, and other shadows stalked 
erect in tlie free air. No one slept any longer 
in the open coffins but the children. A grey, 
sultry fog hung suspended in heavy folds in the 
heavens, and a gigantic shadow drew it in like 
a net, ever nearer, and closer, and hotter. Above 
me I heard the distant fall of avalanches; be- 
neath me, the earnest step of an immeasurable 
earthquake. The church was heaved up and 
down by two incessant discords, which strug- 
gled with one another, and in vain sought to 
unite in harmony. Sometimes a grey glimmer 
flared up on the windows, and, molten by the 
glimmer, the iron and lead ran down in streams. 
The net of fog and the reeling earth drove me 
into the temple, at the door of which brooded 
two basilisks with twinkling eyes in two poi- 
sonous nests. I passed through unknown sha- 
dows, on whom were impressed all the centu- 
ries of years. The shadows stood congregated 
round the altar; and in all, the breast throbbed 
and trembled in the place of a heart. One 
corpse alone, which had just been buried in the 
church, lay still upon its pillow, and its breast 
heaved not, while upon its smiling countenance 
lay a ha|)py dream ; but on the entrance of one 
of the living he awoke, and smiled no more. 
He opened his closed eyelids with a painful 
effort, but within there was no eye; and in the 
sleeping bosom, instead of a heart there was a 
wound. He lifted up his hands, and folded 
them in prayer; but the arms lengthened out 
and detached themselves from the body, and 
the folded hands fell down apart. Aloft, on the 
church-dome, stood the dial-plate of Eternity ; 
but there was no figure visible upon it, and it 
was its own index ; only a black figure pointed 
to it, and the dead wished to read the time 
upon it. 

A lolty, noble form, having the expression of 
a never-ending sorrow, now sank down from 
above upon the altar, and all the dead ex- 
claimed — " Christ ! is there no God V And he 
answered — " There is none !" The whole sha- 
dow of each dead one, and not the breast alone, 
now trembled, and one after another was se- 
vered by the trembling. 

Christ continued ; — "I traversed the worlds. 
I ascended into the suns, and flew with the 
milky ways through the wildernesses of the 
heavens ; but there is no God ! I descended as 
tar as Being throws its shadow, and gazed down 
nto the abyss, and cried aloud — 'Father, where 



art thou?' but I heard nothing but the eternal 
storm which no one rules; and the beammg 
rainbow in the west hung, without a creating 
sun, above the abyss, and fell down in drops; 
and when I looked up to the immeasurable 
world for the Divine Eye, it glared U]ion me 
from an empty, bottomless socket, and Eternity 
lay brooding upon chaos, and gnawed it, and 
ruminated it. Cry on, ye discords ! cleave the 
shadows with your cries; for he is not!" 

The shadows grew pale and melted, as the 
white vapor formed by the frost melts and be- 
comes a warm breath, and all was void. Then 
there arose and came into the temple — a terri- 
ble sight for the heart — the dead children who 
had awakened in the church-yard, and they 
cast themselves before the lofty form upon the 
altar, and said, "Jesus! have we no Father?" 
and he answered with streaming eyes, "We are 
all orphans, I and you ; we are without a Fa- 
ther." 

Thereupon the discords shrieked more harsh- 
ly; the trembling walls of the temple split 
asunder, and the temple and the children sunk 
down, and the earth and the sun followed, and 
the whole immeasurable universe fell rushing 
past us; and aloft upon the summit of infinite 
Nature stood Christ, and gazed down into the 
universe, chequered with thousands of suns, as 
into a mine dug out of the Eternal Night, 
wherein tne suns are the miners' lamps, and 
the milky ways the veins of silver. 

And when Christ beheld the grinding con- 
course of worlds, the torch-dances of the hea- 
venly ignes falui, and the ooral-bauks of beating 
hearts; and when he beheld how one sphere 
after another poured out its gleaming souls into 
the sea of death, as a drop of water strews 
gleaming lights upon the waves, sublime, as the 
loftiest finite being, he lifted up his eyes to the 
Nothingness, and to the empty Immensity, and 
said: "Frozen, dumb Nothingness! cold, eternal 
Necessity! insane Chance! know ye what is 
beneath you? When will ye destroy the build- 
ing and me? Chance! knowest thou thyself 
when with hurricanes thou wilt march through 
the snow-storm of stars and extinguish one sun 
after the other, and when the sparkling dew of 
the constellations shall cease to glisten as thou 
passest by? How lonely is every one in the 
wide charnel of the universe! I alone am in 
company with myself O Father! Father! 
where is thine infinite bosom, that I may be at 
rest? Alas! if every being is its own father 
and creator, why cannot it also be its own de- 
stroying angel? * * * Is that a man near 
me ? Thou poor one ! thy little life is the sigh 
of Nature, or only its echo. A concave mirror 
throws its beams upon the dust-clouds composed 
of the ashes of the dead upon your earth, and 
thus ye exist, cloudy, tottering images! Look 
down into the abyss over which clouds of ashes 
are floating by. Fogs full of worlds arise out 
of the sea of death. The future is a rising va- 
por, the present a falling one. Knowest thou 



RICHTER. 



417 



thy parth'?" Here CVirist looked down, and bis 
eyes filled with tears, and he said, "Alas! I too 
was once like you : then I was happy, for I had 
still my infinite Father, and still gazed joyfully 
from the mountains into the infinite expanse of 
heaven; and I pressed my wounded heart on 
his soothing image, and said, even in the bitter- 
ness of death : ' Father, take thy Son out of his 
bleeding shell, and lift him up to thy heart.' 
Ah, ye too, too happy dwellers of earth, ye still 
believe in him. Perhaps at this moment your 
sun is setting, and ye fall amid blossoms, radi- 
ance, and tears, upon your knees, and lift up 
your blessed hands, and call out to the open 
heaven, amid a thousand tears of joy, 'Thou 
knowest me too, thou infinite One, and all my 
wounds, and thou wilt welcome me aft^r death, 
and wilt close them all.' Ye wretched ones! 

after death they will not be closed When 

the man of sorrows stretches his sore wounded 
back uj)on the earth to slumber towards a love- 
lier morning, full of truth, full of virtue and of 
joy, behold, he awakes in the tempestuous 
chaos, in the everlasting midnight, and no morn- 
ing cometh, and no healing hand, and no infinite 
Father ! Mortal who art near me, if thou still 
livest, worship him, or thou hast lost him for- 
ever !" 

And as I fell down and gazed into the gleam- 
ing fabric of worlds, I beheld the raised rings 
of the giant serpent of eternity, which had 
couched itself round the universe of worlds, 
and the rings fell, and she enfolded the universe 
doubly. Then she wound herself in a thou- 
sand folds round Nature, and crushed the worlds 
together, and, grinding them, she squeezed the 
infinite temple into one church-yard church — 
and all became narrow, dark, and fearful, and 
a bell- hammer stretched out to infinity was 
about to strike the last hour of Time, and split 
the universe asunder — when I awoke. 

My soul wept for joy, that it could again 
worship God; and the joy, and the tears, and 
the belief in him, were the prayer. And when 
I arose, the sun gleamed deeply behind the full 
purple ears of corn, and peacefully threw the 
reflection of its evening blushes on the little 
moon, which was rising in the east without an 
aurora. And between the heaven and the 
eartli a glad fleeting world stretched out its 
short wings, and lived like myself in the pre- 
sence of the infinite Father, and from all nature 
around me flowed sweet peaceful tones, as 
from evening bells. 



LETTER TO MY FRIENDS, INSTEAD OF 
PREFACE.* 

Of ways for becoming happier (not happy) 
I could never inquire out more than three. The 

* Life of duintiis Fixlein. German Romance. T. 
Candle, Vol. iii. Edinburgh. 1827. 
3c 



first, rather an elevated road, is this : To soar 
away so far above the clouds of life, that you 
see the whole external world, with its wolf 
dens, charnel-houses, and thunder-rods, lying 
far down beneath you, shrunk into a little child's 
garden. The second is: Simply to sink down 
into this little garden; and there to nestle your- 
self so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, 
that, in looking out from your warm lark-nest, 
you likewise can discern no wolf-dens, charnel- 
houses, or thunder -rods, but only blades and 
ears, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a 
tree, and a sun-screen, and rain-screen. The 
third, finally, which I look upon as the hardest 
and cunningest, is that of alternating between 
the other two. 

This I shall now satisfactorily expound to 
men at large. 

The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your 
Howard, your Republican, he whom civic storm, 
or genius poetic storm, impels ; in short, every 
mortal with a great Purpose, or even a peren- 
nial Passion (were it but that of writing the 
largest folios), all these men fence themselves 
in by their internal world against the frosts and 
heats of the external, as the madman in a worse 
sense does: every fixed idea, such as rules every 
genius, every enthusiast, at least periodically, 
separates and elevates a man above the bed 
and board of this Earth, above its Dogs-grot- 
toes, buckthorns and Devil's- walls ; like the 
Bird of Paradise, he slumbers flying; and on 
his outspread pinions, oversleeps unconsciously 
the earthquakes and conflagrations of Life, in 

his long fair dream of his ideal Mother-land 

Alas! To few is this dream granted ; and these 
few are so often awakened by Flying Dogs!* 

This skyward track, however, is fit only for 
the winged portion of the human species, for 
the smallest. What can it profit poor quill- 
driving brethren, whose souls have not even 
wing-shells, to say nothing of wings? Or these 
tethered persons with the best back breast and 
neck fins, who float motionless in the wicker 
Fish-box of the State, and are not allowed to 
swim, because the Box or State, long ago tied 
to the shore, itself swims in the name of the 
Fishes? To the whole standing and writing 
host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors, 
Clerks of all departments, and all the lobsters 
packed together heels over head in the Lobster- 
basket of the Government office-rooms, and for 
refreshment, sprinkled over with a few nettles ; 
to these persons, what way of becoming happy 
here, can I possibly point out? 

My second merely; and that is as follows: 
To take a compound microscope, and with it to 
discover, and convince themselves, that their 
drop of Burgundy is properly a Red Sea, that 
butterfly-dust is peacock-feathers, mouldiness a 
flowery field, and sand a heap of jewels. These 
microscopic recreations are more lasting than 
all costly watering-place recreations. — But J 

* So are the Vampyres called. 



418 



RICHTER. 



must explain these metaphors by new ones. 
The purpose, for which I have sent Fi.rlein's 
Life into the Messrs. LiibeUs' Warehouse, is 
simply that in this same Life — therefore in this 
Preface it is less needful — I may show to the 
whole Earth that we ought to value little joys 
more than great ones, the night-gown more than 
the dress-coat ; that Plutus' heaps are worth 
less than his handfuls, the plum than the penny 
for a rainy day ; and that not great, but little 
good haps can make us happy. — Can I accom- 
plish this, I shall, through means of my Book, 
bring up ibr Posterity, a race of men finding re- 
freshment in ail things; in the warmth of their 
rooms and of their night-caps; in their pillows; 
in the three High Festivals; in mere Apostles' 
days ; in the Evening Moral Tales of their 
wives, when these gentle persons have been 
forth as ambassadors visiting some Dowager 
Residence, whither the husband could not be 
persuaded ; in the bloodletling-day of these 
their newsbringers ; in the day of slaughtering, 
salting, potting against the rigor of grim winter; 
and in all such days. You perceive, my drift 
is that man must become a little Tailor-bird, 
which, not amid the crashing boughs of the 
■storm-tost, roaring, immeasurable tree of Life, 
ibut on one of its leaves, sews itself a nest toge- 
.ther, and there lies snug. The most essential 
-sermon one could preach to our century, were 
■a sermon on the duty of staying at home. 

The third skyward road is the alternation 
between the other two. The foregoing second 
way is not good enough for man, who here on 
Earth should take into his hand not the Sickle 
only, but also the Plough. The first is too good 
for him. He has not always the force, like 
Rugendas, in the midst of the Battle to compose 
Battle-pieces; and, like Backliuisen in the Ship- 
wreck, to clutch at no board but the drawing- 
board to paint it on. And tlien his pains are 
not less lasting than his fatigues. Still oftener 
is Strength denied its Arena: it is but the 
smallest portion of life that, to a working soul, 
offers Alps, Revolutions, Rhine -falls, Worms 
Diets, and Wars with Xerxes ; and for the whole 
it is bettei so: the longer portion of life is a 
field beate.i flat as a threshing-floor, without 
lofty Gothard Mountains; oflen it is a tedious 
ice-field, without a single glacier tinged with 
dawn. 

But even by walking, a man rests and reco- 
vers himself for climbing; by little joys and 
duties, for great. The victorious Dictator must 
contrive to plough down his battle Mars-field 
into a flax and carrot field ; to transform his 
theatre of war into a parlour theatre, on which 
his children may enact some good pieces from 
the Children's Fiiend. Can he accomplish this, 
can he turn so softly from the path of poetical 

happiness into that of household happiness, 

then is he little different from myself, who even 
now, though modesty might forbid me to dis- 
close It — wlio even now, I say, amid the crea- 
Uon of this Letter, have been enabled to reflect, 



that when it is done, so also will the Roses and 
Elder-berries of pastry be done, which a sure 
hand is seething in butter for the Author of this 
Work. 



THE MARRIAGE.* 

Rise, fair Ascension and Marriage day, and 
gladden readers also! Adorn thyself with the 
fairest jewel, with the bride, whose soul is as 
pure and glittering as its vesture; like pearl 
and pearl-muscle, the one as the other, lustrous 
and ornamental! And so over the espalier, 
whose fruit-hedge has hitherto divided our dar- 
ling from his Eden, every reader now presses 
after him ! — 

On the 9th of May, 1793, about three in the 
morning, there came a sharp peal of trumpets, 
like a light -beam, through the dim -red May- 
dawn : two twisted horns, with a straight trum- 
pet between them, like a note of admiration 
between interrogation -points, were clanging 
from a house in which only a parishioner (not 
the Parson) dwelt and blew : tor this parishioner 
had last night been celebrating the same cere- 
mony whicli the pastor had this day before him. 
The joyful tallyho raised our Parson from his 
broad bed (and the Shock from beneath it, who 
some weeks ago had been exiled from the white 
sleek coverlid), and this so early, that in the 
portraying tester, where on every former morn- 
ing he had observed his ruddy visage, and his 
white bedclothes, all was at present dim and 
crayoned. 

1 confess, the new-painted room, and a gleam 
of dawn on the wall, made it so light, that he 
could see his knee-buckles glancing on the chair. 
He then softly awakened his mother (the other 
guests were to lie for hours in the sheets), and 
she had the city cook-maid to awaken, who, 
like several other articles of wedding-furniture, 
had been borrowed for a day or two from 
Flachsenfingen. At two doors he knocket.1 in 
vain, and without answer ; for all were already 
down at the hearth, cooking, blowing, and ar- 
ranging. 

How softly does the Spring day gradually 
fold back its nun-veil, and the Earth grow bright, 
as if it were the morning of a Resurrection! — 
The quicksilver-pillar of the barometer, the 
guiding Fire-pillar of the weather-prophet, rests 
firmly on Fixlein's Ark of the Covenant. The 
Sun raises himself, pure and cool, into the 
morning-blue, instead of into the morning-red. 
Swallows, instead of clouds, shoot skimming 
through the melodious air. . . . O, the good 
Genius of Fair Weather, who deserves many 
temples and festivals (because without him no 
festival could be held), lifted an aetherial azure 
Day, as it were, from the well-clear atmosphere 
of the Moon, and sent it down, on blue butter- 
fly-wings — as if it were a blue Monday — glitter- 

* From the same. 



RICHTER. 



41b 



ino below the Sun, in the ziazag of joyful qni- 
veritig descent, upon the narrow spot of Earth, 
which our hea'ccl fancies are now viewing. . . 
And on this bahny, vernal spot, stand amid 
flowers, over which the trees are shaliing blos- 
soms instead of leaves, a bride and a bride- 
groom Happy Fixleiii ! how shall I paint 

thee without deepeiiing the sighs of longing in 
tiie fairest souls? — 

But soft! we will not drink the magic oup of 
Fancy to the l>ottom, at six in the morning; but 
keep sober till towards night! 

At the sound of the morning prayer-bell, the 
bridegroom — for the din of preparation was dis- 
turbing iiis quiet orison — went out into the 
church-yard, which (as in many other jHaces) 
together with the church, lay round his mansion 
like a court. Here, on the moist green, over 
whose closed flowers the church-yard wall was 
still spreading broad shadows, did his spirit 
cool itself from the warm dreams of Earth : 
here, where the white flat grave -stone of his 
Teacher lay before him like the fallen-in door 
on the Janus'-lemple of Life, or like the wind- 
ward side of the narrow house, turned towards 
the tempests of the world : here, where the 
little shrunk metallic door on the grated cross 
of his father uttered to him the inscriptions of 
death, and the year when his parent departed, 
and all the admonitions and mementos, graven 
on the lead ; — there, I say, his mood grew softer 
and more solemn; and he now lifted up by 
heart his morning prayer, which usually he 
read ; and entreated God to bless him in his 
office, and to spare his mother's life, and to look 
widi favor and acceptance on the purpose of 
to-day, — Then, over the graves, he walked into 
his fenceless little angular flower-garden; and 
here, composed and confident in the divine 
keeping, he pressed the stalks of his tulips 
deeper into the mellow earth. 

But on returning to the house, he was met on 
all hands by the bell-ringing and the Janizary- 
music of wedding-gladness; — the marriage- 
guests had all thrown off' their nightcaps, and 
were drinking diligently; — there was a clatter- 
ing, a cooking, a frizzling; — tea-services, coffee- 
services, and warm beer-services, were advanc- 
ing in succession; and plates full of bride-cakes 
were going round like potter's frames or cistern- 
wheels. — The Schoolmaster, with three young 
lads, was heard rehearsing from his own house 
an Arioso, will) whicli, so soon as they were 
Jierfect, lie purposed to surprise his clerical su- 
perior. — But now rushed all the arms of the 
loaming joy-streams into one, when the sky- 
queen besprinkled with blossoms, the bride, 
descended upon Earth in her timid joy, full of 
quivering, humble love; — when the bells be- 
gan; — when the procession-column set forth 
with the whole village round and before it ;^ 
when the organ, the congregation, the officiating 
priest, and the sparrows on the trees of the 
church-window, struck louder and louder their 
rolling peals on the drum of the jubilee-festival. 



. . . The heart of the singing bridegroom was 
like to leap from its place for joy, " that on his 
bridal-day, it was all so respectable and grand." 
— Not till the marriage benediction could he 
pray a little. 

Still worse and louder grew the business 
during dinner, when pastry-work and march- 
pane-devices were brought forward, — when 
glasses, and slain fishes (laid under the napkins 
to frighten tlie guests) went round ; — and when 
the guests rose, and themselves went round, 
and at length danced round : for they had in- 
strumental music from the city there. 

One minute handed over to the other the 
sugar-bowl and bottle-case of joy: the guests 
heard and saw less and less, and the villagers 
began to see and hear more and more, and to- 
wards night they penetrated like a wedge into 
the open door, — nay, two youths ventured even 
in the middle of the parsonage-court, to mount 
a plank over a beam, and commence seesawing. 
— Out of doors, the gleaming vapor of the de- 
parted Sun was encircling the Earth, the even- 
ing-star was glittering over parsonage and 
church-yard ; no one heeded it. 

However, about nine o'clock, — when the 
marriage -guests had well nigh forgotten the 
marriage -pair, and were drinking or dancing 
along for their own behoof; when poor mortals, 
in this sunshine of Fate, like fishes in the sun- 
shine of the sky, were leaping up from their 
wet cold element; and when the bridegroom 
under the star of happiness and love, casting 
like a comet its long train of radiance over all 
his heaven, had in secret pressed to his joy-filled 
breast his bride and his mother, — then did he 
lock a slice of wedding-bread privily into a 
press, in the old superstitious belief, that this 
residue secured continuance of bread for the 
whole marriage. As he returned, with greater 
love for the sole partner of his life, she herself 
met him with his mother, to deliver him in 
private the bridal-nightgown and bridal-shirt, 
as is the ancient usage. Many a countenance 
grows pale in violent emotions, even of joy: 
Thiennette's wax-face was bleaching still whiter 
under the sunbeams of Happiness. 0, never 
fall, thou lily of Heaven, and may four springs 
instead of four seasons open and shut thy flower- 
bells to the sun! — All tlie arms of his soul as 
he floated on the sea of joy were quivering to 
clasp tlie soi't warm heart of his beloved, to en- 
circle it gently and fast, and draw it to his own. 

He led her from the crowded dancing-room 
into the cool evening. Why does the evening, 
does the night put warmer love in our hearts i 
Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness? or is 
it the exalting separation from the turmoil of 
life; that veiling of the world, in which for the 
soul nothing more remains but souls? — is it 
therefore, that the letters in which the loved 
name stands written on our spirit apiiear, like 
phosphorus-writing, by night, in fire, while by 
day in their cloudy traces they but smoke? 

He walked with hi« bride into the Castle 



420 



RICHTER. 



garden: she hastened quickly through the Castle, 
and past its servants'-hall, where the fair flowers 
of her young life had been crushed broad and 
dry, under a long dreary pressure ; and her soul 
expanded, and breathed in the free open garden, 
on whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the 
first seeds of the blossoms which to-day were 
gladdening her existence. Still Eden ! Green 
flower-chequered chiaroscuro! — The moon is 
sleeping under ground lilie a dead one ; but be- 
yond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds 
have fallen down liiie rose-leaves; and the 
evening-star, the brideman of the sun, hovers, 
like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red, 
and, modest as a bride, deprives no single starlet 
of its light. 

The wandering pair arrived at the old gar- 
deners hut; now standing locked and dumb, 
with dark windows in the light garden, like a 
fragment of the Past surviving in the Present. 
Bared twigs of trees were folding, with clammy 
half-formed leaves, over the thick intertwisted 
taiigles of the bushes. — The Spring was stand- 
ing, like a conqueror, with Winter at his feet. — 
In the blue pond, now bloodless, a dusky even- 
ing-sky lay hollowed out, and the gushing waters 
were moistening the flower-beds. — The silver 
sparks of stars were rising on the altar of the 
East, and failing down extinguished in the red 
sea of the West. 

The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder 
through the trees, and gave tones to the acacia- 
grove ; and the tones called to the pair who had 
first become happy within it: "Enter, new 
mortal pair, and think of what is past, and of 
my withering and your own ; and be holy as 
Eternity, and weep not only for joy, but for 
gratitude aUo!" — And the wet-eyed bridegroom 
led his wet-eyed bride under the blossoms, and 
laid his soul, like a flower, on her heart, and 
said : " Best Tliiennette, I am unspeakably hap- 
py, and would say much, and cannot — Ah, thou 
Uearest, we will live like angels, like children 
together! Surely I will do all that is good to 
thee; two years ago I had nothing, no. nothing; 
ah, it is through thee, best love, that I am hapi)y. 
1 call thee Thou, now, thou dear good soul!" 
She drew him closer to her, and said, though 
without kissing him: "Call me Thou always, 
Dearest!" 

And as they slept forth again from the sacred 
grove into the magic-dusky garden, he took ofi" 
his hat; first, that he mglit internally thank 
God, and secomlly, becai.-e he wished to look 
into this fairest evening sky. 

They reached the blazing, rustling, marriage- 
house, but their softened hearts sought stillness; 
and a Ibreigu touch, as in the blossoming vine, 
would have disturbed the flower -nuptials of 
djeir souls. They turned rather, and winded 
-tp into the church-yard to preserve their mood. 
Majestic on the groves and mountains stood 
the Night before man's heart, and made that also 
great. Over the white steeple-obelisk the sky 
rested bluer, and darker ; and behind it, wavered 



tVie withered summit of the May-pole with faded 
flag. The son noticed his father's gravf on 
which the wind was opening and shutting, with 
harsh noise, the little door of the metal cross, to 
let the year of his death be read on the brass 
plate within. An overpowering sadness seized 
his heart with violent streams of tears, and 
drove him to the sunk hillock, and he led his 
bride to the grave, and said : " Here sleeps he, 
my good father; in his thirty-second year, he 
was carried hither to his long rest. thou 
good, dear father, couldst thou to-day but see the 
happiness of thy son, like my mother! But thy 
eyes are empty, and thy breast is fidl of ashes, 
and thou seest us not." — He was silent. The 
bride wept aloud ; she saw the mouldering cof- 
fins of her parents open, and the two dead arise 
and look round for their daughter, who had 
stayed so long behind them, forsaken on the 
Earth. She fell upon his heart, and faltered : 
"0 beloved, I have neither father nor mother, 
do not forsake me !" 

thou who hast still a father and a mother, 
thank God for it, on the day when thy soul is 
full of joyful tears, and needs a bosom wherein 
to shed them. . . . 

And with this embracing at a father's grave, 
let this day of joy be holily concluded. 



THOUGHTS.* 

The inner man, like the negro, is born white, 
but is colored black by life. In advanced age 
the grandest moral examples pass by us, and 
our life-course is no more altered by them thair 
the earth is by a flitting comet; but in child- 
hood the first object that excites the sentiment 
of love or of injustice flings broad and deep its 
light or shadow over the coming years ; and as, 
according to ancient theologians, it was only the 
first sin of Adam, not his subsequent ones, which 
descended to us by inheritance, so that since the 
One Fall we make the rest for ourselves, in like 
manner the first fall and the first ascent influ- 
ence the whole life. 

HOW CHILDREN LEARN TO WORSHIP. 

Sublimity is the staircase to the temple of 
religion, as the stars are to immensity. When 
the vast is manifested in nature, as in a storm, 
thunder, the starry firmament, death, then utter 
the name of God before your child. Signal ca- 
lamity, rare success, a great crime, a noble ac- 
tion, are the spots upon which to erect the 
child's tabernacle of worship. 

Always exhibit before cliildren, even upon 
the borders of the holy land of religion, solemn 
and devout emotions. These will extend to 
them, unveiling at length the object by which 
they are excited, though at 'he beginning they 
are awe-struck with you, not knowing where- 

* From the Diadem. 1846. Carey & Hart, Philadelphia. 
Translated by Miss L. Osgood. 



RICHTER, 



421 



fore. Newton, who uncovered his head when 
the greatest Name was pronounced, thus be- 
came without words a teacher of religion to 

children. 

Instead of carrying children frequently to 
public worship, I should prefer simply to con- 
duct them upon great days in nature or in hu- 
rr)an life into the empty church, and there show 
them the holy place of adults. To this I might 
add twilight, night, the organ, the hymn, the 
priest, exhortation; and so by a mere walk 
through the building, a more serious impression 
might remain in their young hearts than after a 
wliole year of common church routine. Let 
every hour in which their hearts are consecrated 
to religion, be to them as absorbing as that in 
M liich they partake for the first time of the 
Lord's Supper. 

Let the Protestant child show reverence to 
the Catholic images of saints by the road-side — 
the same as to the ancient Druidical oak of his 
ancestors. Let him as lovingly accept different 
forms of religion among men, as different lan- 
guages, wherein there is still but one human 
mind ex,pressed. Every genius has most power 
in his own tongue, and every heart in its own 
religion. 

SUSCEPTIBILITY OF THE SENSES IN CHILDREN. 

Who has not felt with me, that frequently a 
rural nosegay, which was our delight when we 
were children in the village, through its old fra- 
grance produces for us in cities, in the advanced 
years of manliood, an indescribably rapturous 
return to godlike childhood, and like a flowery 
divinity wafts us upward to the first encircling 
Aurora-cloud of our earliest obscure sensations. 
But could such a remembrance so forcibly sur- 
prise ifs, were not the child's perception of 
flowers most powerful and interior? 

JOTOUSXESS OF CHiLDBEN. 

How should it be otherwise ? I can bear a 
tnelanclioly man, but never a melancholy child. 
Into whatever quagmire the former sinks, he 
niay raise his eyes either to the realm of reason 
or to that of hope; but the little child sinks and 
perishes in a single black poison-drop of the 
present time. — Only imagine a child conducted 
to the scaffold — Cupid in a German coffin — ur 
fancy a butterfly crawling like a caterpillar 
v/ith his four wings pulled off, and you will 
feel what I mean. 

TOYS. 

You need not surround your children, like 
tho^e of the nobility, with a little world of turn- 
er's toys. Let their eggs be white, not figured 
and painted ; they can dress them out of their 
own iinaginations. On the contrary, the older 
man grows, the larger reality appears. The 
fields which gli.sten for the young with the 
morning dew of love's brightness, chill the gray, 
half-blind old man with heavy evening damps, 
and at last he requires an entire world, even 
the second, barely to live in. 



LANGOaGES. 

Do not torment your pupil with a thousand 
tongues. The mere learning of languages is 
like expending one's money in the purchase of 
fine purses, or learning the Paternoster in every 
tongue, but never praying with it. 

HAPPY FATHERS. 

Two classes of men are happy fathers. The 
first is a country gentleiiiFin, who enjoys such 
golden means of exemption from other occupa- 
tions, that his rural mans.'on can be a benevo- 
lent asylum for his children ; since not even 
cards, hares, or rents are dearer to him than his 
posterity. The other is a country minister — the 
six days leisure, the rural seclusion from the 
whirl of cities, the free air, the office itself, 
wliich is a higher school of education, and on 
every seventh day presents to the children their 
dear father upon a glorious elevation, as the 
pastor and the saint, thus impressing the seal 
of office upon the instructions of the week — all 
this opens to the clergyman an arena for educa- 
tion, into which he may introdt-ce with advan- 
tage other children, as well as his own. 

FEMALE DELICACY. 

Boys may derive advantage from the evil 
example of drunken Helots; girls should wit- 
ness only what is good. Even boys do not 
come forth from the Augean stable of world- 
discipline without some smell of the barn. But 
girls are tender, white, Paris-apple blossoms, 
parlor flowers, whose delicate freshness cannot 
bear to be handled, but may only be touclied 
with the finest brush. Like the priestesses of 
antiquity, they should be brought up only in 
holy places; the harsh, the indecorous, the vio- 
lent, they may not hear, far less behold. 

SEWING. 

Most of the finger-works, whereby the female 
quicksilver is made stationary, bring with them 
this mischief — the mind, remaining idle, either 
grows rusty with dullness, or is given over to 
the circling maze of fancy, where wave succeeds 
to wave. Sewing and knitting-needles, for in- 
stance, keep open the wounds of disappointed 
love longer than all the romances in the world ; 
they are thorns which prick through the droop- 
ing roses. But give the young girl such an oc- 
cupation as young men generally have, wliich 
shall require a new thought every minute, and 
the old one cannot be continually raying up and 
glaring before her. Especially, change of em- 
ployment contributes to heal woman's heart; 
constant progress in some one thing, man's. 

RELIGION. 

Upon the mount of religion, man may indeed 
still have sorrows, but they are brief. The 
nights linger in valleys, but on the mountains 
they are shortened, and ever a small red streak 
points towards the rising day. 
36 



423 



EICHTER. 



THE IDEAL. 

Ye holy matrons of by-gone times! As little 
did ye know of the ideal heart, as of the circu- 
lation of the pure blood which warmed and 
colored you, when ye cried, "I do this for my 
husband, for my children," and appeared in 
prosaic subjection to your cares and pursuits. 
Yet that holy Ideal was passing through you, 
as heaven's fire descends to the earth through 
clouds. 



MERRIMENT. 



Is there anything in life so lovely and poet- 
ical as the laugh and merriment of a young girl, 
who still in harmony v/ith all her powers sports 
with you in luxuriant freedom, and in her 
mirthfulness neither despises nor dislikes? Her 
gravity is seldom as innocent as her playful- 
ness; still less that haughty discontent which 
converts the youthful Psyche into a dull, thick, 
buzzing, wing-drooping night- moth. Among 
a certain Indian tribe the youth selected at a 
feast that maiden for marriage who laughed in 
her sport; perhaps my opinion inclines the 
same way. 

Laughing cheerfulness throws day-light upon 
all the paths of life; discontent blows her ill- 
omened vapors from afar; depression produces 
more confusion and distraction of thought than 
the above-named giddiness. If, indeed, the 
wife could stereotype this comedy by playing 
it in wedded life, and sometimes enliven the 
dull epic of the husband or hero, by her own 
comic-heroic poetry, she would enjoy the delight 
of winning and enchanting both husband and 
children. Never fear that feminine playfulness 
will exclude depth of character and sensibility. 
The still energy of the heart is ever growing 
and filling itself beneath the outward glee. 
How heavenly, when at length for the first time 
the laughing eye melts in love, and gushing 
tears mirror forth the whole tender soul! 

Let then the laughter-loving creatures giggle 
on at one another, and especially at the first 
clumsy make-game wight who comes among 
them, even should he be the writer of this pa- 
ragraph. 



Truthfulness is not so much a branch as a 
blossom of moral, manly strength. The weak, 
whether they will or not, must lie. As respects 
children, for the first five years they utter neither 
truth nor falsehood — they only speak. Their 
talk is thinking aloud ; and as one half of their 
thought is often an affirmative, and the other a 
negative, and, imlike us, both escape from them, 
they seem to lie, while they are only talking 
M'ith themselves. Besides, at first they love to 
sport with thi-ir new art of speech ; and so talk 
nonsense merely to hear theinr.elves. Often 
they do not uihu-rstand your question, and give 

an erroneous, rather tluui a false reply. We 

may ask, besides, vvliethi'r, when children seem 
to imagine and falsify, they are not often relat- 



ing their remembered dreams, which necessa 
rily blend in them with actual experience. 

Children everywhere fly on the warm, sunny- 
side of hope, lliey say, when the bird or the 
dog has escaped from them, without any reason 
for the expectation — "he will come back again 
soon." And since they are incapable of distin- 
guishing hope, that is, imagination, from reflec- 
tion or truth, their self-delusion consequently 
assumes the appearance ^ f falsehood. For in- 
stance, a truthful little girl described to me va- 
rious appearances of a Christ-child, telling what 
it had said and done. In all those cases in 
which we do not desire to mirror before the 
child the black image of a lie, it is sufficient to 
say, "Be sober, have done with play." 

Finally, we must distinguish between un- 
truths relating to the future and the past. We 
do not attribute to a grown man who breaks 
his word in reference to some future perform- 
ance, that blackness of perjury which we charge 
on him who falsifies what has been already 
done; so with children, before whose brief 
vision time, like space, is immeasurablOj and 
w^ho are as unable to look through a day, as we 
through a year, we should widely separate un- 
truthfulness of promise from untruthfulness of 
assertion. Truth is a divine blossom upon an 
earthly root; of course, it is in time not the 
earliest, but the latest virtue. 

^ THE CLASSICS, 

The bulwarks around the city of God have 
been laid by the ancients for every age, through 
the history of their own. Manhood at the pre- 
sent day would sink immeasurably low, did 
not our youth pass through the still temple of 
the great old times and men, as a vestrtjule to 
the crowded Fair of modern life. The names 
of Socrates, Cato, Epaminondas, &c., are pyra- 
mids of human energy. Rome, Athens, Sparta, 
are three coronation cities of the giant Geryon, 
which, like primeval mountains of humanity, 
grapple with youthful manhood, while modern 
ones only attract the eye. 

REVERENCE FOB UFE. 

Only place all life before the child, as within 
the realm of humanity, and thus the greater 
reveals to him the less. Put life and soul into 
everything : describe to him even the lily, which 
he would pull up as an unorganized thing, as 
the daughter of a slender mother, standing in 
her garden-bed, from whom her little white off- 
spring derives nutriment and moisture. And 
let not this be done to excite an empty ener- 
vated habit of pity, a sort of inoculation-hospital 
for foreign pains, but from the religious cultiva- 
tion of reverence for life, the God all-moving in 
the tree-top and the human brain. The love 
of animals, like maternal affections, has this 
advantage, that it is disinterested and claims 
no return, and can also at every moment find 
an object and an opportunity for its exercise 




En^ "by F. HTmiplixerys 



CC M\ IL IE © \'£ II, 



AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL. 



BorD 1767. Died 1843. 



A. W. VON ScHLEGEL, the eldest of the two 
brothers whose several and joint labors have 
contributed so largely to the literary and aes- 
thetic culture of their nation and age, occupies 
the front rank among the scholars and critics 
of this century, whether we regard the extent 
and variety of his learning or the acuteness of 
his analysis and his luminous judgment. As a 
translator he surpasses all who have ever la- 
bored in that line. The fidelity with which 
he has rendered Shakspeare, or rather the skill 
with which he has reproduced him, has natu- 
ralized that poet in all the states of Germany, 
and made him not less a German than he is an 
English classic, — perhaps even more popular 
in the translation than in the original: — a soli- 
tary instance of literary transplantation, unless 
the popular versions of the old Hebrew poets 
may be regarded as another. " Such," says 
Mrs. Austin, " is Herr von Schlegel's masterly 
handling of his own language, and the exqui- 
site nicety of his ear, that he has, in many 
cases (for example, Hamlet's Soliloquy), caught 
the very cadence of the original. With no 
other living laniruage, perhaps, than the Ger- 
man, would this be possible; and even in that 
it is a wonderful achievement." " Calderon 
presented still greater difficulties of a me- 
trical kind ; these Herr von Schlegel has tri- 
umphantly overcome ; he has adhered to the 
original even in metre, rhyme, and assonance, 
and has combined this exact imitation of form 
with an equally faithful interpretation of the 
meaning. The translation of the two greatest 
dramatic poets of two nations, so unlike in ge- 
nius, shows a talent for discriminating, and a 
power of handling all the forms and resources 
of language, which have never been surpassed." 

A. W. von Schlegel has attained no mean 
reputation as an original poet, and would pro- 
bably have figured more illustriously in that 
capacity had not his poetic labors been eclipsed 
by his critical. His chief excellence, as a poet, 
consists in the perfection which he has given 
to the forms of poetic composition, and his 
magic mastery of language. 



He was born at Hanover, on the 5th of Sep- 
tember, 1767. His father held the office of 
Counsellor of the Consistory in the Lutheran 
Church. He received his early education in 
the Lyceum of his native city, where, at the 
age of eighteen, he recited before the Public, 
on the occasion of the King's birth-day, a poem 
on the history of German poetry, which at- 
tracted a good deal of attention at the time. 
In 1786 he entered the university of Gottingen, 
where he became intimate with the poet Biir- 
ger, and where he obtained the prize for a Latin 
disquisition on the geography of Homer. After 
he had finished his philological studies at the 
university, he resided for some time in Amster- 
dam, in the capacity of private tutor. In 1796 
he returned to Germany, and resided at Jena, 
where he became a diligent contributor to va- 
rious literary journals. He was soon made 
Professor in the university in that place, and 
produced a great impression far and wide by 
his lectures on aesthetics. In connection with 
his brother Friedrich, with Tieck, Schelling, 
and others, he edited a periodical work, in 
which he labored to establish the Romantic 
School of Art. In 1802 he removed to Berlin, 
where he lectured on literature and art, and 
contributed to various periodicals. In 1804 he 
travelled with Madame de Stael, and resided 
with her successively in Italy, in France, in 
Vienna, and finally in Stockholm, where the 
Crown -prince of Sweden cultivated his ac- 
quaintance, and employed him as political 
writer, and afterwards conferred upon him the 
title of nobility. In 1808 he read, in Vienna, 
the Lectures on Dramatic Art, from which the 
following extracts are taken. In 1818 he re- 
ceived an appointment as Professor at the new 
university at Bonn, which he held until his 
death. He commenced, in 1820, a journal de- 
voted to the study of the Oriental languages, 
called the "Indian Library." He also pub- 
lished the Bhagnvnd- Gila, a philosophical 
poem in the Sanscrit, and accompanied it with 
a Latin translation. He wrote in llie French 
and in the Italian, as well as in his vernacular 

1423) 



4-24 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



tongue. His " Comparison of the Phaedra of 
Euripides with that of Racine," in the former 
of those languages, and his treatise on the 
bronze horses at Venice, in the latter, are I 



among the most important of his essays. He 
was twice married and twice divorced. He 
died at Bonn, 1845. 



LECTURES ON DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 

THE GREEK DK.VMA. 

(From the translation of John Black.) 
When we hear the word theatre, we natu- 
rally think of what with us bears the same 
name; and yet nothing can be more different 
from our theatre than the Grecian, in every part 
of its construction. If in reading tlie Grecian 
pieces we associate our own stage with them, 
the light in which we shall view them must be 
false in every respect. 

The accurate mathematical dimensions of the 
principal part of it are to be found in Vitruvius, 
who also distinctly points out the great differ- 
ence between the Greek and Roman theatres. 
But these and similar passages of the ancient 
writers have been most perversely interpreted 
by architects unacquainted with the ancient 
dramatists;* and the philologists on the other 
hand, who were altogether ignorant of archi- 
tecture, have also fallen into egregious errors. 
The ancient dramatists are still, therefore, alto- 
gether in want of that sort of illustration which 
relates to scenic regulation. In many tragedies 
I conceive that my ideas on this subject are suf- 
ficiently clear; but others again present difficul- 
ties which are not so easily solved. We find 
ourselves most at a loss in figuring to ourselves 
the representation of the pieces of Aristophanes ; 
the ingenious poet must have brought his won- 
derful inventions before the eyes of his au- 
dience in a manner equally bold and astonish- 
ing. Even Barthelemy's description of the 
Grecian stage is not a little confused, and the 
subjoined plan extremely erroneous; in the 
place which he assigns for the representation 
of the pieces in Antigone and Ajax, for instance, 
he is altogether wrong. The following obser- 
vations will not therefore appear the less super- 
fluous. + 

The theatres of the Greeks were quite open 
above, and their dramas were always acted in 
open day, and beneath the canopy of heaven. 



* We have a remarkable instance of this in the pre- 
tended ancient theatre of Palladio, at Vicenza. Hercu- 
laneum, it is true, had noi then been discovered, and the 
ruins of the ancient theatre are not easily understood, 
if we have never seen one in an entire state. 

t I am partly indebted for them to the illustrations of 
a learned architect, M. Genelli, of Berlin, author of the 
ing(!nious Letters on Vitruvius. We have compared 
several Greek tra^'edies with our interpretation of this 
description of Vitruvius, and endeavored to figure to 
ourselves Ihe manner in wliich they were represented; 
and 1 afterwards found my ideas confirmed, on examina- 
tion of Ihe theatre of Herculaneuni, and tlie two very 
•mall theatres at I'ompeii. 



The Romans, at an after period, endeavored by 
a covering to shelter the audience from the rays 
of the sun ; but this degree of luxury was hardly 
ever enjoyed by the Greeks. Such a state of 
things appears very inconvenient to us; but the 
Greeks had nothing of effeminacy about them, 
and we must not forget, too, the beauty of their 
climate. When they were overtaken by a storm 
or a shower, the play was of course interrupted; 
and they would much rather expose themselves 
to an accidental inconvenience, than, by shut- 
ting themselves up in a close and crowded 
house, entirely destroy the serenity of a religious 
solemnity, which their plays certainly were.* 
To have covered in the scene itself, and impri- 
soned gods and heroes in dark and gloomy 
apartments with difficulty lighted up, would 
have appeared still more ridiculous to them. 
An action which so nobly served to establish 
the belief of the relations with heaven could 
only be exhibited under an unobstructed heaven, 
and under the very eyes of the gods as it were, 
for whom, according to Seneca, the sight of a 
brave man struggling with adversity is a be- 
coming spectacle. With respect to the supposed 
inconvenience, which, according to the assertion 
of many modern critics, was felt by the poets 
from the necessity of always laying the scene 
of their pieces before houses, a circumstance 
that often forced them to violate probability, 
this inconvenience was very little felt by tragedy 
and the older comedy. The Greeks, like so 
many southern nations of the present day, lived 
much more in the open air than we do, aild 
transacted many things in public which usu- 
ally take place with us in houses. For the 
theatre did not represent the street, but a place 
before the house belonging to it, where the altar 
stood on which sacrifices to the household gods 
were offered up. Here the women, who lived 
in so retired a manner among the Greeks, even 
those who were unmarried, might appear with- 
out impropriety. Neither was it im[)Ossible for 
them to give a view of the interior of the houses; 
and this was effected, as we shall immediately 
see, by means of the encyclema. 

But the principal reason for this observance 
was that publicity, according to the republican 
notions of the Greeks, was essential to a grave 
and important transaction. This is clearly 
proved by the presence of the chorus, whose 

* They carefully made choice of a beautiful situatior. 
The theatre at Tauroineniuin, at present Taorniina, in 
Sicily, of which the ruins are still visible, was, according 
to Munter's description, situ.tted in such a inaiiner that 
the audience had a view of .(Etna over the hack ground 
of the theatre. 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



423 



remaining on many occasions when secret trans- 
actions were going on, has been jnJged of ac- 
coriling to rules of propriety inapplicable to that 
country, antl most undeservedly censured. 

The theatres of the ancients were, in compa- 
rison with the small scale of ours, of a colossal 
magnitude, partly for the sake of containing the 
whole of the people, with the concourse of 
strangers who flocked to the festivals, and partly 
to correspond with the majesty of the dramas 
represented in them, which required to be seer, 
at a respectful distance. Tlie seats of the spec- 
tators consisted of steps, which rose backwards 
round tlie semicircle of the orcliestra (called by 
us the pit), so that they all could see with equal 
convenience. The effect of distance was reme- 
died by an artificial heightening of the subject 
represented to the eye and ear, produced by 
means of masks, and contrivances for increasing 
the loudness of the voice, and the size of the 
figures. Vitruvius speaks also of vehicles of 
sound, distributed throughout the building ; but 
the commentators are very much at variance 
with respect to them. We may without hesi- 
tation venture to assume, that the theatres of 
the ancients were constructed on excellent 
acoustical principles. 

The lowest step of the amphitheatre was still 
raised considerably above the orchestra, and the 
stage was placed opj)Osite to it, at an equal de- 
gree of elevation. The sunk semicircle of the 
orchestra contained no spectators, and was des- 
tined for anoiher purpose. It was otherwise 
however willi the Romans, but we are not at 
present considering the distribution of their 
theatres. 

The stage consisted of a strip which stretched 
from one end of the building to the other, and 
of which the depth bore little proportion to this 
breadth. This was called the logeum, in the 
Latin, pulpitum,and the usual place for persons 
who spoke was in the middle of it. Behind 
this middle [lart, the serene went inward in a 
quadrangular form, with less depth, however, 
than breadth. The space here comprehended 
was called the proscenium. The remaining 
part of the logeum, to the right and left of the 
scene, had, both before, the brink which adjoined 
the orcliestra, and behind, a wall possessing no 
scenical decorations, but entirely simple, or at 
ino.st architecturally ornamented, which was 
elevated to an equal height with the uppermost 
steps for the audience. 

The (lecoration was contrived in such a man- 
ner, that the principal object in front covered 
the back-ground, and the prospects of distance 
Were given at two sides, the very reverse of 
the incxie adopted by us. This had also its 
rules: on the left aiipeared the town to which 
the palace, temple, or whatever occupied the 
niiddle, belonged ; on the right the open country, 
landscape, mountains, seashore, &c. The late- 
ral decorations were com|josed of triangles, 
which turned on an axis fastened underneath ; 
Hid in this manner the change of scene was 
3d 



effected.* In the hindmost decoration it is pro- 
bable that many things were exhibited in a 
bodily form which are only painted with us. 
When a -palace or temple was represented, 
there appeared in the proscenium an altar, 
wliich answered a number of purposes in the 
performance of the pieces. 

Tlie decoration was for the most part archi- 
tectural, but it was also not unfrequently a 
j painted landscape, as in Prometheus, where it 
represented Caucasus; or in Philoctetus, where 
the desert island of Lemnos, with its rocks and 
his cave, were exhibite<l. It is clear, from a 
passage of Plato, that the Greeks, in the decep- 
tions of theatrical perspective, carried things 
much farther than we might have inferred 
from some wretched landscapes discovered in 
Herculaneum. 

In the back wall of this scene there was a 
large main entrance, and two side entrances 
It has been maintained, that from them it might 
be discovered whether an actor played a prin- 
cipal or under part, as in the hrst case he came 
in at the main entrance, and in the second, at 
the side doors. But this should be understood 
with the distinction, that it must have been re- 
gulated according to the nature of the piece. 
As the hindmost decoration was generally a 
palace, in which the principal characters of 
royal descent resided, they naturally came 
through the great door, while the servants re- 
sided in the wings. There were two other en- 
trances ; the one at the end of the logeum, from 
whence the inhabitants of the town came; the 
other underneath in the orchestra, which was 
the side for those who had to coine from a dis- 
tance : they ascended a staircase of the logeum 
opposite to the orchestra, which could be ayjplied 
to all sorts of purposes, according to circum- 
stances. The entrance, therefore, with respect 
to the lateral decorations, declared the place 
from whence the players were supposed to 
come; and it might naturally happen, that the 
pri^icipal characters were in a situation to avail 
themselves with propriety of the two last-men- 
tioned entrances. Tlie situation of these en- 
trances serves to explain many passages in the 
ancient dramas, where the persons standing in 
the middle see some one advancing, long before 
he approaches them. Beneath the seats of the 
spectators a stair was somewhere constructed, 
which was called the Cliaronic, and through 
which the shadows of the departed, witliout 
being seen by the audience, ascended into the 
orchestra, and then, by the stair which we for- 
merly mentioned, made their appearance on the 
stage. The nearest brink of the logeum some- 



* According to an observation on Virjjil, Ijy Servius, 
tile change of scene was produced partly fiy revHtlviiig, 
and partly by wilhdrawing. 'I'lie former applies to the 
lateral decorations, and the latter to the imildle or back- 
ground. The parlitioii in the middle opened, disappeared 
at both sides, and exhibited to view a new picture. But 
all the [wrts of the scene were not always changed at Che 
same time. 

36* 



426 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



times represented the sea-shore. The Greeks 
were well skilled in availing themselves even 
or what lay beyond the decoration, and making 
it subservient to scenical effect. I doubt not, 
therefore, that in the Enmenides the spectators 
were twice addressed as an assembled people ; 
first, by Pythia, when she calls upon the Greeks 
to consult the oracle ; and a second time, when 
Pallas, by a herald, commands silence through- 
out the place of judgment. The frequent ad- 
dresses to heaven were undoubtedly directed 
to a real heaven ; and when Electra, on her 
first appearance, exclaims: "O holy light, and 
thou air which flilestthe expanse between earth 
and heaven !" she probably turned towards the 
rising sun. The whole of this procedure is 
highly deserving of praise; and though modern 
critics have censured the mixture of reality and 
imitation, as destructive of theatrical illusion, 
this only proves that they have misunderstood 
the essence of the illusion which can be pro- 
duced by an artificial representation. If we 
are to be truly deceived by a picture, that is, if 
we are to believe in the reality of the object 
which we see, we must not perceive its limits, 
but look at it through an opening; the frame at 
once declares it for a picture. In scenical deco- 
rations we are now unavoidably compelled to 
make use of architectural contrivances, produc- 
tive of the same effect as the frames of pictures. 
It is consequently much better to avoid this, and 
to renounce the modern illusion, though it may 
have its advantages, for the sake of extending 
the view beyond the mere decoration. It was, 
generally speaking, a principle of the Greeks, 
that everything imitated on the stage should, if 
possible, consist of actual representation; and 
only where this could not be done were they 
sati:>fied with a symbolical exhibition. 

The machinery for the descent of the gods 
through ihe air, or the withdrawing of men from 
the earth, was placed aloft behind the walls of 
the two sides of the scene, and cotisequently* 
removed from the sight of the spectators. Even 
in the time of jEschylus great use was made of 
it, as he not only brings Oceanus through the air 
on a giiffin, but also introduces the whole choir 
of ocean nymphs, at least fifteen in number, in ' 
a winged chariot. There were hollow places 
beneath the stage, and contrivances for thunder 
and lightnirjg, for the apparent fall or burning 
of a house, &c. 

An upper story could be added to the farther- 
most wall of the scene, when they wished to 
represent a tower with a wide prospect, or any- 
thing similar. The encyclema could be thrust 
behind the great middle entrance, a macliine 
of a semicircular form within, and covered 
above, which represented the objects contained 
in it as in a house. This was used for produc- 
ing a great theatrical effect, as we may see from 
many pieces. The side door of the entrance 
would naturally be then open, or the curtain 
ivhiclj covered it withdrawn. 

A stage curtain, which, we clearly see from 



a descriptioH of Ovid, was not dropped, bu 
drawn upwards, is mentioned both by Greek 
and Roman writers, and the Latin appellation, 
aulceum, is even borrowed from the Greeks. I 
suspect, however, that the curtain on the Attic 
stage was not in use at its commencement. In 
the pieces of ./Eschylus and Sophocles the scene 
is evidently empty at the opening as well as the 
conclusion, and therefore it did not require any 
contrivance for preventing the view of the spec- 
tators. However, in many of the pieces of Eu- 
ripides, perhaps also in the ffidipus Tyrannus, 
the stage is at once filled, and represents a 
standing group, who could not have been first 
assembled under the eyes of the spectators. It 
must be recollected, that it was only the com- 
paratively small proscenium, and not the logeum, 
which was covered by the curtain; for, from its 
great breadth, to have attempted to screen the 
loge\im would have been almost impracticable, 
without answering any good end. 

The entrances of the chorus were beneath in 
the orchestra, in which it generally remained, 
and in which also it performed its solemn dance, 
going backwards and forwards during the choral 
songs. In the front of the orchestra, opposite 
to the middle of the scene, there was an eleva- 
tion with steps, resembling an altar, as high as 
the stage, which was called thymele. This 
was the station of the chorus when it did not 
sing, but merely took an interest in the action. 
The leader of the chorus then took his station 
on the top of the thymele, to see what was 
passing on the stage, and to communicate with 
the characters. For though the choral song was 
common to the whole, yet when it entered into 
the dialogue one person spoke for the rest; and 
hence we are to account for the shifting from 
thou to ye in addressing them. The thymele 
was situated in the very centre of the building; 
all the measurements were calculated from it, 
and the semicircle of the amphitheatre was de- 
scribed round that point. It was, therefore, an 
excellent contrivance to place the chorus, who 
were the ideal representatives of the spectators, 
in the very situation where all the radii were 
concentrated. 

The tragical imitation of the ancients was 
altogether ideal, and rhythmical ; and in form- 
ing a judgment of it, we must always keep this 
in view. It was ideal, as its chief object was 
the highest dignity and sweetness; and rhythm- 
ical, as the gestures and inflections of voice 
were measured in a more solemn manner than 
in real life. As the plastic art of the Greeks 
was formed, if we may so express ourselves, 
with scientific strictness on the most general 
conception, and embodied into various general 
characters which were gradually invested witn 
the charms of animation, so that individuality 
was the last thing to which they turned their 
attention; in like manner in the mimetic art, 
their first idea was to exhibit their personages 
with heroical grandeur, a dignity more than 
human, and an ideal beauty : their second was 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



427 



character ; and the last of all passion, which in 
the collision was thus forced to give way. Tlie 
fidelity of the representation was less their ob- 
ject than its beauty: with us it is exactly the 
reverse. The use of masks, which appears as- 
tonishing to us, was not only justifiable on this 
principle, but absolutely essential ; and far from 
considering them in the li^lit of a last recourse, 
the Greeks would with justice have considered 
as a last recourse the bein^ obliged to allow a 
player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly marked 
individual features, to represent an Apollo or a 
Hercules. To them this would have appeared 
downright profanation. How limited is the 
power of the most finished actor, in changing 
the character of liis features! And yet this has 
the most unfavorable influence on the expres- 
sion of the passion, as all passion is tinged by 
the cliaracter. Neither are we obliged to have 
recourse to the conjecture, that they changed the 
masks in the different scenes, for the purpose 
of assuming a greater degree of joy or sorrow.* 
This would by no means have been sufficient, 
as the passions are often changed in the same 
scene; and then modern critics would still be 
obliged to suppose, that the masks exhibited a 
dilferent appearance on one side from what they 
did on the other, and that that side was turned 
towards the spectators which the circumstances 
of the moment required.']- No; the countenance 
remained from beginning to end the very same, 
as we may see from the antique masks cut out 
in stone. For the expression of the passion, the 
motion of the arms and hands, the attitudes, and 
the tone of voice, remained to them. We com- 
plain of the want of the expression of the face, 
without reflecting, that at such a great distance 
its etfect would have been lost. 

* I call it conjecture, though Barth«Iemy, in his Ana- 
charsis, considers it a settled point. He cites no autho. 
rities, and 1 do not recollect any. 

t Voltaire, in his essay on the Tragedy of the Ancients 
and Moderns, prefixed to Semiramis, has actually gone 
so far. Amidst a multitude of sujiposed improprieties, 
which he crowds together to confound the admirers of 
ancient tragedy, the following is one: Aucune nation 
(that is to say, excepting the Greeks) ne fait paraitre ses 
acteurs sur des especes d'echasses, le visage couvert d'un 
masque qui exprimc la douleur d'un cote et la joye de 
I'autre. In a conscientious inquiry into the evidence for 
an assertion so very improhahle, and yet so boldly made, 
1 can only find one passage in Ctuinctilian, lib. II. cap. 3, 
and an allusion of I'latonius still more vague. (Vide 
Ahstoph. ed. Kiister, prolegom. p. 10.) Both passages 
refer only to the new comedy, and only amount to this, 
that in some characters the eyebrows were dissunilar. 
As to the view with which this took place. 1 shall after- 
wards say a word or two in considering the new Greek 
comedy, Voltaire, however, is without excuse, as the 
mention of the cothurnus leaves no doubt that he alluded 
to tragic masks, lint his error had probably no such 
learned origin. In most cases, it would be a fruitless 
task to trace the source of Ins ignorance. The whole 
description of the Greek tragedy, as well as that of the 
cothurnus in particular, is worthy of the man whose 
krmw ledge of antiquity was such, that in his Essay on 
Tragedy, pnfixed tii Brutns, he boasts of having intro- 
duced the Koiiian Senate on the stage in red mantles. 



We are not now inquiring whether, without 
the use of masks, it may not be possible to attain 
a higher degree of separate excellence in the 
mimetic art. This we would very willingly 
allow. Cicero, it is true, speaks of the expres- 
sion, the softness, and delicacy of the acting of 
Roscius, in the same terms that a modern critic 
would apply to Garrick or Schroder. But I 
will not lay any stress on the acting of this cele- 
brated player, the excellence of which has be- 
come proverbial, because it appears from a 
passage in Cicero that he frequently played 
without a mask, and that this was preferred by 
his contemporaries. I doubt, however, whether 
this ever took among the Greeks. But the same 
writer relates, that actors in general, for the 
sake of acquiring the most perfect purity and 
flexibility of voice (and not merely the musical 
voice, otherwise the examples would not have 
been applicable to the orator), submitted to such 
a course of uninterrupted exercises as our mo- 
dern players, even the French, who are the 
strictest in their discipline, would consider a 
most intolerable oppression. The ancients could 
show their dexterity in the mimetic art, consi- 
dered by itself without the accompaniment of 
words, in their pantomimes, which they carried 
to a degree of perfection altogether unknown to 
the moderns. In tragedy, however, the great 
object in the art was strict subordination ; the 
whole was to appear animated by one spirit, 
and hence, not merely the poetry, but the mu- 
sical accompaniment, the scenical decoration 
and representation, were all the creation of the 
poet. The player was a mere tool, and his ex- 
cellency consisted in the accuracy with which 
he filled up his part, and by no means in arbi- 
trary bravura, or an ostentatious display of skill. 

As from the quality of their writing materials 
they had not the convenience of many copies, 
the parts were studied from the repeated deli- 
very of the poet, and the chorus exercised in the 
same manner. This was called teaching a 
piece. As tli^ poet was also a musician, and 
for the most part a player likewise, this must 
have greatly contributed to the perfection of the 
representation. 

We :nay safely allow that the task of the 
modern player, who must change his person 
without concealing it, is much more difficult; 
but this difficulty affords us no just criterion for 
deciding which of the two merits the preference 
as a representation of the noble and the beau- 
tiful. 

As the features of the player acquired a more 
decided expression from the mask, as his voice 
was strengthened by a contrivance for that 
purpose, the cothurnus, which consisted of sev& 
ral considerable additions to his soles, as we 
may see in the ancient statues of Melpomene, 
raised in like manner his figure considerably 
above the middle standard. The IV-iuale parts 
were also played by men, as the voice and other 
qualities of women would have conveyed an 
inadequate idea of the energy of tragic lieroines. 



428 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



The forms of the masks.* and the wliole ap- 
pearance of the tragic fi|;ures, we may easily 
suppose, were sufficiently beautiful and digni- 
fied. We should do well to have the ancient 
sculpture always present to our minds ; and the 
most accurate conception, perhaps, that we can 
possibly have, is to imagine them so many sta- 
tues in the grand style endowed with life and 
motion. But, as in sculpture, they were fond 
of dispensing as much as possible with dress, 
for the sake of exhibiting the more essential 
beauty of the figure; on the stage they would 
endeavour, from an opposite principle, to clothe 
as much as they could well do, both from a re- 
gard to decency, and because the actual forms 
of the bodj' would not correspond sufficiently 
with the beauty of the countenance. They 
would also exhibit their divinities, which in 
sculpture we always observe either entirely 
naked, or only half covered, in a complete dress. 
Tliey had recourse to a number of means for 
giving a suitable strength to the forms of the 
limbs, and thus restoring proportion to the in- 
creased height of the player. 

The great breadth of the theatre in proportion 
to its depth must have given to the grouping of 
the figures the simple and distinct order of the 
bas-relief We prefer on the stage, as well as 
everywhere else, groups of a picturesque de- 
scription, more crowded, in part covered by 
themselves, and stretching out into distance; 
but the ancients were so little fond of foreshort- 
ening, that even in their painting they generally 

* We have obtained a knowledije of iheiii from the 
imitations in stone wliich have come down to tjs. They 
display both beauty and variety. That great variety 
must liave taiten place in the tra^iical deparlment(in the 
comic, we can liave no doubt about the matter), is evi- 
dent from tlie rich store of technical expressions in the 
Greek language for every gradation of tile age, and clia- 
racter of masks. See the Onomasticon of Jul. Pollux. 
In the marble masks, however, we can neither see the 
thiiniess of the mass from which the real masks were 
executed, the more delicate coloring, nor the exquisite 
mechanism of their joinings. The abundance of excel- 
lent workmen possessed by Athens, in everything which 
had reference to the plastic arts, will warrant the con- 
jecture that they were in this respect inimitable. Tliose 
who have seen the masks of wax in the grand style, 
winch in some degree contain the whole head, lately 
contrived at the Roman carnival, may form to theni- 
seJves a pretty good idea of the theatrical masks of the 
ancients. They imitate life even to its movements in a 
most masterly maimer, and at such a distance as that 
from which the ancient players were seen, the deception 
is most perfect. They always contain the apple of tlie 
eye, as we see in the ancient masks, and the person 
covered sees merely through the aperture left for the iris. 
The ancients must have gone still farther, and contrived 
also an iris for the masks, according to the anecdote of 
the singer I'hainyris, who, in a piece which was probably 
of Sophocles, made his appearance with a blue and a 
black eye. Even accidental circumstances were imi- 
tated; for instance, the cheeks of 'I'yro, down which the 
blood had rolled from the cruel conduct of his stepmotlier. 
The head from the mask must no doubt have appeared 
somewhat large for the rest of the figure ; but this dispro- 
portion, in tragedy at least, would not be perceived from 
the elevation of the cothurnus. 



avoided it. The gestures accompanied the 
rhythiTius of the declamation, and were intended 
to display the utmost beauty and sweetness. 
The poetical conception required a certain de- 
gree of repose in the action, and that the whole 
should be kept in masses, so as to exhibit a suc- 
cession of plastic attitudes; and it is not impro- 
bable that the player remained for some time 
motionless in the same position. But we are 
not to suppose from this, that the Greeks were 
contented with a cold and spiritless representa- 
tion of the passions. How could we reconcile 
such a supposition with the fact, that whole 
lines in their tragedies are frequently dedicated 
to inarticulate exclamations of pain, with which 
we have nothing to correspond in any of our 
modern languages? 

It has been often conjectured that the delivery 
of their dialogue must have resembled the mo- 
dern recitative. For this conjecture there is no 
other foundation than that the Greek, like almost 
all the southern languages, must have been pro- 
nounced with a greater musical inflection of the 
voice than our languages of the north. In other 
respects I conceive that their tragic declamation 
must have been altogether unlike recitative, 
much more measured, and far removed from 
its learned and artificial modulation. 

We come now to the essence of the Greek 
tragedy itself In stating that the conception 
was ideal, w^e are not to understand that the 
different characters were morally perfect. In 
this case what room could there be for such an 
opposition or conflict, as the plot of a drama re 
quires? Weaknesses, errors, and even crimes, 
were portrayeil in them, but the manners were 
always elevated above reality, and every person 
was invested with such a portion of dignity and 
grandeur as was compatible with the share 
\v liich he possessed in the action. The ideality 
of the representation chiefly consisted in the 
elevation to a higher sphere. The tragical po- 
etry wished wholly to separate the image of 
humanity which it exhibited to us, from the 
ground of nature to which man is in reality 
chained down, like a feudal slave. How was 
this to be accomplished? By exhibiting to us 
an iiTiage hovering in the air? But this would 
have been incompatible with the law of gravi- 
tation and with the earthly materials of which 
our bodies are framed. Frequently, what we 
praise in an as ideal is really nothing more. 
But the production of airy floating shadows can 
make no durable impression on the mind. The 
Greeks, however, succeeded in combining in 
the most |)erfect manner in their art ideality 
with reality; or, dropping school terms, an ele- 
vation more than human with all the truth of 
life, and all die energy of bodily qualities. They 
did not allow their figures to flutter without 
consistency in empty space, but they fixed the 
statue of humanity on the eternal and iinniov- 
able basis of moral liberty; and that it might 
stand there unshaken, being formed of stone or 
brass, or some more solid mass than the living 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



429 



human bodies, it made an impression by its 
own weight, and from its very elevation and 
magnificence it was only tlie more decidedly 
subjected to the law of gravity. 

Inward liberty and external necessity are the 
two poles of the tragic world. Each of these 
ideas can only appear in the most perfect man- 
ner by the contrast of the other. As the feeling 
of internal dignity elevates the man above the 
unlinuted dominion of impulse and native in- 
stinct, and in a word absolves him from the 
gnardiansliip of nature, so the necessity which 
he must also recognise ought to be no mere na- 
tural necessity, but to lie beyond the world of 
sense in the abyss of infinitude ; and it must 
consequently be represented as the invincible 
power of fate. Hence it extends also to tlie 
world of gods; for the Grecian gods are mere 
powers of nature, and although immeasurably 
higher than mortal man, yet, compared with 
infinitude, they are on an equal footing with 
himself. In Homer and the tragedians the gods 
are introduced in a manner altogether ditferent. 
In the former their appearance is arbitrary and 
accidental, and can communicate no higher in- 
terest to the epic poem than the charm of the 
wonderful. But in tragedy the gods either enter 
in obedience to fate, and to carry its decrees 
into execution, or they endeavor in a godlike 
manner to assert their liberty of action, and ap- 
pear involved in the same struggles with destiny 
which man has to encounter. 

This is the essence of the tragic in the sense 
of the ancients. We are accustomed to give to 
all terrible or sorrowful events the appellation 
of tragic, and it is certain tliat such events are 
selected in preference by tragedy, though a me- 
lancholy conclusion is by no means indispensa- 
bly necessary; and several ancient tragedies, 
viz. the Eumenides, Philoctetes, and in some 
degree also the CEdipus Colonus. without men- 
tioning many of the pieces of Euripides, have a 
happy and enlivening ternjinatiou. 

But why does tragedy select those objects 
which are so dreadfully repugnant to the wishes 
and the wants of our sensible nature? This 
question has often been asked, and seldom an- 
swered in a very satisfactory manner. Some 
have said that the pleasure of such representa- 
tions arises from the comparison between the 
calmness and tranquillity of our own situation, 
and tlie storms and perplexities to which the 
victims of passion are exposed. But when we 
take a warm interest in a tragedy, we cease to 
think of ourselves; and when this is not the 
case, it is the be>t of all proofs that we take but 
a feeble interest, and that the tragedy has failed 
in its effects. Others again have had recourse 
to our feelings for moral iminovement, which 
is gratified by the view of poetical justice in the 
rewards of the good and the punishment of the 
wicked. But he whom the aspect of such 
dreadful exaniples could in reality improve, 
would be conifcious of a sentiment of depression 
and humiliation, very far removed from genuine 



morality and elevation of mind. Besides, poet 
ical justice is by no means indispensable in a 
good tragedy; it may end with the suffering of 
the just and the triumph of the wicked, when 
the balance is once restored by the prospect of 
futurity. Small will be our improvement, if 
with Aristotle we say that the object of tragedy 
is to purify the passions by pity and terror. In 
the first place the commentators have never 
been able to agree as to the meaning of this 
proposition, and have had recourse to the most 
forced explanations. Look for instance into the 
Dramaturgie of Lessing. Lessing gives a new 
explanation, and conceives he has found in 
Aristotle a poetical Euclid. But mathematical 
deinonstrations are subject to no misconception, 
and geometrical evidence is not applicable to 
the theory of the fine arts. Supposing however 
tragedy to operate this moral cure in us, it must 
do so by the painful feelings of terror and com- 
passion ; and it remains to be proved how we 
should take a pleasure in subjecting ourselves 
to such an operation. 

Others have been pleased to say that we are 
attracted to theatrical representations from the 
want of some violent agitation to rouse us out 
of the torpor of every-day life. I have already 
acknowledged the existence of this want, when 
speaking of the attractions of the drama : and 
to it we are even to attribute the fights of wild 
beasts and gladiators among the Romans. But 
must we who are less indurated, and more in- 
clined to tender feelings, be desirous of seeing 
demi-gods and heroes descend into the bloody 
lists of the tragic stage, like so many desperate 
gladiators, that our nerves may be shaken by 
the aspect of their sufferings? No: it is not the 
aspect of suffering which constitutes the charm 
of a tragedy, or the amusement of a circus or 
wild beast fight. In the latter we see a display 
of activity, strength, and courage, qualities re- 
lated to the mental and moral powers of man. 
The satisfaction which we derive from the re- 
presentation of the powerful situations and 
overwhelming passions in a good tragedy, triust 
be ascribed either to the feeling of the dignity 
of human nature, excited by the great models 
exhibited to us, or to the trace of a higher order 
of things, impressed on the apparently irregular 
progress of events, and secretly revealed in 
them ; or to both of these causes together. 

The true cause, therefore, why in tragical 
representations we cannot exclude even that 
which appears harsh and cruel is, that a spirit- 
ual and invisible power can only be measured 
by the opposition which it encounters from some 
external force that can be taken in by the senses. 
The moral freedom of man can therefore only 
be displayed in a conflict with the impulse of 
the senses: so long as it is not called into action 
by a higher power, it is either actually dormant 
in him, or appears to slumber, as it can fill no 
part as a mere natural entity. The moral pari 
of our nature can only be preserved amidst 
struggles and difficulties, and if we were there 



fore to ascribe a distinctive aim to tragedy, as 
instructive, it should be this: that all these suf- 
ferings must be experienced, and all these diffi- 
culties overcome, to establish the claims of the 
niiud to a divine origiu, and teach us to estimate 
the earthly existence as vain and insiguificatit. 

With respect to everything connected with 
tliis point, I refer my hearers to the Section on 
the Sublime in Kant's Criticism of the Judg- 
ment (Kritik der Urtheilskrafl'), to the coutplete 
perfection of which notliiiig is wanting but a 
more definite idea of the tragedy of the ancients, 
- with which he does not seem to have been very 
well acquainted. 

I come now to another peculiarity which dis- 
tinguishes tlie tragedy of the ancients from ours, 
1 mean tlie chorus. We must consider it as the 
personification of opinion on the action which 
is going on ; the incorporation into the repre- 
sentation itself of the sentiments of the poet as 
the interpreter for the whole human race. This 
is the general poetical character which we must 
here assign to it, and that character is by no 
means affected by the circumstance that the 
chorus had a local origin in the feasts of Bac- 
chus, and that it always had a peculiar national 
signification with the Greeks. We have already 
said that, with their republican way of thinking, 
publicity was considered essential to every im- 
portant transaction. As in their compositions 
they went back to the heroic ages, they gave a 
certain republican cast to the families of their 
heroes, by carrying on the action either in pre- 
sence of the elders of tlie people, or those per- 
sons whose characters entitled them to respect. 
This publicity does not, it is true, correspond 
with Homer's picture of the manners of tlie he- 
roic age; but both in the costume and tlie my- 
thology, the dramatic poetry generally displayed 
a spirit of independence and conscious liberty. 

The chorus was therefore introduced to give 
the whole that appearance of reality which was 
most consistent with the fable. Whatever it 
might be in particular pieces, it represented in 
general, first the national spirit, and then the 
general participa'ion of manliind. In a word, 
tlie chorus is the ideal spectator. It mitigates 
the impression of a heart-rending or moving 
story, wliile it conveys to the actual spectator a 
lyrical and musical expression of his own emo- 
tions, and e'evates hhn to the region of consi- 
deration. 

The modern critics have never known what 
to make of the chorus; and this is the less to 
be wondered at, as Aristotle aflbrds no satisfac- 
tory solution of the difficulty. The business of 
the chorus is better painted by Horace, who as- 
scribes to it a general expression of moral par- 
ticipation, instruction and admonition. But the 
critics in question have either believed that its 
chief object was to prevent the stage from ever 
being altogether empty, althougli the proper 
pluce for the chorus was not upon tlie stage ■ or 
they have censured it as a superfluous ard 
laughable accompaniment, and seemed ast )- 



nished at the sujiposed impropriety of carrying 
on secret transactions in the presence of assem- 
bled multitudes. This they consider as the 
principal reason for the observance of the unity 
of place, as it could not be changed by the poet 
without the dismission of the chorus, an act 
■which would have required at least some sort 
of pretext; they believe that the chorus owed 
its continuance from the first origin of tragedy 
merely to accident ; and as it is easy to perceive 
that in Euripides, the last tragic poet which we 
have, the choral songs have frequently little or 
no connection with the fable, and form a mere 
episodical ornament, they therefore conclude 
that the Greeks had only to take one other step 
in dramatic art to explode the chorus altogether. 
To refute these superficial conjectures, it is only 
necessary to observe, that Sophocles wrote a 
Treatise on the chorus, in prose, in opposition 
to the principles of some other poets, and that 
far from following blindly the practice which 
he found established, like an intelligent artist 
he could assign reasons for the system which 
he adopted. 

Modern poets of the very first rank, since the 
revival of the study of the ancients, have often 
attempted to introduce the chorus in their pieces, 
for the most part without a correct, and always 
without a vivid idea of its destination. But we 
have no suitable singing or dancing, neither 
have we, as our theatres are constructed, any 
place for it ; and it will hardly ever succeed, 
therefore, in becoming naturalized with us. 

The Greek tragedy, in its pure and unaltered 
state, will always for our theatre remain an 
exotic plant, which we can hardly hope to cul- 
tivate with any success, even in the hot-house 
of learned art and criticism. The Grecian my- 
thology, which constitutes the materials of an- 
cient tragedy, is as foreign to the minds and 
imaginations of most of the spectators, as its 
form and mode of representation. But to en- 
deavor to constrain another subject, an historical 
one for example, to assume that form, must 
always be a most unprofitable and hopeless 
attempt. 

I have called mythology the chief material 
of tragedy. We know, indeed, of two historical 
tragedies, by Grecian authors: the Capture of 
Miletus, of Phrynichns, and the Persians, of 
jEschylus, a piece which still exists; but these 
singular exceptions, both belonging to an epoch 
when the art had not attained its full maturity, 
among so many hundred examples of a ditter- 
ent description, serve to establish more strongly 
the truth of the rule. The sentence passed by 
the Athenians on Phrynichus, whom they sub- 
jected to a pecuniary fine because, in the repre- 
sentation of contemporary calamities which 
with due caution he might have avoided, he 
had agitated them in too violent a manner, 
however hard and arbitrary if may appear in a 
judicial point of view, disiilays nevertheless a 
correct feeling with respect to the subject and 
the limits of art. The mind suffering under the 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



431 



near reality of the subject cannot preserve the 
necessary repose and self-possession which are 
necessary for the reception of pure tragical im- 
pressions. The heroic fables, on the other liand, 
appear always at a certain distance, and in the 
light of the wonderful. The wonderful pos- 
sesses the advantage of being believed, and in 
some degree disbelieved, at the same time: be- 
lieved ill so far as it is founded on the connec- 
tion with other opinions; disbelieved wliile we 
never take such an immediate interest in it as 
we do in what wears the hue of the every-day 
life of our own age. The Grecian mythology 
was a web of national and local traditions, held 
in equal honor as a part of religion and as an 
introduction to history; everywhere preserved 
in full life among the people by customs and 
monuments, and by the numberless works of 
epic and mythical poets. The tragedians had 
only therefore to engraft one species of poetry 
on another; they were always allowed their 
use of certain established fables, invaluable for 
their dignity, grandeur, and remoteness from all 
accessary ideas of petty description. Every- 
thing, down to the very errors and weaknesses 
of that departed race of heroes who claimed 
tlieir descent from the gods, was consecrated in 
the eyes of the people. Those heroes were 
painted as beings endowed with more than 
human strength; but, so far from possessing 
unerring virtue and wisdom, they were also 
represented as under the dominion of furious 
and unbridled passions. It was a wild age of 
effervescence: the cultivation of social order 
had not as yet rendered the soil of morality 
arable, and it yielded at the same time the 
most beneficent and poisonous productions, with 
the fresh and luxuriant fulness of a creative 
nature. Here the monstrous and ferocious were 
not a necessary indication of that degradation 
and corruption with which they are necessarily 
associated under the development of law and 
order, and which fill us with sentiments of hor- 
ror and aversion. The criminals of the fabulous 
ages are not, if we may be allowed the expres- 
sion, amenable to the tribunals of men, but con- 
signed over to a higher jurisdiction. Some are 
of opinion that the Greeks, in their republican 
zeal, took a particular pleasure in witnessing 
the representation of the outrages and conse- 
quent calamities of the different royal families, 
ami are almost disposed to consider the ancient 
tragedy, in general, as a satire on monarcliical 
government. This party view would, however, 
have deailened the interest of the audience, and 
consequently destroyed the effect which it was 
the aim of the tragedy to produce. But we 
must remark, that the royal families, v/hose 
crimes and niislbrtunes afforded the most abun- 
dant materials for tragical pictures of a horrible 
description, were the Pelopidce of Mycense, and 
tlie Labdacidie of Thebes, families which were 
foreign to the Athenians, for whom the pieces 
were composed. We do not see that the Attic 
poets endeavored to exhibit the ancient kings 



of their country in an odious light; on the con- 
trary, they always hold up their national hero, 
Theseus, for public admiration, as a model of 
justice and moderation, the champion of the 
oppressed, the first lawgiver, and even the 
founder of their liberty; and it was one of their 
favorite modes of flattering the people, to per- 
suade them that, even in the heroic ages, Athens 
was distinguished above all the other states of 
Greece, for obedience to the laws, humanity, 
and a knowledge of the rights of nations. The 
general revolution, by wliich the independent 
kingdoms of ancient Greece were converted 
into a community of free states, had separated 
the heroic age from the age of social cultivation, 
by a wide interval, beyond which the genealogy 
of a very few families only was attempted to 
be traced. This was extremely advantageous 
for the ideal elevation of the characters of their 
tragedy, as few human things will admit of a 
close inspection into them, without betraying 
their imperfections. But in the very different 
relations of the age in which those heroes lived, 
the standard of mere civil and domestic mo- 
rality was not applicable, and the feeling must 
go back to the primary ingredients of Immanity. 
Before the existence of constitutions, — before the 
proper development of law and right, the sove- 
reigns and rulers were their own lawgivers in 
a world not yet subjected to order; and the 
fullest scope was thus given to the dominion of 
will for good and for bad purposes. Hereditary 
rule, therefore, exhibited more striking instances 
of sudden changes of fortune than the late times 
of political equality. In these respects the high 
rank of the principal characters was essential, 
or at least favorable to tragic representation, 
and not because, according to the idea of some 
moderns, those only who can occasion the hap- 
piness or misery of numbers are sufficiently im- 
portant to interest us in their behalf, nor because 
internal elevation of sentiment must be clothed 
with external dignity, to claim our honor and 
admiration. The Greek tragedians paint the 
downfall of kingly houses without any reference 
to the condition of the people; they show us 
the man in the king, and, far from veiling tlieir 
heroes from our sight in their purple mantles, 
they allow us to look through their vain splen- 
dor, into a bosom torn and harrowed up by 
passions. That the regal pomp was not so 
necessary as the heroic costume is evident, not 
only from the practice of the ancients, but from 
the tragedies of the moderns having a reference 
to the throne, produced under difl'erent circum- 
stances, namely, the existence of monarchical 
government. They dare not draw from existing 
reality, for nothing is less suitable for tragedy 
than a court, anil a court life. When they do 
not therefore paint an ideal kingdom with dis- 
tant manners, they fall into stiffness and for- 
mality, which are much more destructive to 
freedom and boldness of character, and to <leep 
pathos, than the narrow circle of private life. 
A few mythological fables ordy seem ougi 



432 



A. W, SCHLEGEL. 



nally mavUed out for tragedy : such, for example, 
as the lou^-coiitinued alternation of aggressions, 
vengeance, and maledictions, which we witness 
in the house of Atreus. When we examine tlie 
names of the pieces which are lost, we have 
great difficulty in conceiving how the mytholo- 
gical fables on which they are founded, as they 
are known to us, could afford sufficient mate- 
rials for the development of an entire tragedy. 
It is true, the poets, in the various relations of 
the same story, had a great amplitude of selec- 
tion ; and this very variety justified them in 
going still farther, and making considerable al- 
terations in the circumstances of an event, so 
that the inventions added to one piece some- 
times contradict the accounts given by the same 
poet in another. We are, however, principally 
to ascribe the productiveness of mythology, for 
the tragic art, to the principle which we ob- 
serve so powerful throughout the whole histo- 
rical range of Grecian cultivation; namely, that 
the power which preponderated for the time 
assimilated everything to itself As the heroic 
fables, in all their deviations, were easily de- 
veloped into the tranquil fulness and light va- 
riety of epic poetry, they were afterwards 
adapted to the object which the tragedians pro- 
posed to accomplish, by earnestness, energy, 
and compression ; and what in this change of 
destination appeared inapplicable to tragedy 
still afforded materials for a sort of half sportive, 
though ideal representation, in the subordinate 
walk of the satirical drama. 

I shall be forgiven, I hope, if I attempt to 
illustrate the above reflections on the essence 
of the ancient tragedy, by a comparison bor- 
rowed from the plastic arts, wliich will, I trust, 
be found somewhat more than a mere fanciful 
allusion. 

The Homeric epic is, in poetry, what half- 
raised workmanship is in sculpture, and tragedy 
the distinctly separated group. 

The poem of Homer, sprung from the soil of 
the traditionary tale, is not yet purified from it, 
as the figures of a bas-relief are borne by a 
back-ground which is foreign to them. These 
figures appear depressed, and in the epic poem 
all is painted as past and remote. In the bas- 
relief they are generally thrown into profile, 
and in the epic characterized in the most artless 
manner: they are, in the former, not properly 
grouped, but follow one another; and the Ho- 
meric heroes, in like manner, advance singly in 
succession before us. It has been remarked 
that the Iliad is not definitively closed, but that 
we are left to suppose something both to pre- 
cede and to follow. The bas-relief is equally 
boundless, and may be continued ad infinitum, 
either from before or behind, on which account 
'lie ancients preferred the selection of those 
objects for it which admitted of an indefinite 
extension, as the trains at sacrifices, dances, and 
rows of combatants, &c. Hence tliey also ex- 
hibited bas-reliefs on round surfaces, such as 
vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where the two 



ends are withdrawn from our sight by the curv 
ature, and where, on our advancing, one object 
appears as another disappears. The reading 
of the Homeric poetry very much resembles 
such a circumgyration, as the present object 
alone arrests our attention, while that which 
precedes and follows is allowed to disappear. 

But in the distinctly formed group, as in tra 
gedy, sculpture and poetry bring before our eyes 
an independent and definite whole. To sepa- 
rate it from natural reality, the former places it 
on a base, as on an ideal ground. It also re- 
moves as much as possible all foreign and acci- 
dental accessaries, that the eye may wholly rest 
on the essential objects, the figures themselves. 
These figures are wrought into the most com- 
plete rounding, yet they refuse the illusion of 
colours, and announce by the purity and uni- 
formity of the mass of which they are con- 
structed, a creation not endowed with perishable 
life, but of a higher and more elevated character. 

Beauty is the object of sculpture, and repose 
is most advantageous for the display of beauty. 
Repose alone, therefore, is suitable to the figure. 
But a number of figures can only be connected 
together and grouped by one action. The group 
represents beauty in motion, and the object of 
it is to combine both in the highest degree. 
This can only be effected when the artist finds 
means, in the most violent bodily or mental 
anguish, to moderate the expression by manly 
resistance, calm grandeur, or inherent sweet- 
ness, in such a manner that, with the most 
moving truth, the features of beauty shall yet 
in nowise be disfigured. The observation of 
Winkelmann on this subject is inimitable. He 
says that beauty with the ancients was the 
tongue on the balance of expression, and in this 
sense the groups of Niobe and Laocoon are 
masterpieces; the one in the sublime and se- 
rious, the other in the learned and ornamental 
style. 

The comparison with ancient tragedy is the 
more apposite here as we know that both JEa- 
chylus and Sophocles produced a Niobe, and 
that Sophocles was also the author of LaocoOn. 
In Laocoon the coufiicting sufferings and an- 
guish of the body, and the resistance of the soul, 
are balanced with the most wonderful equili- 
brium. The children calling for help, tender 
objects of our compassion, and not of our admi- 
ration, draw us back to the appearance of the 
father, who seems to turn his eyes in vain to 
the gods. The convolving serpents exhibit to 
us the inevitable destiny which unites together 
the characters in so dreadful a manner. And 
yet the beauty of proportion, the pleasing flow 
of the attitude, are not lost in this violent strug- 
gle; and a representation the most frightful to 
the senses is yet treated with a degree of mode- 
ration, while a mild breath of sweetness is dif- 
fused over the whole. 

In the group of Niobe there is also the most 
per'ect mixture of terror and pity. The up- 
turned looks of the mother, and the mouth half 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



433 



open in supplication, seem to accuse the invi- 
sible wrath of Heaven. The daughter, clinging 
in the agonies of death to the bosom of her mo- 
ther, in her infantine innocence can have no 
other fear than for herself: the innate impulse 
of self-preservation was never represented in a 
manner more tender and affecting. Can there 
on the other hand be exhibited to the senses a 
more beautiful image of self-devoting heroic 
magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends her body 
forwards, that if possible she alone may receive 
the destructive bolt? Pride and repugnance 
are melted down in the most ardent maternal 
love. The more than earthly dignity of the 
features is the less disfigured by pain, as from 
the quick repetition of the shocks she appears, 
as in the fable, to have become insensible and 
motionless. But before this figure, twice trans- 
formed into stone, and yet so inimitably ani- 
mated, — before this line of demarcation of all 
human suffering, the most callous beholder is 
dissolved in tears. 

In all the agitation produced by the sight of 
these groups, there is still somewhat in them 
which invites us to composed contemplation; 
and in the same manner, the tragedy of the 
ancients leads us, even in the course of the re- 
presentation, to the most elevated reflections on 
our existence, and those mysteries in our destiny 
which can never be wholly explained. 

^SCHYLUS. 

jEschylus is to be considered as the creator 
of tragedy, which sprung from him completely 
armed, liked Pallas from the head of Jupiter. 
He clothed it in a state of suitable dignity, and 
gave it an appropriate place of exhibition ; he 
was the inventor of scenic pomp, and not only 
instructed the chorus in singing and dancing, 
but appeared in the character of a player. He 
was the first who gave development to the dia- 
logue, and limits to the lyrical part of the tra- 
gedy, which still however occupies too much 
space in his pieces. He draws his characters 
with a few bold and strongly marked features. 
The plans are simple in the extreme : he did 
not understand the art of enriching and varying 
an action, and dividing its development and 
catastrophe into parts, bearing a due proportion 
to each other. Hence his action often stands 
still, and this circumstance becomes still more 
apparent, from the undue extension of his choral 
songs. But all his poetry betrays a sublime and 
serious mind. Terror is his element, and not 
the softer affections ; he holds up the head of 
Medusa to his astonished spectators. His man- 
ner of treating fate is austere in the extreme: 
he suspends it over the heads of mortals in its 
gloomy majesty. The cothurnus of .iEschylus 
has as it were an iron weight: gigantic figures 
alone stalk before our eyes. It seems as if it 
required an effort in him to condescend to paint 
mere men to us : he abounds most in represen- 
tation of gods, and seems to dwell with parti- 
cular delight in exhibiting the Titans, those 
3e 



ancient gods who signify the dark powers of 
primitive nature, and who had long been driven 
into Tartarus beneath a better regulated world 
He endeavors to swell out his language to a 
gigantic sublimity, corresponding with the stan- 
dard of his character. Hence he abounds in 
harsh combinations and overstrained epithets, 
and the lyrical parts of his pieces are often ob- 
scure in the extreme, from the involved nature 
of the construction. He resembles Dante and 
Shakspeare in the very singular cast of his 
images and expressions. These images are 
nowise deficient in the terrible graces, which 
almost all the writers of antiquity celebrate in 
^schylus. 

.iEschylus flourished in the very first vigor 
of the Grecian freedom, after its successful 
struggle, and he seems to have been thoroughly 
imbued with a proud feeling of the superiority 
which this struggle reflected on the nation to 
which he belonged. He was an eye-witness 
of the greatest and most glorious event in the 
history of Greece, the overtliro\/ and annihila- 
tion of the Persian hosts under Darius and 
Xerxes, and had fought in the memorable bat- 
tles of Marathon and Salamis with distinguished 
bravery. In the Persians he has, in an indirect 
manner, sung the triumph which he contributed 
to obtain, while he paints the downfall of the 
Persian projects, and the ignominious return of 
the fugitive monarch to his royal residence. He 
describes in the most vivid and glowing colors 
the battle of Salamis. In this piece, and in the 
Seven before Thebes, a warlike vein gushes 
forth ; the personal inclination of the poet for 
the life of a hero shines throughout with the 
most dazzling lustre. It was well remarked 
by Gorgias, the sophist, that Mars, instead of 
Bacchus, dictated this last drama; for Bacchus, 
and not Apollo, was the patron of tragic poets, 
which may appear somewhat singular on a first 
view of the matter, but then we must recollect 
that Bacchus was not merely the god of wine 
and joy, but also the god of the highest degree 
of inspiration. 

Among the remaining pieces of .ZEschylus, 
we have what is highly deserving of our atten- 
tion, a complete triology. The antiquarian ac- 
count of triologies is this, that in the more early 
times the poet did not contend for the prize 
with a single piece, but with three, which how- 
ever were not always connected together by 
their contents, and that a fourth satirical drama 
was also attached to them. All these were 
successively represented in one day. The idea 
which we must form of the triology in relation 
to the tragic art is this ; a tragedy cannot be 
indefinitely lengthened and continued, like the 
Homeric epic poem for example, to which whole 
rhapsodies have been appended ; for this is too 
independent and complete within itself Not- 
withstanding this circumstance, however, seve- 
ral tragedies may be connected together by 
means of a common destiny running tliroughout 
all their actions in one great cycle. Hence the 
37 



434 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



fixing on the number three admits of a satisfac- 
tory explanation. It is tlie thesis, the antithesis, 
and the connection. The advantage of this 
conjunction was that, in the consideration of the 
connected fables,* more ample degree of grati- 
fication was derived than could possibly be ob- 
tained from a single action. The objects of the 
three tragedies might be separated by a wide in- 
terval of time, or follow close upon one another. 

The three pieces of the triology of .^Eschylus 
are Agamemnon, the Choephorse or Electra, and 
the Eumenides or Furies. The object of the 
first is the murder of Agamemnon by Clytem- 
nestra, on his return from Troy. In the second, 
Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother : 
facto pius et sceleratus eodem. This deed, although 
perpetrated from the most powerful motives, is 
repugnant however to natural and moral order. 
Orestes as a prince was, it is true, entitled to 
exercise justice even on the members of his 
own family; but he was under the necessity 
of stealing in disguise into the dwelling of the 
tyrannical usurper of his throne, and of going to 
work like an assassin. The memory of his 
father pleads his excuse ; but although Clytem- 
nestra has deserved death, the blood of his 
mother still rises up in judgment against him. 
This is represented in the Eumenides in the 
form of a contention among the gods, some of 
whom approve of the deed of Orestes, while 
others persecute him, till at last the divine wis- 
dom, under the figure of Minerva, reconciles 
the opposite claims, establishes a peace, and 
puts an end to the long series of crimes and 
punishments which desolated the royal house 
of Atreus. 

A considerable interval takes place between 
the period of the first and second pieces, during 
which Orestes grows up to manhood. The 
second and third are connected together imme- 
diately in the order of time. Orestes takes flight 
after the murder of his mother to Delphi, where 
we find him at the commencement of the Eu- 
menides. 

In each of the two first pieces, there is a visi- 
ble reference to the one which follows. In 
Agamemnon, Cassandra and the chorus pro- 
phesy, at the close, to the arrogant Clytemnestra 
and lier paramour .iEgisthus, the punishment 
which awaits them at the hands of Orestes. In 
the Choephorae, Orestes, immediately after the 
execution of the deed, finds no longer any re- 
pose ; the furies of his mother begin to persecute 
him, and he announces his resolution of taking 
refuge in Delphi. 

The connection is therefore evident through- 
out, and we may consider the three pieces, 
which were connected together even in the re- 
presentation, as so many acts of one great and 
entire drama. I mention this as a preliminary 
justification of Shakspeare and other modern 
Doets, in connecting together in one representa- 
tion a larger circle of human destinies, as we 
can produce to th-e critics who object to this the 
supposed example of the ancients. 



In Agamemnon it was the intention of .^s- 
chylus to exhibit to us a sudden fall from the 
highest pinnacle of prosperity and fame, into 
the abyss of ruin. The prince, the hero, the 
general of the whole of the Greeks, in the very 
moment when he has succeeded in concluding 
the most glorious action, the destruction of Troy, 
the fame of which is to be re-echoed from the 
mouths of the greatest poets of all ages, on en- 
tering the threshold of his house, after which 
he has long sighed, is strangled amidst the un 
suspected preparations for a festival, according 
to the expression of Homer, "like an ox in the 
stall," strangled by his faithless wife; her un- 
worthy seducer takes possession of his throne, 
and the children are consigned to banishment, 
or to hopeless servitude. 

With the view of giving the greater effect to 
this dreadful alternation of fortune, the poet has 
previously thrown a splendor over the destruc- 
tion of Troy. He has done this in the first half 
of the piece in a manner peculiar to himself, 
which, however singular, must be allowed to 
be impressive in the extreme, and to lay fast 
hold of the imagination. It is of importance to 
Clytemnestra not to be surprised by the arrival 
of her husband. She has therefore arranged 
an uninterrupted series of signal-fires from Troy 
to Mycenie to announce to her the great event. 
The piece commences with the speech of a 
watchman, who supplicates the gods for a re- 
lease from his toils, as for ten long years he had 
been exposed to the cold dews of night, has 
witnessed the various changes of the stars, and 
looked in vain for the expected signal; at the 
same time he sighs in secret for the internal 
ruin of the royal house. At this moment he 
sees the blaze of the long wished-for fires, and 
hastens to announce it to his mistress. A chorus 
of aged persons appears, and in their songs they 
trace back the Trojan war, throughout all its 
eventful changes of fortune from its first origin, 
and recount all the prophecies relating to it, and 
the sacrifice of Iphigenia, at the expense of 
which the voyage of the Greeks was purchased. 
Clytemnestra declares the joyful cause of the 
sacrifice which she orders, and the herald Tal- 
thybius immediately makes his appearance, who 
as an eye-witness announces the drama of the 
conquered and plundered city consigned as a 
prey to the flames, the joy of the victors, and the 
glory of their leader. He displays with reluc- 
tance, as if unwilling to shade the brilliancy of 
his picture, the subsequent misfortunes of the 
Greeks, their dispersion, and the shipwreck 
sutfered by many of them, an immediate symp- 
t«m of the wrath of the gods. We easily see 
how little the unity of place was observed by 
the poet, and that he rather avails himself of 
the prerogative of his mental dominion over the 
powers of nature, and adds wings to the circling 
hours m their course towards their dreadful 
goal. Agamemnon now comes, borne in a sort 
of triumphal procession; and seated in another 
car, laden with booty, follows Cassandra, his 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



435 



prisoner of war and mistress, according to the 
privilege of the heroes of those days. Clytern- 
nestra greets him witli hypocritical joy and 
veneration; she orders her slaves to cover the 
ground with •the most costly embroideries of 
purple, that it might not be touched by the foot 
of the conqueror. Agamemnon, with sage mo- 
deration refuses to receive an honor due only to 
the gods; at last he yields to their invitations 
aiul enters the house. The chorus then begins 
to uttet dark forebodings. Clytemnestra returns 
to allure Cassandra to her destruction by the 
art of soft persuasion. The latter remains dumb 
and motionless, but the queen is hardly gone, 
when, seized with a prophetic rage, she breaks 
out iuto the most perplexing lamentations, after- 
wards unveils her prophecies more distinctly to 
the chorus; she sees in her mind all the enor- 
mities which have been perpetrated in that 
house; the repast of Thyestes, which the sun 
refused to look on ; the shadows of the dilace- 
rated children appear to her on the battlements 
of the palace. She also sees the death prepared 
for her master, and although horror-struck at 
the atrocious spectacle, as if seized with an 
overpowering fury, she rushes into the house to 
meet her inevitable death ; we then hear behind 
the scenes the sighs of the dying Agamemnon. 
The palace opens; Clytemnestra stands beside 
the body of her king and husband, an undaunted 
criminal, who net only confesses the deed, but 
boasts of it as a just requital for Agamemnon's 
ambitious sacrifice of Iphigenia. The jealousy 
towarils Cassandra, and the criminal union with 
the unworthy ./Egisthus, which is first disclosed 
after the completion of the murder towards the 
conclusion of the piece, are motives which she 
throws entirely into the back-ground, and hardly 
touches on; this was necessary to preserve the 
dignity of the object. But Clytemnestra would 
have been improperly portrayed as a weak 
woman seduced from her duty; she appeared 
with the features of that heroic age so rich in 
bloody catastrophes, in which all the passions 
were violent, and in which, both in good and 
evil, men exceeded the ordinary standard of 
later and more puny ages. What is so revolt- 
ing, what affords such a deep proof of the de- 
generacy of human nature, as the spectacle of 
horrid crimes conceived in a pusillanimous bo- 
som ? When such crimes are to be portrayed 
by the poet, he must neither endeavor to em- 
bellish them, nor to mitigate our horror and 
aversion. The consequence which is thus given 
to the sacrifice of Iphigenia has this particular 
advantage, that it keeps within some bounds 
our discontent at the fall of Agamemnon. He 
cannot be pronounced wholly innocent; an 
earlier crime recoils on his own head ; and be- 
sides, according to the religious idea of the an- 
cients, an old curse hung over his house: .iEgis- 
thus, the contriver of his destruction, is a son of 
;hat very Thyestes on whom his father Atreus 
took such an unnatural revenge; and this fatal 
connection is conveyed to our rninds in the most 



vivid manner by the chorus, and more espe- 
cially by the prophecies of Cassandra. 

The scene of the Choephora? is before the 
royal palace; the grave of Agamemnon appears 
on the stage. Orestes is seen with his faithful 
Py lades, and opens the play (which is unfor- 
tunately somewhat mutilated at the commence- 
ment) at the sepulchre with a prayer to Mer- 
cury, and with an invocation to his father, in 
wliich he promises to avenge him, and to whom 
he consecrates a lock. He sees a female train 
in mourning weeds issue from the palace, who 
bring a libation to the grave ; and, as he tliinks 
he recognizes his sister among them, he retires 
with Pylades that he may first overhear them. 
The chorus, which consists of captive Trojan 
virgins, reveals with mournful gestures the oc- 
casion of its mission, namely, a dreadful dream 
of Clytemnestra; it adds obscure forebodings 
of the impending revenge for the bloody crime, 
and bewails its lot in being obliged to serve 
unworthy superiors. Eiectra asks the chorus if 
they mean to fulfil the commission of her hostile 
mother, or if they are to pour out their ofl^ering 
in silence ; and in compliance with their advice, 
she also oflers up a prayer to the subterranean 
Mercury and the soul of her father, in her own 
name and that of the absent Orestes, that he 
may appear and avenge him. In pouring out 
the offering she joins in the lamentations of the 
chorus for the departed. She then conjectures, 
from finding a lock of hair resembling her own 
in color, and seeing footsteps near the grave, 
that her brother has been there; and when she 
is almost frantic with joy at the thought, her 
brother steps forward and discovers himself. 
He soon overcomes her doubts by exhibiting to 
her a tissue woven by herself: they give them- 
selves np to their joy; he addresses a prayer 
to Jupiter, and makes known that Apollo has 
called on him, under the most dreadful threats 
of persecution from the furies of his father, to 
destroy those who were guilty of his death in 
the same manner in which he was destroyed, 
namely, by guile and cunning. We have now 
hymns on the part of the chorus and Eiectra, 
which consist of prayers to her father's shade 
and the subterranean divinities, and a recapitu- 
lation of the motives for the deed, especially 
those derived from the death of Agamemnon. 
Orestes inquires iuto the vision which induced 
Clytemnestra to offer the libation, and hears 
that she dreamt that she gave her breast to a 
dragon in her son's cradle and suckled it with 
her blood. He now resolves to become the 
dragon, and announces more distinctly his in- 
tention of stealing into the house as a disguised 
stranger, and attacking both her and .^Egistlius 
by surprise. With this view he withdraws 
along with Pylades. The subject of the next 
choral hymn is the boundless audacity of men 
in general, and especially of women in their 
illicit passions, confirmed by the most terrible 
mythical examples, and the avenging justice 
which always at last overtakes them. Orestes 



436 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



returns as a stranger, with Pylades, and desires 
admission into the palace. Clytemnestra comes 
out, and when she learns from him the death 
of Orestes, at which Electra assumes a feigned 
grief, she invites him to enter and partake of 
their hospitality. After a short prayer of the 
chorus, the nurse comes and mourns her foster 
child ; the chorus inspires her with some hopes 
of his being still in life, and advises her to con- 
trive to bring ^gisthus to Clytemnestra without 
his bo(ly-t_'aard. On the approaching aspect of 
danger, the chorus proffers prayers to Jupiter 
and Mercury for the success of the deed. JEgis- 
thus enters into conversation with the messenger, 
can hardly allow himself to be persuaded of the 
truth of the joyful news of the death of Orestes, 
and hastens into the house for the purpose of 
ascertaining it, from whence, after a short prayer 
of the chorus, we hear the cries of the murdered. 
A servant rushes o'jt and gives the alarm at the 
door of the fe/nale dwelling, to warn Clytem- 
nestra. She hears it, comes forward, and de- 
iTiands an axe to defend herself; but as Orestes 
rushes instantaneously on her with the bloody 
sword, her courage fails her, and she holds up 
to him the maternal breast in the most moving 
manner. Hesitating in his purpose, he asks the 
counsel of Pylades, who in a few lines exhorts 
him by the most cogent reasons to persist ; after 
an alternation of accusation and defence, he 
pursues her into the house, that he may sacrifice 
her beside the body of .(Egisthus. The chorus 
rejoices in a grave hymn at the completion of 
the retaliation. The great door of the palace 
opens, and exhibits in the inside the two dead 
bodies on one bed. Orestes orders the servants 
to unfold the capacious vestment in which his 
father was entangled when he was slain, that 
it muy be seen by all the beholders ; the chorus 
recognize the bloody spots in it, and mourn 
afresh the murder of Agamemnon. Orestes, 
while he feels that his mind is becoming con- 
fused, lays hold of an opportunity of justifying 
himself; he declares his intention of repairing 
to Delphi to purify himself from the bloody 
deed, and flies with terror from the furies of 
his mother, whom the chorus does not perceive, 
but conceives to be a mere phantom of his ima- 
gination, but who nevertheless will no longer 
allow him any repose. The chorus concUules 
with a reflection on the threefold scene of mur- 
der, in the royal palace, since the repast of 
Thyestes. 

The fable of the Eumenides is, as I have al- 
ready said, the justification and absolution of 
Orestes from his bloody crime; it is a trial, but 
a trial where the gods are accusers, and de- 
fenders, and judges ; and the manner in which 
•he subject is treated corresponds with its ma- 
•esty and importance. The scene itself brought 
before the eyes of the Greeks the highest objects 
of veneration which were known to them. 

It opens before the celebrated temple at Del- 
phi, which occupies the back-ground; the aged 
Pylhia enters in sacerdotal pomp, addresses her 



prayers to all the gods who presided, or*still 
preside, over the oracle, harangues the assem- 
bled people (the actual), and goes into the tem- 
ple to seat herself on a tripod. She returns full 
of consternation, and describes \what she has 
seen in the temple : a man stained with blood 
supplicating protection, surrounded by sleeping 
women with serpent hair; she then makes her 
exit by the same entrance. Apollo now appears 
with Orestes in his traveller's garb, and a sword 
and an olive branch in his hands. He promises 
him his farther protection, commands him to 
flee to Athens, and recommends him to the care 
of the present but invisible Mercury, to whom 
travellers, and especially those who were under 
the necessity of concealing their journey, were 
usually consigned. 

Orestes goes off at the side allotted to stran- 
gers; Apollo re-enters the temple, which re- 
mains open, and the furies are seen in the inte- 
rior sleeping on their seats. Clytemnestra now 
ascends by the charonic stairs through the or- 
chestra, and appears on the stage. We are not 
to suppose her a haggard skeleton, but a figure 
with the appearance of life, though paler, still 
bearing her wounds in her breast, and shrouded 
in ethereal -colored vestments. She calls re- 
peatedly to the Furies in the language of vehe- 
ment reproach, and then disappears, probably 
through a trap-door. The Furies awake, and 
when they no longer find Orestes, they dance 
in wild commotion round the stage during the 
choral song. Apollo returns from the temple, 
and expels them from his sanctuary as profana- 
tory beings. We may here suppose him ap- 
pearing with the sublime displeasure of the 
Apollo of the Vatican, with bow and quiver, or 
clothed in his sacred tunic and chlamys. 

The scene now changes ; but as the Greeks 
on such occasions were fond of going the shortest 
way to work, the back-ground remained proba- 
bly unchanged, and had now to represent the 
temple of Minerva, on the hill of Mars (Areo- 
pagus), and the lateral decorations would be 
converted into Athens and the surrounding 
landscape. Orestes comes as from another land, 
and embraces as a suppliant the statue of Pallas 
placed before the temple. The chorus (who, 
according to the directions of the poet, were 
clothed in black, with purple girdles, and ser- 
pents in their hair, — the masks with something 
of the terrible beauty of Medusa heads, and 
even the age marked on plastic principles, — ) 
follow him on foot to this place, but remain 
throughout the remainder of the piece beneath 
in the orchestra. The Furies had at first exhi- 
bited the rage of beasts of prey at the escape 
of their booty, but they now sing with tranquil 
dignity their high and terrible office among 
mortals, claim the head of Orestes as forfeited 
to them, and consecrate it with mysterious 
charms to endless pain. Pallas, the warlike 
virgin, appears in a chariot and four at the in 
tercession of the suppliant. She listens with 
calm dignity to the mutual complaints of Orestes 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



437 



and liis adversaries, and finally undertakes, 
after due reflection, the office of umpire, at the 
solicitation of the two parties. The assembled 
judges take their seats on the steps of the tem- 
ple, the herald commands silence among the 
people by sound of trumpets, as at an actual 
tribunal. Apollo advances to advocate the 
cause of the youth, the Furies in vain oppose 
his interference, and the arguments for and 
against the deed are gone through in short 
speeches. The judges throw their calculi into 
the urn, Pallas throws in a white one ; all are 
wrought up to the highest pitcli of expectation ; 
Orestes calls out full of anguish to his protector; 

PhcEbus Apollo, how is the cause decided ? 
The Furies, on the other hand : 

O black night, mother of all things, dost thou behold this ? 

In the enumeration of the black and white 
pebbles, they are found equal in number, and 
the accused is therefore declared by Pallas 
acquitted of the charge. He breaks out into 
joyful expressions of thanks, while the Furies 
on the other hand declaim against the arrogance 
of the young gods, who take such liberties with 
the race of Titan. Pallas bears their rage with 
equanimity, addresses them in the language of 
kindness, and even of veneration ; and these 
beings, so untractable in their general disposi- 
tion, are unable to withstand the power of her 
mild and convincing eloquence. They promise 
to bless the land over which she has dominion, 
while Pallas assigns them a sanctuary in the 
Attic territory, where they are to be called the 
Eumenides, that is, the benevolent. The whole 
ends with a solemn procession round the theatre, 
with songs of invocation, while bands of child- 
ren, women, and old men, in purple robes, and 
with torches in their hands, accompany the 
Furies in their exit. 

Let us now take a retrospective view of the 
whole triology. In Agamemnon we observe in 
the deed which is planned and executed, the 
greatest display of arbitrary will and power : 
the principal character is a great criminal; and 
the piece ends with the revolting impressions 
produced by the sight of triumphant tyranny 
and crime. I have already alluded to the cir- 
cumstance of a previous destiny. 

The deed in the Choephora; is partly recom- 
mended by Apollo as an appointment of fate, and 
partly originates in natural motives: the desire 
of avenging the father, and the fraternal love 
for the oppressed Electra. After the deed the 
struggle between the most sacred feelings first 
becomes manifest, and allows no repose to the 
distracted youth. 

From the very commencement, the Eume- 
nides stands on the very higliest tragical eleva- 
tion : all the past is concentrated as it were in 
one focus. Orestes has merely been the passive 
instrument of fate ; and free agency is trans- 
ferred to the more elevated sphere of the gods. 
Pallas is properly the principal character. The 
opposition between the most sacred relations, 



which frequently appears beyond the power of 
mortal solution, is represented as a contention 
in the world of the gods. 

And this leads me to the deep import of the 
whole. The ancient mythology is in general 
symbolical, although not allegorical ; for the two 
are quite distinct. Allegory is the personifica- 
tion of an idea, a fable solely undertaken with 
such a view; but that is symbolical which has 
been created by the imagination for other pur- 
poses, or which has a reality in itself indepen- 
dent of the idea, but which at the same tiine is 
easily susceptible of a symbolical explanation, 
and even of itself suggests it. 

The Titans, in general, mean the dark pri- 
mary powers of nature and of mind ; the later 
gods, what enters more within the circle of con- 
sciousness. The former are more nearly related 
to the original chaos, the latter belong to a world 
already subjected to order. The Furies are the 
dreadful powers of conscience, in so far as it 
rests on obscure feelings and forebodings, and 
yields to no principles of jeason. In vain 
Orestes dwells on the just motives for the deed— 
the voice of blood resounds in his ear. Apollo 
is the god of youth, of the noble ebullition of 
passionate discontent, of the bold daring action : 
hence this deed was commanded by him. Pallas 
is cool wisdom, justice, and moderation, which 
alone can allay the dispute. 

Even the sleep of the Furies in the temple 
is symbolical ; for only in the holy place, in the 
bosom of religion, can the fugitive find rest from 
the stings of his conscience. Scarcely however 
has he again ventured into the world, when the 
image of his murdered mother appears, and 
again awakens them. The very speech of 
Clytemnestra is symbolical, as well as the attri- 
butes of the Furies, the serpents, and the suck- 
ing of blood. The same may be said of the 
aversion of Apollo for them ; in fact this sym- 
bolical application runs throughout the whole.— 
The equal cogency of the motives for and 
against the deed is denoted by the divided 
number of the judges. When at last a sanctuary 
is allotted to the softened Furies in the Athe- 
nian territory, this is as much as to say that 
reason shall not everywhere assert her power 
against the instinctive impulse, that there are 
certain boundaries in the human mind which 
are not to be passed, and which every person 
possessed of a sentiment of reverence will be- 
ware of touching, if he wishes lo preserve in- 
ward peace. 

So much for the deep philosophical import, 
which we are not to wonder at finding in this 
poet, who, according to the testimony of Cicero, 
was a Pythagorean. ./Eschylus had also his 
political views. The first of these was the 
rendering Athens illustrious. Delphi was the 
religious centre of Greece, and yet how it is 
thrown into the shade! It can only shelter 
Orestes from the first onset of persecution, but 
not aflbrd him a complete freedom; this is re- 
served for the land where law and humanity 
37* 



438 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



flourish. His principal object however was the 
recommending as essential to the welfare of 
Athens tlie Areopagus,* an uncorruptible yet 
mild tribunal, in which the white pebble of 
Pallas in favor of the accused does honor to the 
humanity of the Athenians. The poet shows 
us the origin of an institution fraught with bless- 
ings to humanity, in an immense circle of 
crimes. 

But it will be asked, are not aims of this de- 
scription prejudicial to the pure poetical impres- 
sion which the whole ought to produce? Most 
undonbtedly, in the manner in which other 
poets, and especially Euripides, have proceeded 
in such cases. But in jEschylus the aim is 
much more subservient to the poetry than the 
poetry to the aim. He does not lower himself 
to a circumscribed reality, but elevates it on tlie 
contrary to a higher sphere, and connects it with 
the most sublime conceptions. 

In the Orestiad (for so the three connected 
pieces are called) we certainly possess one of 
the most sublime poems that ever was conceived 
by the human imagination, and probably the 
most mature and faultless of all the productions 
of his genius. The period of their composition 
confirms this supposition ; for he was at least 
sixty years old when he brought these dramas 
on the stage, the last which he ever submitted 
in competition for the prize at Athens. Every 
one of his pieces however which have come 
down to us is remarkable either for the display 
of some peculiar property of the poet, or as in- 
dicative of the step in the art on which he stood 
at the time. 

The Chained Prometheus is the representa- 
tion of constancy under sutfering, and that the 
never-ending suffering of a god. Exiled to a 
naked rock on the shore of the encircling ocean, 
this drama still embraces the world, the Olym- 
pus of the gods, and the earth of mortals, all 
scarcely yet reposing in a secure state above the 
dread abyss of the dark Titanian powers. The 
idea of a self-devoting divinity has been myste- 

* I do not tind that this aim has ever been ascribed to 
jEschylus by the express testimony of any ancient writer. 
It ia however, not to be mistaken, esjiecially in the 
speech of Pallas, beginning with the C80th verse. This 
coincides with the account that in the very year when 
the piece was represented, Olymp. Ixxx. 1, a certain 
Ephialtes excited the people against the Areopagus, 
wliich was the best guardian of the old and more austere 
constitution, and kept democratic extravagance in check. 
This Ephialtes was murdered one ni^'ht by an unknown 
hand. jEschylus received the first prize in the theatrical 
games, but we know at the same time that he left Athens 
iinine<liHtely afterwards, and passed his remaining years 
in Sicily. It is possible that, although the theatrical 
judges did him the justice to which he was entitled, he 
niigiit be held in aversion by the multitude notwithstand- 
ing, and that this without any express sentence of ba- 
nishment might have induced him to leave his native 
city. The story of the sight of the terrible chorus of 
Furies having thrown children into mortal convulsions, 
and caused women to miscarry, appears to me fabulous. 
A poet would hardly have been crowned, who had been 
the occasion of profaning the festival by such occurrences. 



riously inculcated in many religions, as a con- 
fused foreboding of the true ; here however it 
appears in a most alarming contrast with the 
consolations of revelation. For Prometheus does 
not suffer on an understanding with the power 
by whom the world is governed, but he atones 
for his disobedience, and that disoViedience con- 
sists in nothing but the attempt to give perfection 
to the human race. It is thus an image of hu- 
man nature itself: endowed with a miserable 
foresight and bound down to a narrow exist- 
ence, without an ally, and with nothing to op- 
pose to the combined and inexorable powers of 
nature, but an unshaken will and the conscious- 
ness of elevated claims. The other poems of 
the Greek tragedians are single tragedies: but 
this may be called tragedy itself: its purest 
spirit is revealed with all the annihilating and 
overpowering influence of its first unmitigated 
austerity. 

There is little external action in this piece: 
Prometheus merely suffers and resolves from 
the beginning to the end; and his sufferings 
and resolutions are always the same. But the 
poet has contrived in a masterly manner to in- 
troduce variety and progress into that which in 
itself was deterhiinately filled, and given us a 
scale for the measurement of the matchless 
power of his sublime Titans in the objects by 
which he has surrounded them. We have the 
first silence of Prometheus while he is chained 
down under the harsh inspection of Strength 
and Force, whose threats serve only to excite a 
useless compassion in Vulcan, who carries them 
into execution ; then his solitary complaints, the 
arrival of the tender ocean nymphs, whose kind 
but disheartening sympathy induces him to give 
vent to his feelings, to relate the causes of his 
fall, and to reveal the future, though with pru 
dent reserve he reveals it only in part; the visit 
of the ancient Oceanus, a kindred god of the 
race of Titans, who, under the pretext of a 
zealous attachinent to his cause, advises him to 
submission towards Jupiter, and who is on that 
account dismissed with proud contempt ; the 
introduction of the raving lo, driven about from 
place to place, the victim of the same tyranny 
from which Prometheus hiinself suffers ; his 
prophecy of the wanderings to which she is still 
doomed, and the fate which at last awaits her, 
connected in some degree with his own, as from 
her blood he is to receive a deliverer after 
the lapse of many ages ; the appearance of 
Mercury as a messenger of the tyrant of the 
world, who with threats commands him to dis- 
close the secret by which Jupiter may remain 
on his tlirone secure from all the malice of fate ; 
and lastly, the yawning of the earth before Pro- 
metheus has well declared his refusal, amidst 
thunder and lightning, storms and earthquake, 
by which he hunself and the rock to which he 
is chained are swallowed up in the abyss of 
the nether world. The triumph of subjection 
was never celebrated in more glorious strains, 
and we have difficulty in conceiving how the 



A. W. SCHLEGEL. 



439 



poet in the Freed Prometheus could sustain 
himself on such an elevation. 

In the dramas of ^schylus we have one of 
many examples that, in every art as well as 
nature, gigantic productions precede those that 
evince regularity of proportion, which again in 
their turn decline gradually into littleness and 
insignificance, and that poetry in its original 
appearance approaches always the nearest to 
the reverence of religion, whatever form the 
latter may assume among the various races of 
men. 

A saying of the poet, which has been pre- 
served, afibrds us a proof that he endeavored 
to maintain himself on this elevation, and pur- 
posely avoided all artificial cultivation, which 
might have the effect of lowering the divinity 
of his character. His brethren stimulated him 
to write a new Paean. He answered: "The 
old one of Tynachus is the best, and the same 
thing would happen here that was observable 
in a comparison between the ancient and mo- 
dern statues; for the former with all their sim- 
plicity were considered as divine, and the mo- 
dern, with all the care bestowed on their 
execution, were indeed admired, but bore much 
less the impression of a divinity." He carries 
his boldness in religious matters, as in every- 
thing else, to the utmost limits; and he was 
even accused of having in one of his pieces 
disclosed the Eleusinian mysteries, and only 
absolved on the intercession of his brother 
Amynias, who displayed the wounds which he 
had received in the battle of Salamis. He per- 
haps believed that in the poetic communication 
was contained the initiation into the mysteries, 
and that nothing was in this way revealed to 
any one who was not worthy of it. 

The tragic style of .zEschylus is still imper- 
fect, and not unfrequently runs into the unmixed 
epic and lyric. It is often disjointed, irregular, 
and hard. To compose more regular and skil- 
ful tragedies than tliose of ./Eschylus was by no 
means difficult; but in the more than mortal 
grandeur which he displayed, it was impossible 
that he should ever be surpassed ; and even 
Sophocles, his younger and more fortunate rival, 
did not in this respect equal him. The latter, 
in speaking of jEschylus, gave a proof that he 
was himself a reflecting artist : " .(Eschy lus does 
what is right without knowing it." These few 
simple words exhaust the whole of what we 
understand by powerful genius unconscious of 
its powers. 

SOPHOCLES. 

The birth-year of Sophocles was nearly at an 
equal distance between that of his predecessor 
and of Euripides, so that he was about half a 
life-time from each : in this all the accounts are 
found to coincide. He was however during 
the greater part of his life the contemporary of 
both. He frequently contended for the tragic 
garland with ^Eschylus, and he outlived Euri- 
pides, who himyself attained a good age. If I 



may speak in the spirit of the ancient religion, 
it seems that a beneficent Providence wished 
to evince to the human race, in the instance of 
this individual, the dignity and felicity of their 
lot, as he was endowed with every divine gift, 
with all that can adorn and elevate the mind 
and heart, and crowned with every blessing 
imaginable in this life. Descended from rich 
and honored parents, and born a free citizen of 
the most cultivated state of Greece, such were 
the advantages with which he entered the 
world. Beauty of body and of soul, and the 
uninterrupted enjoyment of both in the utmost 
perfection, till the extreme limits of human ex- 
istence ; an education the most extensive, yet 
select, in gymnastics and music, the former so 
important in the development of the bodily 
powers, and the latter in the communication of 
harmony ; the sweet blossom of youth, and the 
ripe fruit of age; the possession and continued 
enjoyment of poetry and art, and the exercise 
of serene wisdom ; love and respect among his 
fellow citizens, fame in other countries, and the 
countenance and favor of the gods; these are 
the general features of the life of this pious and 
virtuous poet. It would seem as if the gods, in 
return for his dedicating himself at an early age 
to Bacchus, as the giver of all joy, and the author 
of the cultivation of the human race, by the re- 
presentation of tragical dramas for his festivals, 
had wished to confer immortality on him, so 
long did they delay the hour of his death ; but 
as this was impossible tliev extinguished hi? 
life as gently as possible, that ne might imper- 
ceptibly change one immortality for another, 
the long duration of his earthly existence for an 
imperishable name. When a youth of sixteen, 
he was selected, on account of his beauty, to 
play on the lyre, and to dance in the Greek 
manner before the chorus of youths who, after 
the battle of Salamis (in which iEschylus fought, 
and which he has so nobly described), executed 
the Paean round the trophy erected on that oc- 
casion ; so that the fairest development of his 
youthful beauty coincided with the moment 
when the Athenian people had attained the 
epoch of their highest glory. He held the rank 
of general along with Pericles and Thucydides, 
and, when arrived at a more advanced age, the 
priesthood of a native hero. In his twenty-hfth 
year he began to represent tragedies; twenty 
times he was victorious ; he often gained the se- 
cond place, and he never was ranked in the third. 
In this career he proceeded with increasing suc- 
cess till he reached his ninetieth year; and some 
of his greatest works were even the fruit of a still 
later period. There is a story of an accusation 
brought against him by one or more of his elder 
sons, of having become childish from age, be- 
cause he was too fond of a grandchild by a 
second wife, and of being no longer in a condi- 
tion to manage his own affairs. In his defence 
he merely read to his judges his CEdip.is in Co- 
lonos, which he had then composed in honor of 
Colonos, his birth-place; and the astonished 



140 



A: W. SCHLEGEL 



judges, without fartVier consultation, conducted 
him in triumph to his house. If it be true that 
the second CEdipus was written, at so late an 
age, as from its mature serenity and total free- 
dom from the impetuosity and violence of youth 
we have good reason to conclude that it actually 
was, it affords us at once a pleasing picture of 
the delight and reverence which attended his 
concluding years. Although the various ac- 
counts of his death appear fabulous, they all 
coincide in this, that he departed without a 
struggle, while employed in his art, or some- 
thing connected with it, and that like an old 
swan of Apollo, he breathed out his life in song. 
I consider also the story of the Lacedemonian 
general who had fortified the burying-ground 
of his fathers, and who, twice exhorted by Bac- 
chits in a vision to allow Sophocles to be there 
interred, despatched a herald to the Athenians 
on the subject, with a number of other circum- 
stances, as the strongest possible proof of the 
established reverence in which his name was 
held. In calling him virtuous and pious, I spoke 
in the true sense of the words ; for although his 
works breathe the real character of ancient 
grandeur, sweetness and simplicity, of all the 
Grecian poets he is also the individual whose 
feelings bear the strongest affinity to the spirit 
of our religion. 

One gift alone was refused to him by nature: 
a voice attuned to song. He could only call 
forth and direct the harmonious effusions of 
other voices; he was therefore compelled to 
depart from the established practice of the poet 
acting a part in his own pieces, and only once 
(a very characteristic trait) made his appear- 
ance in the character of the blind singer Tha- 
myris playing on the cithera. 

As .iEschylus, who raised tragic poetry from 
its rude beginnings to the dignity of the cothur- 
nus, was his predecessor; the historical relations 
in which he stood to Sophocles enabled the latter 
to avail himself of the inventions of his original 
master, so that jEschylus appears as the rough 
designer, and Sophocles as the finished successor. 
The more artful construction of the dramas of 
the latter is easily perceived : the limitation of 
the chorus with respect to the dialogue, the 
polish of the rhythmus, and the pure Attic dic- 
tion, the introduction of a greater number of 
characters, the increase of contrivance in the 
fable, the multiplication of incidents, a greater 



degree of development, the more trarvquil con- 
tinuance of all the moments of the action, and 
the greater degree of theatrical effect given to 
incidents of a decisive nature, the more perfect 
rounding of the whole, even considered in a 
mere external point of view. But he excelled 
.iEschylus in somewhat still more essential, and 
proved himself deserving of the good fortune 
of having such a preceptor, and of entering into 
competition with him in the same subjects : I 
mean the harmonious perfection of his mind, 
by which he fulfilled from inclination every 
duty prescribed by the laws of beauty, and of 
which the impulse was in him accompanied 
by the most clear consciousness. It was im- 
possible to exceed jEschyius in boldness of 
conception; lam inclined however to believe 
that Sophocles appears only less bold from his 
wisdom and moderation, as he always goes to 
work with the greatest energy, and perhaps 
with even a more determined severity, like a 
man who knows the extent of his powers, and 
is determined, when he does not exceed them, 
to stand up with the greater confidence for his 
rights. As .zEschylus delights in transporting 
us to the convulsions of the primary world of 
the Titans, Sophocles on the other hand never 
avails himself of the gods but when their ap- 
pearance is necessary; he formed men, accord- 
ing to the general confession of antiquity, better, 
that is, not more moral, or exempt from error, 
but more beautiful and noble than they appeared 
in real life ; and while he took everything in 
the most human signification, he was at the 
same time aware of their superior destination. 
According to all appearance he was also more 
moderate than jEschylus in his scenic orna- 
ments; he displayed perhaps more taste and 
selection in his objects, but did not attempt the 
same colossal pomp. 

To characterize the native sweetness and 
affection so eminent in this poet, the ancients 
gave him the appellation of the Attic bee. 
Whoever is thoroughly imbued with the feeling 
of this property may flatter himself that a sense 
for ancient art has arisen within him ; for the 
affected sentimentality of the present day, far 
from coinciding with him in this opinion, would 
both in the representation of bodily sufferings, 
and in the language and economy of the trage- 
dies of Sophocles, find much of an unsupportable 
austerity. 



FRIEDRICH DANIEL ERNST SCHLEIERMACHER. 



Bora 1768. Died 1834. 



The respected divine who bore this name, 
distinguished alike by his intellectual pre-emi- 
nence and his beautiful piety, somewhat resem- 
bles Fenelon in his relation to his time, and the 
kind of influence which went forth from him. 
With nothing of the mysticism of the French 
saint, he possessed the same practical depth 
of spirit and the same devout earnestness; 
strongly contrasted in this respect with the ra- 
tionalistic theologians of his day. As a German 
and a theologian, he was learned, of course ; 
but he was far more than that ; he was also a 
profound philosopher, and, in philosophy, a Pla- 
tonist. No modern has entered more fully into 
the meaning and spirit of the immortal Greek, 
whose works he translated in part. The great 
aim of his life was to reconcile philosophy with 
Christianity, and to revive the religious senti- 
ment in an age when the atheistic philosophy 
of France had brought a temporary blight upon 
all the nobler products of the soul. The "Dis- 
courses on Religion," from which the following 
extract is taken, is a contribution to this end. 
His last and his most important work is the 
Christliche Glaubenslehre (Doctrine of Chris- 
tianity). 

Schleiermacher was born at Breslau, and 
educated as a Moravian at the Seminary of the 
United Brethren at Niesky. At the age of 
twenty he left the society of the Moravians, 
and studied theology at Halle. Having been 
ordained as a preacher, he was minister for six 
years at the hospital, Charite, in Berlin. During 
this time, he published his Monologues and the 
Discourses on Religion, and translated Blair's 
and Fawcett's sermons. In 1802, he was ap- 



pointed professor "extraordinary" of theology at 
Halle, and preached to the University. During 
the troublous period of the French invasion in 
1807, when Halle was taken from the Prus- 
sians, he returned to Berlin, and lectured and 
preached with patriotic boldness on the state 
of the times, unawed by Davoust, who then 
occupied the city. In 1809, he was appointed 
preacher to the Trinity church in Berlin, and 
was married the same year. In 1810, at the 
establishment of the University at Berlin, he 
was made Professor of theology in that institu- 
tion. This post he retained until his death. 
In 1833, he visited England, and opened the 
German church at the Savoy. 

In person, Schleiermacher was diminutive 
and deformed. As a preacher, he was un- 
boundedly popular, although his discourses had 
none of those qualities which stir the blood, but 
consisted, for the most part, in plain practical 
appeals to the understanding and the conscience. 
He preached extempore, and, it is said, with no 
other preparation than that which he allowed 
himself on Sunday morning, — an hour before 
service. His conduct during his last hours, as 
related by his wife, was characteristic, and 
illustrated the Christian faith and piety which 
distinguished him through life. His last act, a 
few minutes before death, was to administer 
the service of the Eucharist to himself and his 
family. "In these words of the Holy Scrip- 
tures," he said, " I place my trust ; they are 
the corner-stone of my faith :" then turning to 
his wife and children, " In this love and com- 
munion of souls, then, we are and shall be one 
and undivided." He died February 12, 1834. 



DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE SOCIAL ELEMENT IN HELIOION ; OK ON THE CHUBCH AND 

PRIESTHOOD. 

TniDilatcd bj Mr. Oeorge Bipley. 

Those among you who are accustomed to re- 
gard relifjion as a disease of the human mind, 
chc-ris-ii also the Ijabitual conviction, that it is an 
evil more easily borne, if it canno* be restrained, 
3F 



so long as it is only insulated individuals here 
and there who are infected with it; but tha 
the common clanger is raised to the highest de- 
gree, and everything put at stake, as soon as a 
too close connexion is permitted between many 
patients of this character. In the former case 
it is possible by a judicious treatment, as it wen; 
by an antiphlogistic regimen, and by a healthy 

(441) 



442 



SCHLEIERMACHER. 



spiritual atmosphere, to ward oflf the violence of 
the paroxysms ; and if not to entirely conquer 
the exciting cause of the disease, to attenuate it 
to such a degree that it shall be almost inno- 
cuous. But in the latter case, we must despair 
of every other means of cure, except that which 
may proceed from some internal beneficent ope- 
ration of Nature. For the evil is attended with 
more alarming symptoms, and is more fatal in 
its effects, when tlie too great proximity of other 
infected persons feeds and aggravates it in every 
individual ; the whole mass of vital air is then 
quickly poisoned by a few ; the most vigorous 
frames are smitten with the contagion ; all the 
channels in which the functions of life should 
go on are destroyed ; all the juices of the system 
are decomposed ; and, seized with a similar 
feverous delirium, the sound spiritual life and 
productions of whole ages and nations are in- 
volved in irremediable ruin. Hence your anti- 
pathy to the church, to every institution which 
is intended for the communication of religion, 
is always more prominent than that which you 
feel to religion itself: hence, also, priests, as the 
pillars and the most efficient members of such 
institutions, are, of all men, the objects of your 
greatest abomination. 

Even those among you who hold a little more 
indulgent opinion with regard to religion, and 
deem it rather a singularity than a disorder of 
the mind, an insignificant rather than a danger- 
ous phenomenon, cherish quite as unfavourable 
impressions of all social organization for its pro- 
motion. A slavish immolation of all that is free 
and peculiar, a system of lifeless mechanism 
and barren ceremonies, — these, they iinagine, 
are the inseparable consequences of every such 
institution ; and these, the ingenious and elabo- 
rate work of men, who, with almost incredible 
success, have made a great merit of things which 
are either nothing in themselves, or which any 
other person was quite as capable of accom- 
plishing as they. I should pour out my heart 
but very imperfectly before you, on a subject to 
which I attach the utmost importance, if I did 
not undertake to give you the correct point of 
view with regard to it. I need not here repeat 
how many of the perverted endeavors and me- 
lancholy fortunes of humanity you charge upon 
religious associations j this is clear as light, in a 
thousan<l indications of your predominant indi- 
viduals; nor will I stop to refute these accusa- 
tions, one by one, in order to fix the evil upon 
other causes. Let us rather submit the whole 
conception of the church to a new examination, 
and from its central point, throughout its whole 
extent, erect it again upon a new basis, without 
regard to what it lias actually been hitherto, or 
to what experience may suggest concerning it. 

If religion exists at all, it must needs possess 
a social cliaiaclLu' j this is founded not only in 
the nature of man, but still more in the nature 
uf religion. You will acknowledge that it indi- 
cates a state of disease, a signal perversion of 



nature, when an individual wishes to shut up 
within himself anything which he has produced 
and elaborated by his own efforts. It is the dis- 
position of man to reveal and to communicate 
whatever is in him, in the indispensable rela- 
tions and mutual dependence not only of practical 
life, but also of his spiritual being, by which he 
is connected with all others of his race; and the 
more powerfully he is wrought upon by any- 
thing, the more deeply it penetrates his inward 
nature, so much the stronger is this social im- 
pulse, even if we regard it only from the point 
of view of the universal endeavor to behold 
the emotions which we feel ourselves, as they 
are exhibited by others, so that we may obtain 
a proof from their example that our own expe- 
rience is not beyond the sphere of humanity. 

You perceive that I am not speaking here of 
the endeavor to make others similar to ourselves, 
nor of the conviction that what is exhibited in 
one is essential to all ; it is merely my aim to 
ascertain the true relation between our indivi- 
dual life and the common nature of man, and 
alearly to set it forth. But the peculiar object 
of this desire for communication is unquestion- 
ably that iu which man feels that he is origin- 
ally passive, namely, his perceptions and emo- 
tions. He is here impelled by the eager wish 
to know whether the power which has produced 
them in him be not something foreign and un- 
worthy. Hence we see man employed, from his 
very childhood, with making revelations, which, 
for the most part, are of this character ; the con- 
ceptions of his understanding, concerning whose 
origin there can be no doubt, he allows to rest 
in his own mind, and still more easily he deter- 
mines to refrain from the expression of his judg- 
ments; but whatever acts upon his senses, what- 
ever awakens his feelings, of that he desires to 
obtain witnesses, with regard to that he longs 
for those who will sympathise with him. How 
should he keep to himself those very operations 
of the world upon his soul which are the most 
universal and comprehensive, which appear to 
him as of the most stupendous and resistless 
magnitude? How should he be willing to lock 
up within his own bosom those very emotions 
which impel him with the greatest power be- 
yond himself, and in the indulgence of which, 
he becomes conscious that he can never under- 
stand his own nature from himself alone? It 
will rather be his first endeavor, whenever a 
religious view gains clearness in his eye, or a 
pious feeling penetrates his soul, to direct the 
attention of others to the same object, and, as far 
as possible, to communicate to their hearts the 
elevated impulses of his own. 

If, then, the religious man is urged by his na- 
ture to speak, it is the same nature which se- 
cures to him the certainty of hearers. There is 
no element of his being with which, at the same 
time, there is implanted in man such a lively 
feeling of his total inability to exhaust it by him- 
self alone, as with that of religion. A sense of 
religion has no sooner dawned upon him, than 



SCHLEIERMACHER. 



443 



he feels the infinity of its nature and the limita- 
tion of his own; he is conscious of embracing 
but a small portion of it; and that which he 
cannot immediately reach, he wishes to perceive, 
as far as he can, from the representations of 
others who liave experienced it themselves, and 
to enjoy it with them. Hence, he is anxious to 
observe every manifestation of it; and, seeking 
to supply his own deficiencies, he watches for 
every tone which he recognizes as proceeding 
from it. In this manner, inntual communica- 
tions are instituted; in this manner, every one 
feels equally the need both of speaking and 
hearing. 

But the imparting of religion is not to be 
sought in books, like that of intellectual con- 
ceptions and scientific knowledge. The pure 
impression of the original product is too far de- 
stroyed in this medium, which, in the same way 
that dark-colored objects absorb a great propor- 
tion of the rays of light, swallows up everything 
belonging to tlie pious emotions of the heart, 
which cannot be embraced in the insufficient 
symbols from which it is intended again to pro- 
ceed. Nay, in the written communications of 
religious feeling, everything needs a double 
and triple representation ; for that which origin- 
ally represented, must be represented in its 
turn ; and yet the effect on the whole man, in 
its complete unity, can only be imperfectly set 
forth by continued and varied reflections. It is 
only when religion is driven out from the society 
of the living, that it must conceal its manifold 
life under the dead letter. 

Neither can this intercourse of heart with 
heart, on the deepest feelings of humanity, be 
carried on in common conversation. Many per- 
sons, who are filled with zeal for the interests 
of religion, have brought it as a reproach against 
the manners of our age, that while all other im- 
portant subjects are so freely discussed in the 
intercourse of society, so little should be said 
concerning God and divine things. I would 
defend ourselves against this charge by main- 
taining that this circumstance, at least, does not 
indicate contempt or indilference towards reli- 
gion, but a happy and very correct instinct. In 
the presence of joy and merriment, where ear- 
nestness itself must yield to raillery and wit, 
there can be no place for that wliich should be 
always surrounded with holy veneration and 
awe. Religious views, pious emotions, and se- 
rious considerations with regard to them, — these 
we cannot throw out to each other in such small 
crumbs as the topics of a light conversation; 
and when the discourse turns upon sacred sub- 
jects, it would rather be a crime than a virtue 
to have an answer ready for every question, 
and a rejoinder for every remark. Hence, the 
religious sentiment retires from such circles as 
are too wide for it, to the more confidential in- 
tercourse of friendship, and to the mutual com- 
munications of love, where the eye and the 
countenance are more expressive than words, 
and where even a holy silence is understood. 



But it is impossible for divine things to be 
treated in the usual manner of society, where 
the conversation consists in striking flashes of 
thought, gaily and rapidly alternating with each 
other ; a more elevated style is demanded for 
the communication of religion, and a different 
kind of society, which is devoted to this pur- 
pose, must hence be formed. It is becoming 
indeed to apply the whole richness and magni- 
ficence of human discourse to the loftiest subject 
which language can reach, — not as if there were 
any adornment, with which religion could not 
dispense, but because it would show a frivolous 
and unholy disposition in its heralds, if they did 
not bring together the most copious resources 
within their power, and consecrate them all to 
religion : so that they might thus perhaps ex- 
hibit it in its appropriate greatness and dignity. 
Hence, it is impossible without the aid of po- 
etry, to give utterance to the religious sentiment, 
in any other than an oratorical manner, with 
all the skill and energy of language, and freely 
using, in addition, the service of all the arts, 
which can contribute to flowing and impas- 
sioned discourse. He, therefore, whose heart 
is overflowing with religion, can open his mouth 
only before an auditory, where that which is 
presented, with such a wealth of preparation, 
can produce the most extended and manifold 
effects. 

Would that I could present before you an 
image of the rich and luxurious life in this city 
of God, when its inhabitants come together each 
in the fulness of his own inspiration, which is 
ready to stream forth without constraint, but at 
the same time, each filled with a holy desire to 
receive and to appropriate to himself everything 
which others wish to bring before him. If one 
comes forward before the rest, it is not because 
he is entitled to this distinction, in virtue of an 
office or of a previous agreement, nor because 
pride and conceitedness have given him pre- 
sumption: it is rather a free impulse of the 
spirit, a sense of the most heart-felt unity of each 
with all, a consciousness of entire equality, a 
mutual renunciation of all First and Last, of 
all the arrangements of earthly order. He 
comes forward, in order to communicate to 
others, as an object of sympathizing contempla- 
tion, the deepest feelings of his soul while under 
the influence of God ; to introduce them within 
the sphere of religion, in which he breathes hia 
native air; and to infect them with the conta- 
gion of his own holy emotions. He speaks forth 
the Divine which stirs his bosom, and in holy 
silence the assembly follows the inspiration of 
his words. Whether he unveils a secret mys- 
tery, or with prophetic confiilence connects the 
future with the present; whether he strengthens 
old impressions by new examples, or is led by 
the lofty visions of his burning imagination into 
other regions of the world and into another 
order of things; the practised sense of his au- 
dience everywhere accompanies his own ; and 
■when he returns into himself from his wander 



444 



SCHLEIERMACHER. 



ings through the kingdom of God, his own heart 
and that of each of his hearers are the common 
dwelling-place of the same emotion. 

If now the agreement of his sentiments with 
that which they feel be announced to him, 
whether loudly or low, then are holy iTiysteries 
—not merely significant emblems, but, justly re- 
garded, natural indications of a peculiar con- 
sciousness, and peculiar feelings — invented and 
celebrated, a higher choir, as it were, which in 
its own lofty language answers to the appealing 
voice. But not only, as it were ; for as such a 
discourse is music without tune or measure, so 
there is also a music among the Holy, which 
may be called discourse without words, the 
most distinct and expressive utterance of the 
inward man. The Muse of Harmony, whose 
intimate relation with religion, although it has 
been for a long time spoken of and described, 
is yet recognized only by few, has always pre- 
sented upon her altars the most perfect and 
magnificent productions of her selectest scholars, 
in honor of religion. It is in sacred hymns and 
choirs, with which the words of the poet are 
wOnnected only by slight and airy bands, that 
those feelings are breathed forth which precise 
language is unable to contain ; and thus the 
tones of thought and emotion alternate with each 
other in mutual support, until all is satisfied and 
filled with the Holy and the Infinite. Of this 
character is the influence of religious men upon 
one another; such is their natural and eternal 
union. Do not take it ill of them, that this hea- 
venly bond, — the most consummate product of 
the social nature of man, but to which it does 
not attain until it becomes conscious of its own 
high and peculiar significance, — that this should 
be deemed of more value in their sight, than 
the political union, which you esteem so far 
above everything else, but which will nowhere 
ripen to manly beauty, and which compared 
with the former, appears far more constrained, 
than free, far more transitory than eternal. 

But where now, in the description which I 
have given of the community of the pious, is 
that distinction between priests and laymen, 
which you are accustomed to designate as the 
source of so many evils? A false appearance 
has deceived you. This is not a distinction 
between persons, but only one of condition and 
employment. Every man is a priest, so far as 
he draws around him others, in the sphere which 
he has appropriated to himself, and in which 
he professes to be a master. Every one is a 
layman, so far as he is guided by the counsel 
and experience of another, within the sphere 
of religion, where he is comparatively a stran- 
ger. There is not here the tyrannic aristocracy, 
which you describe with such hatred ; but this 
society is a pries'.ly people, a perfect repub- 
lic, where every one is alternately ruler and 
citizen, where every one follows the same power 
in another which he feels also in himself, and 
witli which he too governs others. 

How then could the spirit of discord and di- 



vision, — which you regard as the inevitable 
consequence of all religious combinations, — find 
a congenial home within this sphere? I see 
nothing but that All is One, and that all the dif- 
ferences which actually exist in religion, by 
means of this very union of the pious, are gently 
blended with each other. 1 have directed your 
attention to the different degrees of religious- 
ness, I have pointed out to you the different 
modes of insight, and the different directions in 
which the soul seeks for itself the supreme ob- 
ject of its pursuit. Do you imagine that this 
must needs give birth to sects, and thus destroy 
all free and reciprocal intercourse in religion? 
It is true indeed in contemplation, that every- 
thing which is separated into various parts, and 
embraced in different divisions, must be opposed 
and contradictory to itself; but consider, I pray 
you, how Life is manifested in a great variety 
of forms, how the most hostile elements seek 
out each other here, and for this very reason, 
what we separate in contemplation, all flows 
together in life. They, to be sure, who on one 
of these points bear the greatest resemblance 
to each other, will present the strongest mutual 
attraction : but they cannot, on that account, 
compose an independent whole ; for the degrees 
of this affinity imperceptibly diminish and in- 
crease, and in the midst of so inany transitions 
there is no absolute repulsion, no total separa- 
tion, even between the most discordant ele- 
ments. Take which you will of these masses, 
which have assumed an organic form accord- 
ing to their own inherent energy ; if you do 
not forcibly divide them by a mechanical ope- 
ration, no one will exhibit an absolutely dis- 
tinct and homogeneous character, but the ex- 
treme points of each will be connected at the 
same time with those which display different 
properties and properly belong to another 
mass. 

If the pious individuals, who stand on the 
same degree of a lower order, formed a closer 
union with each other, there are yet some al- 
ways included in the combination who have a 
presentiment of higher things. These are better 
understood by all who belong to a higher social 
union, than they understand themselves ; and 
there is a point of sympathy between the two 
which is concealed only from the latter. If 
those combine together, in whom one of the 
modes of insight, which I have described, is 
predominant, there will always be some among 
them who understand at least both of the modes, 
and since they in some degree belong to both, 
they form a connecting link between two spheres 
which would otherwise be separated. Thus 
the individual who is more inclined to cherish 
a religious connection between himself and na- 
ture, is yet by no means opposed, in the essen- 
tials of religion, to him who prefers to trace the 
footsteps of the Godhead in history: and there 
will never be wanting those who can pursue 
both paths with equal facility. Thus in what- 
ever manner you divide the vast province of 



SCHLEIERMACHER. 



445 



religion, you will always come back to the same 
point. 

If unbounded universality of insight be the 
first and original condition of religion, and hence 
also, most naturally, its fairest and ripest fruit, 
you perceive that it cannot be otherwise than 
that, in proportion as an individual advances in 
religion, and the character of his piety becomes 
more pure, the whole religious world will more 
and more appear to him as an indivisible whole. 
The spirit of separation, in proportion as it in- 
sists upon a rigid division, is a proof of imper- 
fection : the highest and most cultivated minds 
always perceive a universal connection, and for 
the very reason that they perceive it, they also 
establish it. Since every one comes in contact 
only with his immediate neighbor, but, at the 
same time, has an immediate neighbor on all 
sides and in every direction, he is, in fact, in- 
dissolubly linked in with the whole. Mystics 
and Naturalists in religion, they to whom the 
Godhead is a personal Being, and they to whom 
it is not, they who have arrived at a systematic 
view of the Universe, and they who behold it 
only in its elements or only in obscure chaos, — 
all, notwithstanding, should be only one : one 
band surrounds them all ; and they can be to- 
tally separated only by a violent and arbitrary 
force ; every specific combination is nothing 
but an integral part of the whole, its peculiar 
characteristics are almost evanescent, and are 
gradually lost in outlines that become more and 
more indistinct ; and at least those who feel 
themselves thus united will always be the su- 
perior portion. 

Whence, then, but through a total misunder- 
standing, have arisen that wild and disgraceful 
zeal for proselytism to a separate and peculiar 
form of religion, and that horrible expression 
— "no salvation except with us." As I have 
described to you the society of the pious, and 
as it must needs be according to its intrinsic 
nature, it aims merely at reciprocal communi- 
cation, and subsists only between those who are 
already in possession of religion, of whatever 
character it may be ; how then can it be its 
vocation to change the sentiments of those who 
now acknowledge a definite system, or to intro- 
duce and consecrate those who are totally desti- 
tute of one? The religion of this society, as 
such, consists only in the religion of all the pious 
taken together ; as each one beholds it in the 
rest, — it is Infinite, no single individual can 
embrace it entirely, since so far as it is indivi- 
dual, it ceases to be one, and hence no man can 
attaAi such elevation and completeness, as to 
raise himself to its level. If any one then, has 
chosen a part in it for himself, whatever it may 
be, were it not an absurd procedure for the so- 
ciety to wish to deprive him of that which is 
adapted to his nature, — since it ought to com- 
prise this also within its limits, and hence some 
one must needs possess it? 

And to what end should it desire to cultivate 
those who are yet strangers to religion? Its 



own especial characteristic — the Infinite Whole 
— of course it cannot impart to them ; and the 
communication of any specific element cannot 
be accomplished by the Whole, but only by in- 
dividuals. But perhaps then, the Universal, the 
Indeterminate, which might be presented, when 
we seek that which is common to all the mem- 
bers ? But you are aware, that as a general 
rule, nothing can be given or communicated, in 
the form of the Universal and Indeterminate: 
specific object and precise form are requisite 
for this purpose ; otherwise, in fact, that which 
is presented would not be a reality but a nullity. 
Such a society, accordingly, can never find ? 
measure or rule for this undertaking. 

And how could it so far abandon its sphere 
as to engage in this enterprise? The want on 
which it is founded, the essential principle of 
religious society, points to no such purpose. 
Individuals unite with each other and compose 
a Whole : the Whole, accordingly, rests in itself, 
and needs not to strive for anything beyond. 
Hence, whatever is accomplished in this way 
for religion is the private affair of the indivi- 
dual for himself, and if I may say so, more in 
his relations out of the church than in it. Com- 
pelled to withdraw into the inferior scenes of 
life, from the circle of religious communion, 
where the mutual existence and life in God 
aflbrd him the most elevated enjoyment, and 
where his spirit, penetrated with holy feelings, 
soars to the highest summit of consciousness, it 
is his consolation that lie can connect everything 
with which he must there be employed, with 
that which always retains the deepest signifi- 
cance in his heart. As he descends from those 
lofty regions, among those whose whole endea- 
vor and pursuit are limited to earth, he easily 
believes — and you must pardon him the feeling 
— that he has passed from intercourse with 
Gods and Muses, to a race of coarse barbarians. 
He feels like a steward of religion among the 
unbelieving, a herald of piety among the sa- 
vages; he hopes, like an Orpheus or an Am- 
phion, to charm the multitude with his heavenly 
tones; he presents himself among them, like a 
priestly form, clearly and brightly exhibiting the 
lofty, spiritual sense, which fills his soul, in all 
his actions and in the whole compass of his 
Being. If the contemplation of the Holy and 
the Godlike awakens a kindred emotion in 
them, how joyfully does he cherish the first 
presages of religion in a new heart, as a delight- 
ful pledge of its growth even in a harsh and 
foreign clime! With what triumph does he 
bear the neophyte with him to the exalted as- 
sembly! This activity for the promotion of re- 
ligion is only the pious yearning of the stranger 
after his home, the endeavor to carry his father- 
land with him in all his wanderings, and every- 
where to find again its laws and customs as the 
highest and most beautiful elements of his life; 
but the father-land itself, happy in its own re- 
sources, perfectly sufficient for its own wants, 
knows no such endeavor. 
38 



GEORGE WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL.* 



Born 1770. Died 1831. 



George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the 

last of the four great German philosophers, 
was born August 27th, 1770, at Stuttgart, in 
the kingdom of Wiirtemberg. " It is quite re- 
markable," says his biographer, " that one of 
his sponsors was a professor of philosophy." He 
was matriculated as a student of theology in 
the University of Tubingen, in the year 1788. 
After completing his University career, he pur- 
sued an extensive and severe course of study 
in comparative retirement, being meanwhile 
chiefly employed as a teacher in private fami- 
lies. In 1801 he became a public lecturer in 
the University of Jena, dedicating his first work 
to an examination of the difference between 
the systems of Fichte and Schelling. Here he 
continued to give courses of lectures, and to 
develope his system, until the taking of Jena 
by the French in 1806. For the next two years 
he edited a newspaper, then he was rector of a 
gymnasium in Nuremberg, where he perfected 
his most important work, in which he gave a 
new character to the whole system of Logic. 
While professor of philosophy in Heidelberg 
(1816-18) he published his Encyclopaedia, in 
which his whole scheme of philosophy is con- 
tained. He was called to Berlin in the year 
1818, and remained there until his death, on 
the fourteenth of November, 1831, when he 
fell a victim to the cholera. 

His philosophy claims to be the absolute sys- 
tem, the result and culmination of all other 
systems. In it he resumes the whole progress 
of the human mind, and alleges that his sys- 
tem, and that alone, is able to explain the whole 
course of history, all the phenomena of nature, 
all the problems of speculation. There is one 
Absolute Substance pervading all things. That 
Substance is Spirit. This Spirit is endued 
with the power of development; it produces 
from itself the opposing powers and forces of 
the universe. All that we have to do is to 
stand by and see the process going on. The 
process is at first the evolution of antagonistic 

* For this account of Hegel, and the translations from 
bis writings which follow, with the exception of the last, 
the editor is indebted to a friend. 



forces ; then a mediation between them. AL 
proceeds by triplicates; there is the positive, 
then the negative, then the mediation between 
them, which produces a higher unity. This 
again is but the starting point for a new series. 
And so the process goes on, from stage to stage, 
until the Absolute Spirit has passed through all 
the stadia of its evolutions, and is exhibited in 
its highest form in the Hegelian system of phi- 
losophy. The system comprises three depart- 
ments: Logic, Natural Philosophy, and the 
Philosophy of Spirit. Logic is the science of 
the Absolute Idea, in its abstract character; 
in the Philosophy of Nature we have the same 
Absolute in another, an external form ; in the 
Philosophy of Spirit we have its highest stage. 
Here it manifests itself as the Subjective Spirit, 
the Objective Spirit, and the Absolute Spirit. 
The Absolute Spirit, in fine, has three stages 
of development, which are Religion, Art, and 
Philosophy. 

The collective works of this philosopher have 
been published in eighteen octavo volumes. 
They embrace, besides those already specified, 
extensive courses of lectures upon Ethics, Art, 
the Philosophy of History, the History of Phi- 
losophy, and the Philosophy of Religion. His 
system has produced a profound impression 
upon the German mind. The theological and 
philosophical controversies of the day rage 
around it. It is reputed to be the most com- 
prehensive and analytic of pantheistic schemes. 
Its author and some of his disciples assert, that 
it is the same system in the form of philosophy, 
which Christianity gives us in the form of faith. 
But its present position is that of hostility to 
Christianity. 

The style of Hegel is declared by one of his 
friends to be "strong, pithy, and sometimes 
knotty." His terminology is often obscure. 
These characteristics may be noted in the fol- 
lowing translations, which are chiefly taken 
from his Philosophy of History. Though this 
work was published after his death, yet the 
first portion of it, from which our extracts are 
derived, was printed from a full manuscript o» 

the author. 

f4461 



HEGEL. 



447 



INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY 
OF HISTORY. 

The subject of this course of Lectures is the 
Pliilosophical History of the World. By this is 
not meant general reflections upon history, such 
as one might draw from it and illustrate by 
appropriate examples, but the History of the 
World itself. That its true nature may be 
clearly seen, it seems to be necessary first of 
all to go through with tVie other modes in which 
history is treated. There are three general 
classes into which historical works may be 
divided : 

1. Primitive History. 

2. Systematic History, or History accompanied 
by the reflections of the author. 

3. Philosophical History. 

1. PRIMITIVE HISTORY. 

To give a definite image of what I mean by 
this kind of history, I need only cite the names 
of Herodotus, Thucydides, and other historians 
of this stamp, who describe chiefly the deeds, 
evients, and conditions which they had directly 
before them, and in the spirit of which they 
themselves participated. That which was ex- 
ternally present, they transferred in their his- 
tories into the domain of mental conceptions. 
The external phenomenon is here presented 
again in the form of an internal conception. 
So, for example, the poet takes the materials 
which his experience and emotions give him, 
and elaborates them into distinct and finished 
pictures. These priinitive historians have also 
at hand the reports and narratives of other 
men, (it is not possible for one man to see every- 
thing,) but only as the poet has an ingredient 
in the cultivated language to which he owes 
so much. What memory carelessly keeps, the 
historian compounds into one whole, places it 
in the temple of Mnemosyne, and thus gives it 
immortal duration. Sagas, popular songs and 
traditions are to be excluded from such primi- 
tive history, for these are confused and unsettled 
tilings, and hence are peculiar to people that 
have not yet obtained a definite historical cha- 
racter. The sphere of events actually seen, or 
that cowld be seen, gives a firmer basis than 
does the dim antiquity where these sagas and 
fables grow up, and they do not constitute a 
part of the history of nations which have at- 
tained a fixed individuality. 

These primitive historians now fashion the 
events, deeds, and conditions which were ac- 
tually before them, into a work that gives to 
otiiers a distinct picture of their times. The 
contents of such histories cannot, of course, be 
of great outward compass, (see the works of 
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Guicciardini ;) for 
they are essentially made up of what is present 
and living around the authors. The state of 
culture of the author is identical with that in 
which those events were transacted, which he 
'ashions into a work ; the spirit of the author 



and the spirit of the deeds he narrates are one 
and the same. He describes that of which he has 
been more or less a part, or in the midst of 
which he has lived. There are short periods 
of time, distinct images of men and events, in- 
dividual traits not reflected upon, from which 
he gathers his picture, in order to bring the scene 
and persons as definitely to the conception of 
after-times, as they stood before his own mind, 
whether in actual vision or in graphic narratives. 
He has nothing to do with reflections upon what 
he describes, for he lives in the spirit of the 
times, and has not yet got out beyond it : if he 
belong, as did Cffisar, to the class of generals or 
statesmen, then his own ends and aims are the 
ones which come out as historical. When it is 
here said that such a historian does not reflecL, 
but that the persons and people themselves come 
forward, this seems to be contradicted by the 
speeches which we read, for example, in Thu- 
cydides, and which, it is quite certain, were not 
delivered as they are reported. But speeches 
are acts among men, and essentially effective 
acts also. People do indeed often say, it was 
only a speech, and mean by this that it was a 
harmless affair. Such speeclies are mere talk, 
and talk has the important advantage of being 
harmless. But speeches from one people to an- 
other, orations addressed to people and princes 
are integral parts of history. Even if Thucy- 
dides did compose the speeches he puts into the 
mouth of Pericles, the most highly cultivated, 
genuine, and noble of statesmen, yet are they 
not foreign to Pericles. In these speeclies, these 
men speak out the maxims of their people, of 
their own selves, their consciousness of their 
political relations, as well as of their moral and 
spiritual natures, the principles which guided 
their aims and acts. What the historian lets 
them say is not a loaned consciousness, but ex- 
presses the very culture of the orators. 

Of such writers of history, whom we must 
study into, and by whom we must linger, if we 
would live with the nations, and sink ourselves 
into their spirit — of such historians, in whom we 
seek not merely learning, but deep and genuine 
delight, there are not so many to be found as 
we might perchance suppose. Herodotus, the 
father, that is the originator of history, and 
Thucydides, have been already named. Xeno- 
phon's Return of the Ten Thousand is a book 
equally original; Cassar's Commentaries are the 
simple master-piece of a great spirit. In an- 
cient times, these historians were necessarily 
great captains and statesmen; in the middle 
ages, if we except the bishops who stood at the 
centre of state affairs, the monks as naive chro- 
niclers are to be reckoned here ; but they were 
as isolated from the events they describe, as 
those men of antiquity were connected with 
them. In later times, all the relations of things 
have changed. Our culture is essentially compre- 
hensive, and immediately transforms all events 
into reports which give a distinct picture of 
them. We have admirable, simple, definite 



448 



HEGEL. 



narratives of this kind, especially of military 
transaictions, which may well be placed by the 
side of Csesar's, and are even more instructive 
than his, on account of the fulness of their con- 
tents, and the details of means and conditions. 
The French Memoirs also belong here. Many 
of these are written by men of talent and wit 
aboitt matters of limited interest, and they fre- 
quently contain much of anecdote; butothersare 
true historical master-pieces, as those of Cardinal 
de Retz, and bring to view a wider historical 
field. In Germany there are but few masters 
in this art; Frederic the Great (Jiistoire de mon 
temps') is an honorable exception. Such works 
can fitly come only from men in high stations. 
Only he who stands above can rightly survey 
the field, and look at everything; not he who 
has looked from below upwards through a 
scanty opening. 

2. SYSTEMATIC HISTOHT. 

The seoond kind of history we may call Sys- 
tematic History, or history accompanied by the 
reflections, and composed in view of the gene- 
•ral s&heme of the author. It is history, in the 
exhibition of which we are led beyond mere 
present and passing events, not in reference to 
time, but in respect of the spirit or views with 
which it is composed. Under this second genus, 
there are wholly different species to be dis- 
tinguished. 

a. We wish for a general view of the whole 
history of a people or country, or of the world, 
in short, what we call General History. Here 
the chief thing is the working up of the histori- 
cal materials, and to this labor the author comes 
with a spirit which is different from the spirit 
of the periods of which he treats. In doing this, 
the points of chief importance will be, on the 
one hand, the principles which the author ap- 
plies in judging of the character and tendency 
of the acts and events he describes, and, on the 
other hand, those which guide him in the com- 
position of the history. The reflections and 
judgments of us Germans upon these points 
have been very manifold; every writer of his- 
tory has got his own special way in his own 
head. The English and French, as a general 
thing, know how history should be written: their 
stage of culture is more general and national; 
among us, each one thinks out some subtle pecu- 
liarity, and instead of writing history, we are 
always trying to find out the way in which his- 
tory should be written. This first species of 
excogitated history is near akin to primitive his- 
tory, when it has no farther aim than to exhibit 
the vi'hole history of a country. Such compila- 
tions (here belong the histories of Livy, Diodo- 
ruc, Sicnlus, von Miiller's History of Switzer- 
land) when well made are highly serviceable. 
It would be best, if the historians would ap- 
proximate to those of the first genus, and de- 
scribe things so graphically, that the reader 
might suppose he was hearing contemporaries 
and eye-wirtnesses relate the events. But the 



peculiar tone of mind which every individual 
must have, who belongs to a particular stage of 
national culture, frequently becomes modified 
by the periods through which such a history 
takes its course, and the spirit which speaks 
from the historian is another than the spirit ot 
these times. Thus Livy lets the old kings of 
Rome, the consuls and generals hold speeches 
befitting only a skilful advocate of the times oi 
Livy, and which besides are most strongly con- 
trasted with the genuine tales preserved from 
those ancient times ; for example, the fable of 
Menenius Agrippa. Thus, too, the same author 
gives us descriptions of battles, as though he 
had himself seen them, the outlines of which, 
however, might be used for the battles of all 
ages; and the definitiveness of whose details, 
again, is in strong contrast with the want of 
connection and inconsistency with which in 
other passages he often speaks of the most im- 
portant matters. The difference between such 
a compiler and a primitive historian may be 
best seen by comparing the work of Polybius, 
so far as it has been preserved to us, with the 
mode in which Livy makes use of extracts from, 
and abridges it in the corresponding portions 
of his history. John von Mailer, in the endeavor 
to be true in his descriptions to the times which 
he describes, has given to his history a formal, 
grandiloquent and pedantic air. One would 
much rather read such things in the old Swiss 
chronicler, Tschudy himself; everything is more 
simple and natural than in such a mere made- 
up and affected antiquatedness. 

A history of this kind which surveys long 
periods, or the whole history of the world, must 
in truth give up the exhibition of individual 
facts, and abridge by abstractions, not merely 
by leaving out events and actions, but by mak- 
ing the author's thoughts the great means of 
epitomising. A battle, a great victory, a siege, 
are no longer themselves, but are condensed 
into the simplest statements. When Livy tells 
of the wars with the Volsci, he says sometimes, 
(short enough,) this year war was carried on 
with the Volsci. 

b. A second kind of systematic history is the 
pragmatical. When we have to do witli what 
is past, and busy ourselves about a remote world, 
the mind, by its own activity, creates for itself 
a present there, which is the reward of its toil. 
The events are different, but what is universal 
and internal in them, the connection, is one. 
This abolishes the past, and makes the event 
present. Pragmatical reflections, abstract as they 
may be, do thus make the narrative of past 
events into a matter of present interest, and 
vivify them as with present life. Whether such 
reflections are really interesting and enlivening, 
depends upon the spirit of the author Here 
we are especially called upon to make mention 
of those moral reflections, and that moral in- 
struction to be got from history, for the sake of 
which it has often been worked up. Althoug.'j 
it may be said that examoles of virtue elevat« 



HEGEL. 



449 



the soul, and are to be applied in the moral in- 
struction of children, in order to impress them 
with a love of excellence ; yet the destinies of 
nations and states, their complicated interests, 
conditions and conflicts are quite another field. 
Regents, statesmen, and nations are very em- 
phatically referred to the experience of history 
lor their instruction. But what experience and 
history teach is this, that nations and govern- 
ments have never learned anything from his- 
tory, nor acted according to the lessons which 
might have been drawn from it. Every period 
has such peculiar circumstances, has such an 
individual character, that in it we must and can 
judge in view of its own circumstances alone. 
In the pressure of the worlds events, neither a 
general principle, nor the recollection of similar 
relations is of service; for these, like a dim re- 
membrance, have no power against the living 
Ibrce and freedom of the present. Nothing, in 
this respect, is emptier than the oft-repeated 
appeal to Greek and Roman examples, so often 
made among the French in the time of their 
revolution. Nothing can be more diverse than 
the character of those people and of our own 
times. John von Miiller had such moral ends in 
view in his Universal as well as in his Swiss his- 
tory ; he prepared such instructions for princes, 
governments and people, especially for the Swiss; 
(he made special collections of such maxims 
and reflections, and often in his correspondence 
gives the exact number of such reflections, which 
he had finished in a week;) but all this can 
hardly be reckoned among the best things he 
has accomplished. It is only a thorough, free 
and comprehensive view of the situations, and 
the deep significancy of the idea by which we 
Judge of them, (as, for example, in Montesquieu's 
Spirit of the Laws,) which can give truth and 
interest to such reflections. Hence one such 
history supersedes another; the materials are 
open to every writer, every one can easily think 
himself able to arrange and elaborate them, 
and to make his own spirit pass for the spirit 
of the times he describes. From satiety with 
such histories, men have frequently gone back, 
and given a picture of some one important 
event, described from all points of view. Such 
works are certainly of some value, but they 
give, for the most part, only materials. The 
Germans are content with them ; the French, 
on the contrary, give such a spirited description 
of the past, as makes it seem living and pre- 
sent; they bring the past into direct connection 
with present circumstances. 

^. The third kind of systematic history is the 
critical. This is rather history of history, criti- 
cism of narratives, and investigation of their 
truth and credibility. Whatever there is extra- 
ordinary in it, and intended to be so, does not 
consist in the subject-matter, but in the acute- 
ness of the writer, whose object is to pare away 
something from the narratives. The difference 
between what was before held to be fact, and 
what is now to be so held, is the measure of 
3g 



the fame of such a critical investigator of his- 
tory; and it is not often considered, on the other 
hand, how arbitrary are the notions and com 
binations to which he may have surrendered 
himself 

d. The last kind of systematic history is that 
which does not pretend to be more than the 
history of some one department, as Art, Law, 
or Religion. The special subject is here, indeed, 
taken by itself, but since its history is written 
from general points of view, it forms a transi- 
tion to the Philosophical History of the Worhl. 
In our times this kind of history has been more 
cultivated ; the philosophical principles con- 
tained in these different branches have been 
made more prominent. Such branches have a 
connection with the whole of a people's history; 
the main thing is, whether this connection is 
truly exhibited, or is sought for only in external 
relations. If the latter, then these separate de- 
partments seem to be only accidental and indi- 
vidual peculiarities of the nations. 

3. FHILOSOFHICAL HISTORT. 

The third kind of history is the Philosophical. 
In respect to the two previous divisions, there 
was no need of clearing up their meaning; this 
was understood of itself; but it is otherwise 
with this last kind, which seems to demand 
some explanation or justification. 

The philosophy of history, then, in the most 
general point of view, signifies nothing other 
than a thoughtful consideration of history. As 
rational beings, we can never leave off thinking; 
thus we are distinguished from the brutes. In 
our sensations, in our knowledge and apprehen- 
sion, in our impulses and will, so far as they are 
human, there is thought. It may seem that this 
appeal to thought, in connection with history, is 
unsatisfactory, since in history our thoughts must 
be subordinate to what actually exists, to the 
data given us, — must be founded upon, and 
guided by, the facts; while, on the other hand, 
it is said philosophy has thoughts of its own, 
engendered by mere speculation, without regard 
to what actually exists. If it goes to work upon 
history with such speculative notions, then it 
only handles it as so much mere material; does 
not leave it as it is, but fashions it after the 
thought, constructs it a priori, as we say. And 
since the only office of history is to grasp what 
is and has been, events and acts, and as it is 
more true in proportion as it adheres to its data, 
it seems as though the business of philosophy 
were in contradiction with such a procedure. 
This apparent contradiction, and the objection 
to a speculative treatment of history which 
springs from it, we will here explain and refute, 
without, however, going into a rectification of 
the infinitely varied and right special awry no- 
tions which are current, or always invented 
anew, respecting the end, the interests and the 
treatment of history, and its relation to philo 
sophy. 

38* 



450 



HEGEL. 



The only idea which philosophy brings along 
with it to the consideration of history, is the 
simple idea of reason, that reason rules the 
world. This conviction and insight, is indeed 
an assumption in respect to history, as such ; in 
philosophy, however, it is no assumption. In 
philosophy, by means of speculative knowledge, 
it is evinced that reason — and we may here be 
allowed to abide by this expression, without 
entering into an investigation of the relation in 
which reason stands to God — that reason is the 
substance of all things, as well as the infinite 
power by which they are moved ; is itself the 
illimitable material of all natural and spiritual 
life, as well as the source of the infinite variety 
of forms in which this material is livingly mani- 
fested. It is the substance of all things, that is, 
it is that whereby and wherein all that really 
exists has its being and continuance; it is the 
infinite power, — for reason is not so impotent that 
it can produce only an ideal, a something which 
ever should be and never is, and which has its 
being outside of and beyond all that actually 
does exist, nobody knows where, some very 
special thing in the heads of some men ; it is 
the illimitable material of all essentiality and 
truth, — for it is not subjected, as is finite action, 
to the conditions forced upon it by external ma- 
terials, from which it must receive nourishment 
and objects for its activity; it feeds upon itself, 
it creates its materials, viz. the infinite variety of 
extant forms ; for only in the shape which reason 
prescribes and justifies do phenomena come into 
being, and begin to live. That it reveals itself 
in the world, and that nothing in the world but 
this is revealed ; that its honor and glory are 
there, this is what, as we said, is proved by phi- 
losophy, and is here assumed as proved. 

Though we have said that we here assume 
that reason rules the world, yet it is, in fact, not 
so much an assumption, as it is the result of tlie 
investigation we have started upon. From the 
consideration of the history of the world itself, 
we shall come to the result, that there has been 
a rational process of things in it; that it has 
been the rational and necessary course of the 
spirit which moves in the world, — a spirit 
whose nature does indeed ever remain one and 
the same, but which, in the existence of the 
world, unfolds this its one nature. This must, 
as was said, be the product of history. The his- 
tory itself, however, we have to take as it is ; 
we are to go to work historically, empirically. 
It might be stated, as the first condition, that 
we should truly comprehend the historical ma- 
terials; but in such general expressions as truly 
and comprehend, there is an ambiguity. The or- 
dinary and moderate historian, who thinks and 
declares that lie stands only as a recipient, and 
gives himself up to the data, is yet not passive 
with his thinking; he brings with him some 
categories, through which he looks at what is 
before him. In everything, especially, which is 
meant to be scientific, reason may not slumber, 
reflection must be applied. He who looks at 



the world rationally, him the world also looks at 
rationally; the two are reciprocal. 

There are some considerations which may 
serve to illustrate the general conviction, that 
reason has ruled in the world, and in its history, 
also. These will give us an opportunity to 
touch upon some of the chief points of difficulty. 

One is the historical fact, that Anaxagoras, 
the Greek, is said to have been the first to main- 
tain that the voCs, understanding in general or 
reason, rules the world, — not an intelligence, in 
the sense of self-conscious reason — not a spirit, 
as such — for the two are to be carefully distin- 
guished from each other. The movements of 
the solar system follow unchangeable laws; 
these laws are the reason of this system ; but 
neither the sun, nor the planets which describe 
their orbits around it, according to these laws, 
have any consciousness thereof. Such an idea 
as this, that there is reason in nature, that it is 
immutably governed by general laws, does not 
strike us as strange; we are used to the like, 
and do not make much out of them. One rea- 
son, therefore, why I mention this historical cir- 
cumstance is, to make it apparent that history 
teaches us that such like notions, which may 
seem to us trivial, have not always been in the 
world ; that such thoughts make epochs in the 
history of the human mind. Aristotle says of 
Anaxagoras, as the originator of this thought: 
That he appeared like a sober man in the midst 
of the drunken. Socrates received this thought 
from Anaxagoras, and, with the exception of 
the notion of Epicurus, who ascribed all events 
to chance, it first became the predominant one 
in philosophy. Plato represents Socrates as say- 
ing : I rejoiced therein, and hoped that I had 
found a teacher who would interpret nature for 
me in accordance with reason, — who would 
show me in the special its special end, and in 
the whole its general purpose; this hope I 
would not have given up for much. But how 
greatly was I deceived, when I now zealously 
took up the writings of Anaxagoras himself, and 
found that he only brought forward external 
causes, as air, ether, water and the like, instead 
of reason. We see that what Socrates found to 
be unsatisfactory in the principle of Anaxagoras 
was not the principle itself, but the failing to 
apply it to nature in the concrete ; the latter 
was not understood, comprehended, by means 
of the principle; the principle was held in the 
mere abstract, nature was not grasped as a de- 
velopment of it, as an organization produced by 
reason. I would call your attention here, in the 
very beginning, to the point; the dilference there 
is between holding a formula, a principle, a 
truth only in the abstract, and the carrying it on 
and out in definitive and exact application into 
the concrete development. This diti'erence is 
of the widest application. 

This idea, that reason governs the world, is 
also connected with another application of it, 
well known to us in the form of the religious 
truth, that the world is not given over to acci- 



HEGEL. 



451 



dent, or to external and accidental causes, but is 
under the government of a Providence. I might 
aiipeal to your belief in this principle in this re- 
ligious form, if it were not the peculiarity of the 
science of philosophy, that it does not allow 
authority to any assumptions ; or to speak from 
another point of view, if it were not that the 
science of which we here treat is itself to fur- 
nish the proof, though not of the truth, yet of 
the correctness of that principle. The truth, 
now, that a Providence, that die Divine Provi- 
dence presides over the events of the world, 
corresponds with the above principle; for the 
Divine Providence is wisdom and infinite 
power, realizing its purposes, — that is, the ab- 
solute, the rational end and destiny of the 
world; reason is thought, determining itself 
with perfect freedom. But, when further con- 
sidered, the difference, the opposition even, of 
this faith and of our principle shows itself in 
the same way as with the demand of Socrates 
in respect to the maxim of Anaxagoras. This 
faith is equally indefinite, is what is called 
faith in Providence in general, and does not go 
forward to what is definite, — to an application 
to the whole comprehensive course of the 
worlds history. Explaining history, generally 
means only the unveiling of the passions of 
men, their genius, their active powers; and the 
definite ends of Providence are called its plan. 
But it is this plan which is said to be concealed 
from our eyes, which it is audacity even to 
wish to know. The ignorance of Anaxagoras 
as to the mode in which the understanding 
(rouf) reveals itself in actual existence, was an 
unprejudiced one; he had not become conscious, 
nor had any one then in Greece, of any further 
application of his views; he was not yet able 
to apply his general principle to the concrete, 
to understand the latter by the former ; for So- 
crates took the first step in grasping the union 
of the concrete with the universal. Anaxagoras 
was, then, not hostile to such an application; 
but this common faitli in Providence is polemi- 
cal, at least against the application of its prin- 
ciple to any wide extent, or against the attempt 
to understand the general plan of Providence. 
For, in special cases, those who hold it are will- 
ing sometimes to allow pious minds to see, in 
some single occurretjces, not what is casual, but 
the very appointments of God ; when, for ex- 
ample, help unexpectedly coines to an individual 
in great distress and need ; but such Providen- 
tial ends are only of a limited kind, are only 
the special ends of this individual. In the his- 
tory of the world, however, we have to do with 
individuals which are nations, with wholes 
which are states ; we cannot then limit our- 
selves to such retailing of faith in Providence, 
nor yet to that merely abstract, undefined faith, 
\vhich only goes so far as to say that there is a 
Providence in general, but will not advance to 
the statement of its more definite acts. We 
should rather earnestly endeavor to understand 
the ways of Providence, its means and mani- 



festations in history, and to bring those into 
connexion with our general principle. 

HISTOHT AS THE MANIFEST ATIOIT OF SPIRIT. 

The true sphere of the history of the world 
is spiritual. The world comprises in itself both 
the physical and the psychical nature ; physical 
nature plays a large part in the history of the 
world. But spirit, with the course of its deve- 
lopment, is the substance of it. Nature is not 
here to be considered, so far as it is in itself, as 
it were, a system of reason, exhibited in a spe- 
cial and peculiar element, but only as it stands 
related to spirit. Spirit, however, in the theatre 
of the world's history, exists in its most concrete 
form, comes to its most real manifestations. In 
order to understand its connexions with history, 
we must make some preliminary and abstract 
statements respecting the nature of spirit. 

The nature of spirit may be easily understood 
by comparison with that which is the entire op- 
posite of it, — that is, matter. The substance of 
matter is weight, which is only this, that it is 
heavy ; the substance, the essence of spirit, on 
the contrary, is freedom. Every one finds it im- 
mediately credible that spirit, among other attri- 
butes, also possesses freedom; but philosophy 
teaches us that all the attributes of spirit exist 
only through freedom, that they all are only the 
means of which freedom makes use, that this 
alone is what they all seek for and produce. 
The speculative philosophy recognises this fact, 
that freedom is the only truth of spirit. Matter 
shows that it is weight, by its tendency to one 
centre of gravity; it is essentially matle up of 
parts, which parts exist separate from, and ex- 
ternal to, each other; and it is ever seeking their 
unity, and thus seeks to abolish itself, — seeks 
the opposite of what it really is; if it attained 
this unity, it were no longer matter, it were de- 
stroyed ; it strives to realize an idea, for in 
unity it is merely ideal. Spirit, on the other 
hand, is just this, that it has its centre in itself; 
its unity is not outside of itself, but it has found 
it; it is in itself and with itself Matter has its 
substance out of itself; spirit consists in being 
vnth itself. This is freedom ; for when I am de- 
pendent, I refer myself to something else which 
is not myself; I cannot be without something 
external; but I am free when I am with myself. 
This is self-consciousness, the consciousness of 
one's self Two things are here to be distin- 
guished: first, that I know or am conscious; 
secondly, what I know or am conscious of In 
self-consciousness, the two come together, for 
spirit knows itself; it judges of its own nature. 

In this sense, we may say that the history of 
the world is the exhibition of the process by 
which spirit comes to the consciousness of that 
which it really is, — of the signiHcancy of its 
own nature. And as the seed contains in itself 
the whole nature of the tree, even to the taste 
and form of the fruit, so do the first traces of 
spirit virtually contain the whole of history. 



452 



HEGEL. 



The Oriental world did not know that spirit, 
man as such, is of himself free ; since they knew 
it not, they were not free; they only knew that 
one is free; but jnst on this account their free- 
dom was only arbitrariness, wildness, obtuse 
passion ; or, if not so, yet a mildness and tame- 
ness of the passions, which is nothing but an 
accident or caprice of nature. This one is, there- 
fore, only a despot, not a free man. Among the 
Greeks, the consciousness of freedom first arose, 
and therefore they were free ; but they, as the 
Romans also, only kn'ew that some are free, not 
that man, as such, is free. Even Plato and 
Aristotle did not know this. Hence, the Greeks 
not only held slaves, and had their life and the 
continuance of their fair freedom bound thereby, 
but their freedom itself was partly only an ac- 
cidental and perishable flower, and partly a 
hard servitude of the human and humane. The 
German nations, under the influence of Chris- 
tianity, first came to the consciousness that man, 
as man, is free, — that freedom of soul consti- 
tutes his own proper nature. This conscious- 
ness came first into existence in religion, — in 
the deepest religion of the spirit. But to fashion 
the world after this principle, was a further pro- 
blem ; the solution and application of which, 
demanded a severe and long labor. With the 
reception of the Christian religion, for example, 
slavery did not at once come to an end, still less 
did ireedom at once become predominant in the 
States; their governments and constitutions were 
not immediately organized in a rational manner, 
or even based upon the principle of freedom. 
This application of the principle to the world 
at large, this thorough penetration and reforma- 
tion of the condition of the world by means of 
it, is the long process which the history of the 
nations brings before our eyes. I have already 
called attention to the difference between a 
principle, as such, and its application, — that is, 
the introduction of it into the actual operations 
of spirit and life, and carrying it through all of 
tliem ; this is a fundamental position in our 
science, and it is essential that we hold it fast 
in our thoughts. Here we have brought it out 
distinctly, in respect to the Christian principle 
of self-consciousness, of freedom ; but it is no 
less essential in respect to the principle of free- 
dom in general. The history of the world is 
the progress in the consciousness of freedom, — 
a progress which we shall have to recognise in 
its necessity. 

What we have now said, in general terms, 
upon the diff"erence in the knowledge of free- 
dom which we find in different ages of the 
world, gives us, also, the true division of the 
history of the world, and the mode in which 
we shall i)roceed to its discussion. The scheme 
'S this: the Oriental world only knew that one is 
free; the Greek and Roman world knew that 
some are free; but we know that all men, in 
their true nature, are free, — that man, as man, 
is free. 



THE RELATIOlf OP IlfDIVIBUALS TO THE ■WGllLS'S 
HISTORY. 

In the history of the world something else is 
generally brought out by means of the actions 
of individual men than they themselves aim at 
or attain, than they directly know of or will; 
they achieve their own ends, but something far- 
ther is brought to pass in connection with their 
acts, which also lies therein, but which did not 
lie in their consciousness and purposes. As an 
analogous example we cite the case of a man, 
who, out of revenge, which may have been 
justly excited, that is, by an unjust injury, goes 
to work and sets fire to the Ijouse of another 
man. Even in doing this, there is a connection 
made between the direct act, and other, although 
them selves merely external circumstances, which 
do not belong to this &ct, taken wholly and di- 
rectly by itself. This act, as such, is the holding 
perhaps of a small flame to a small spot of a 
wooden beam. What is not yet accomplished 
by this act goes on and is done of itself; the 
part of the beam that was set on fire is con- 
nected with other parts of the same beam, this 
too with the rafters and joists of the whole 
house, this house with other houses, and a wide- 
spread conflagration ensues, which destroys the 
property and goods of many other men besides 
the one against whom the revenge was directed, 
and even costs many men their lives. All this 
lay not in the general act, nor in the intention 
of him who began it all. But, still farther, this 
action has another general character and desti- 
nation: in the purpose of the actor it was only 
revenge against an individual by means of the 
destruction of his property ; but it is also a crime, 
and this involves, farther, a punishment. This 
may not have been included in the conscious- 
ness, and still less in the will of the doer, but 
still such is his act in itself, the general cha- 
racter, the very substance of it, that which is 
achieved by it. In this example all that we 
would hold fast is, that in the immediate action 
there can lie something more than what was in 
the will and consciousness of the actor. The 
substance of the action, and thereby the act 
itself, here turns round against the doer ; it be- 
comes a return-blow against him, which ruins 
him. We have not here to lay any emphasis 
upon the action considered as a crime; it is in- 
tended only as an analogous example, to show, 
that in the definite action there may be some- 
thing more than the end directly willed. 

One other case may be adduced which will 
come up later in its own place, and which, 
being itself historical, contains, in the special 
form which is essential to our purpose, the union 
of the general with the particular, of an end 
necessary in itself with an aim which might 
seem accidental. It is that of Ccesar, in danger 
of losing the position he had obtained, if not of 
superiority over, yet of equality with, the other 
man who stood at the head of the Roman state, 
and of submitting to those who were upon the 



HEGEL. 



451 



point of becoming his enemies. These enemies, 
who at the same time had their own personal 
ends in view, had on their side the formal con- 
stitution of the State and the power of seeming 
legality. CcBsar fought to maintain his own 
position, hotior, and safety, and the victory over 
his opponents was at the same time the con- 
quest of the whole kingdom : and thus he be- 
came, leaving only the forms of the constitution 
of the State, the sole possessor of power. The 
carrying out of his own at first negative purpose 
got for him the supremacy in Rome ; but this 
was also in its true nature a necessary element 
in the history of Rome and of the world, so that 
it was not his own private gain merely, but an 
instinct which consummated that which, consi- 
dered by itself, lay in the times themselves. 
Such are the great men of history — those whose 
private purposes contain the substance of that 
wliich is the will of the spirit of the world. 
This substance constitutes their real power; it 
is contained in the general and unconscious in- 
stinct of men; they are inwardly impelled 
thereto, and have no ground on which they can 
stand in opposing the man who has undertaken 
the execution of such a purpose in his own in- 
terest. The people assemble around his ban- 
ner; he shows to them, and carries out, that 
which is their own immanent destiny. 

Should we, farther, cast a look at the fate of 
these world-historical individuals, we see that 
they have bad the fortune to be the leaders to 
a consummation which marks a stage in the 
progress of the general mind. That reason 
makes use of these instruments we might call 
its craft; for it lets them carry out their own 
aims with all the rage of passion, and not only 
keeps itself unharmed, but makes itself domi- 
nant. The particular is for the most part too 
feeble against the universal; ihe individuals 
are sacriKced. Thus the world's history pre- 
sents itself as the conflict of individuals, and in 
the field of their special interests all goes on 
very naturally. In the animal world the pre- 
servation of life is the aim and instinct of each 
individual, and yet reason or general laws pre- 
vail, and the individuals fall ; thus is it also in 
the spiritual world. Passions destroy each 
other; reason alone watches, pursues its end, 
and makes itself authoritative. 

THE STATE. 

That which is substantial and true in man's 
will is what we call morality and law; and 
this is what is divine in the external objects of 
history. Antigone in Sophocles says: 'The di- 
vine commands are not of yesterday or to-day; 
no. they live without end, and no one knows 
whence and wlinti tlieycame.' Moral laws are 
not accidental, but are reason itself When 
these moral laws or ethical principles, wliich 
compose tiie true substance of humanity, have 
authority in the. actions and sentiments of men, 
when they are really carried out and main- 
tained, then we have the Slate. Now-a-days 



there are manifold errors current upon this mat- 
ter which pass for established truths, and have 
all prejudices in their favor; we will only no 
tice a few of them, and such as have a special 
bearing upon the aim of our history. 

The State, we say, is the realisation of free- 
dom in conformity with ethical laws. An opi- 
nion directly opposed to this view is current, 
wliich asserts that man is free by nature, and 
that the society, the State, of which he is natu- 
rally a member, must restrict this natural free- 
dom. That man is free by nature is wholly 
correct in the sense, that this is the true idea of 
man, but this idea is something that is to be 
realized ; it expresses his destination, and not 
what he actually is at first; the nature of any 
object can mean the same as the true conception 
of it. But this is not the whole meaning of the 
phrase; there is also included in it the notion 
of the mode in which man existed in his natural 
and undeveloped condition. In this sense, a 
state of nature is generally assumed in which 
man is represented as being in the possession 
of his natural rights in the unrestricted exercise 
and enjoyment of his freedom. This assump- 
tion does not pass for something verified by 
history; and if it were earnestly attempted, it 
would be difficult to show that such a state of 
nature either now exists, or has in past times 
anywhere existed. States of savageness can 
indeed be pointed out, but these are always 
connected with rude passions and violence, 
and, even when most cultivated, we find, among 
such tribes, social regulations which restrict 
true freedom. This whole assumption is one 
of those misty figments which a theorising spirit 
generates; a notion necessarily flowing from 
such a spirit, for which it then feigns a real 
existence, without justifying itself in an historical 
way. 

Such as we find this state of nature to be in 
fact, so is it in the notion thereof. Freedom, 
being the ideality of what is primitive and na- 
tural, is not found in the priinitive and natural 
condition of man; it must first be wrought out 
and won, and that, too, by an unending media- 
tion between the impulses of knowledge and 
of will. Hence the state of nature is a state of 
injustice, of force, of unrestrained natural im- 
pulses to inhuman deeds and feelings. Society 
and the State do indeed make restrictions, but 
the restrictions are put upon these crude emo- 
tions and rude impulses, upon fickleness and 
passion. These limitations are made by that 
constant process of mediation between opposing 
principles, which is the only way in which such 
freedom is produced, as is conformed to the 
true idea thereof, and to the laws of reason. 
Right and ethics belong to the very idea of free- 
dom ; these are, in their very nature, universal 
essences, objects, and ends ; they are found 
only as we, by the activity of thought, distin- 
guish ourselves from whatever is sensu.il, and 
develope our characters in contrast with what 
is merely natural; and tffey must, so to speak 



154 



HEGEL. 



be moulded into and embodied in the will 
which is at first only sensuous, even in opposi- 
tion to this will. This is the everlasting mis- 
apprehension of freedom, to know it only in its 
formal and subjective aspects, abstracted from 
its essential objects and aims ; thus is it that 
the limitation of those impulses, desires, and 
passions, which belong only to single indivi- 
duals as such, to the sphere of caprice and mere 
liking, is taken to be a restriction of freedom. 
Such limitation is rather absolutely necessary 
to the emancipation of the will; and society 
and the State are the conditions under which 
freedom is realised. 

Another conception should be mentioned 
which goes against the development of right 
into its legal forms. The patriarchal state, 
taken as a whole, or at least in some of its 
branches, is looked upon as the condition in 
which the moral and social elements of our 
nature are best satisfied, in connection with the 
demands of law, and it is said that justice itself 
can be truly exercised only in conjunction with 
these elements. Tlie family relation lies at the 
basis of the patriarchal condition; and here we 
have a development only of the first ethical 
elements ; the State must also be added in order 
to bring about a conscious development of the 
second or higher elements. The patriarchal 
relation is a state of transition, in which the 
family has grown to a tribe or people; it has 
already ceased to have love and trust for its 
only bonds; it has come to be a connection of 
mutual service. The unity of the mere family 
is one of natural sentiment; the State adds 
higher bonds, and brings the members of the 
family into a higher moral condition and con- 
nections. 

Finally it is said, that right and the true no- 
tion of freedom lie in the general will. When 
we speak of the will as general, we mean, that 
all individuals are to be subject to it; and when 
freedom is said to consist in this, that the indi- 
viduals give their assent, it is easily seen that 
we have here got only the subjective elements 
of the will. It comes out at last to a mere ma- 
jority and minority, and Rousseau has already 
remarked, that then there is no more freedom, 
for the will of the minority is no longer regarded. 
In the Polish diet every individual must give 
his assent to a measure, or it could not pass; 
and for the sake of such freedom the State was 
ruined ; for every faction of the people can give 
itself out to be the people. That which consti- 
tutes the State is found rather in its culture than 
in the people as a mass. 

The fttate, as such, is neither a natural, nor, in 
its highest form, a patriarchal condition, nor is it 
the general will: but it is an ethical whole; the 
State, embodieJ in the individuals, is the true 
ethics. The Statr, its laws, its institutions are the 
rights of the individuals belonging to it, are their 
external possession ; and its soil, its mountains, 
air, and waters, are their land, their fatherland; 
'■heir deeds make the iiistory of this State; that 



which their forefathers have done belongs to 
them, and lives in their memory. All is their 
possession — even as the State also possesses 
them — for it constitutes their substance, their 
being. Their conceptions are thus fulfilled ; and 
their will is the willing of these laws and of 
this fatherland. It is this spiritual community 
which makes one essence, which we call the 
spirit of a people. The individuals belong to 
it; every individual is the son of his people, 
and at the same time, so far as the state is pro- 
gressing, he is the son of his times; no one re- 
mains behind them, nor can he overleap them; 
this spiritual essence is his own, he is its repre- 
sentative; he came forth from it, and stands in 
it. Among the Athenians, Athena had a double 
significancy; first, she designated their institu- 
tions as a whole ; and she was also the goddess 
who represented the unity, the spirit of the 
people. 

This spirit of a people is a definite spirit; its 
character is determined by the historical stage 
of their development. This spirit is the basis 
out of which proceed all the tbrras of national 
culture. It is an individuality, which in reli- 
gion is represented, reverenced, and loved in 
its essential character ; in art, it is exhibited in 
visible images and forms; in philosophy, it is 
known and apprehended as thought. The forms 
which these things take are in inseparable union 
with the spirit of the people; the substance of 
which they are formed and their objects are ori- 
ginally the same; hence, only with such a reli- 
gion can we have such a state; in such a state 
only such a philosophy and art. This remark 
is especially important in respect to the folly 
of our times, in wishing to invent and carry 
out state-constitutions independently of religion. 
The Catholic confession, although standing in 
common with the Protestant, within the bounds 
of Christianity, does not allow that internal jus- 
tice and morality of the state, which lies in the 
more spiritual Protestant principle, and which 
Protestantism ascribes to it. This sundering of 
public law and the constitution of the state from 
its true basis, is the necessary result of the pecu- 
liar principle of the Catholic faith, which does 
not acknowledge that law and morals have a 
real, substantive existence of their own ; but 
when they are thus torn loose from their spiritual 
foundation, from the last sanctuary of the con- 
science, from the same place where religion has 
its seat, then the principles and institutions of 
public law have no fixed centre, but remain 
abstract and undefined. 

Hence it is to be taken as a general principle, 
that these essential things belong and go to- 
gether, and that what is loreign to their spirit 
can have no ingress into a world which has its 
own limits. Thus Grecian art is the product 
of the Greek religion and governments, and no 
one can introduce it among ourselves. It is just 
so with the Greek philosophy; though we may 
learn much from it, yet it cannot satisfy us. 
Spirit takes the form of universality; and if a 



HEGEL. 



455 



state i-s to advance in culture, if this is just its 
office, this culture must be in conformity with 
the laws of Spirit. Law, considered as freedom 
determining itself, is the objectivity of spirit: 
hence that alone is true volition, the will in the 
truth of it, which obeys law, for it then obeys 
only itself; it is then with itself and free; this 
is the freedom in the State for which the citizen 
is active, and which fills his soul. In that the 
State, the fatherland constitutes a community 
of existence, in that the subjective will of man 
becomes subject to the laws, the opposition 
between freedom and necessity vanishes. The 
rational, that which we have recognised as law, 
is necessary; and we are free when we follow 
what is rational ; the objective and subjective 
will are thus reconciled. The ethics of the 
State are not to be regarded as the same thing 
with mere morality, are not the mere result of 
reflection, are not dependent upon private con- 
victions alone ; this is the system of morals fami- 
liar to the modern world, while the true and 
ancient system was based in this, that each man 
stood to his duty. A citizen of Athens did as 
it were by instinct what belonged to him to do ; 
but if I reflect upon the object of my actions, I 
must then have the consciousness that my own 
will is first to come in as an essential element. 
But the true ethics consists in duty, in conformity 
with right, with law which has a real, substantia! 
existence; it has been justly called the second 
nature, for the first nature of man is his primi- 
tive, animal existence. 

BELIGION, AUT, PHILOSOPHT. 

All spiritual action has for its aim and result 
the production of the consciousness of the union 
of the objective and the subjective; in this is 
freedom. This union appejirs to be produced 
by the thinking subject and to go out from it. 
Religion stands at the head of the forms of thia 
union. Here the existing spirit, the spirit be- 
longing to this world, becomes conscious of the 
Absolute Spirit; and in this consciousness of a 
being existing in and for itself, the will of man 
renoimces its particular for private interests: in 
devotion, he puts this a.^ide, lor here he can have 
nothing to do with what is merely personal to 
himself. If he is truly penetrated with devo- 
tion, he knows that his particular interests are 
subordinate. This concentration of soul shows 
itself as feeling, but it also passes over into re- 
flection ; the cullus, ineaning by this all forms 
of outward worship, is a manifestation of such 
reflection ; the only destination and significancy 
of these externals is to produce that internal 
union, — to lead the spirit thereto. By sacrifices, 
man expresses his willingness to give up his 
own possessions, his own will, his own particu- 
lar leelings. Thus Religion is the first form of 
the union of the objective and subjective. The 
second shape it takes is Art: this comes more 
directly into the world of sense than religion; 
in its worthiest bearing its object is to exhibit, 
not, indeed, God as spirit, but the diiferent visi- 



ble representations which the difl^erent religions 
give of God; and, then, what is divine and spi- 
ritual in general. Art is intended to make what 
is divine more clear ; it presents it to the imagi- 
nation and contemplation in visible shapes. 
Truth, finally, appears not only in the form of 
feeling and of mental images of things, as in re- 
ligion; not only in visible shapes, as in art; but 
it is also elaborated by the thinking spirit. 
Thus we attain the third mode of the union of 
the objective and subjective, and that is philo- 
sophy. This is the highest, freest, and purest 
shape which it assumes. 

THE UlflNTELLIGIBILITT OF PHILOSOPHT. 

The difficulty here lies partly in the want of 
ability, in itself only a want of habit, to think 
abstractly, that is, to hold unmixed thoughts 
fast, and to move freely in them. In our ordi- 
nary consciousness, thoughts are overlaid and 
united with current materials from the world 
of sense and of spirit; and in our after-thoughts, 
reflections and reasonings, we mix up feelings, 
and mental images of visible objects, with the 
thoughts themselves: in every sentence where 
we speak only of what belongs to the world of 
sense, e. g. this leaf is green, the categories of 
being and singleness are involved. It is another 
thing to make the unmixed thoughts themselves 
the object of speculation. The other part of the 
unintelligibility arises from the impatient desire 
of having what exists in the consciousness, as a 
thought or idea, also before the mind, in the 
shape of some distinct image. It is a common 
saying, we do not know what we are to think 
about an idea which has been apprehended; 
with an idea there is nothing to be thought but 
the idea itself The sense, however, of that 
expression is, that there is a longing for some 
already known and current notion: when these 
notions are taken away, it is, to the conscious- 
ness, as though the very ground were removed, 
upon which there was once a firm and home- 
like standing-place. When one is transferred 
into the pure region of ideas, he knows not 
where in the world he is. Hence, those writers, 
preachers and authors are found most intelli- 
gible, wlio tell their readers or hearers things 
which they already knoiv by heart, which are 
current with them, and understood of themselves. 
There is a pretension, the opposite of this. 
Philosophy lays claim to thinking, as the pecu- 
liar form in which it works; and every man is 
by nature a thinking being. This science is, 
now, often disdainfully treated by persons who 
have never troubled themselves with studying 
it, and who imagine that they understand, ab 
(xvo, all about philosophy and its conjunctures, 
and are able to philosophize, and judge aboirt 
philosopliy, just as they walk and talk with 
their common education ; and especially on the 
ground of their religious feelings. It is granted 
that one must have studied the other sciences, 
in order to understand them ; and that one is 
justified in passing judgment upon them only 



456 



HEGEL. 



when they are understood. It is granted that, 
in order to make a glioe perfectly, one must 
have learned and practised the art; although 
every man has the measure in his own foot, 
and has hands, and, with these, natural adapt- 
eilness to the whole business. Only in philoso- 
phizing, such like study, learning and pains are 
not requisite. This convenient opinion has got 
confirmation in the latest times, by means of the 
theory of immediate knowledge, — of knowledge 
by intuitive wisdom. 

EMPiniCISM AND PHILGSOPHT. 

The principle of Experience contains one infi- 
nitely important element, that in order to receive 
and hold anything to be true, man must himself 
be with it, have a knowledge of it as connected 
with himself; to speak more definitely, that he 
must find such an external object united, and 
in unison with, </ie certainty of himself . He must 
l)imself be there with it, either by means of his 
external senses or his internal spirit, his essen- 
tial self-consciousness. This principle is the 
same as wliat now-a-days is called faith, direct 
knowledge, the revelation in the external world, 
and especially in one's own self. We call those 
sciences which have been named philosophy, 
empirical sciences, on account of the point of 
departure which they take. But the essential 
thing which they aim at and produce is a know- 
ledge of laws, o[ general principles, a theory — the 
thoughts that are contained in what is present 
around us. Thus the system of Newton is called 
Natural Philosophy; while, again, Hugo Gro- 
tius, combining together the liistorical relations 
of diflerent nations to one another, and reasoning 
after the common fashion upon these data, ar- 
rived at .some general principles, a theory which 
may be called the Philosophy of tlie Law of 
Nations. The word philosophy still retains this 
meaning universally in England. Newton has 
the credit of being the greatest of philosophers ; 
even down in the price-currents of the fabrica- 
tors of instruments we find it ; those instruments 
which are not brought under some special rubric 
(as magnetic and electric apparatus), the ther- 
mometers, barometers, and such like, are called 
philosophical instruments ; although one would 
think that Thought alone, and not a composition 
of iron, wood, &c., was the instrument of phi- 
losophy.* So, too, the science of Political Eco- 
nomy, for which we are indebted to these latest 
times, is called by them philosophy; while we 
Germans name it rational Economy of the State. 
In the mouths of English statesmen the expres- 



* The Journ-il published l.y Thomson has the title, 
"Jinnals of Pkilumpky, or Magazine for Chemistry, Mine- 
ralogy, Mpchai.ics, Natural History, Agriculture, and the 
Arts." One can from this see f.)r himself what the ma- 
terials are which are here called philosophical. Among 
the adverti.-ements of new books in an English paper, 1 
lately found the following: " The Art of Preserving the 
Hair, on Philosophical Principles, neatly printed in post, 
8vo., price 7s." By philosophical principles are liere 
projuably meant chemical, physiological, and such like. 



sion, philosophical principles, is frequently used 
witli reference to the general principles of State 
policy, even in public addresses. In a session 
of Parliament on the 2d of February, 1S25, 
Brougham, by occasion of an Address in reply 
to the Speech from the Throne, spoke of " those 
philosophical principles of free trade, worthy of 
a statesman — for without doubt they are philo- 
sophical — on the adoption of v/liich His Majesty 
lias this day congratulated Parliament." And 
not only this meinber of the opposition, but the 
Secretary of State, Caiming, in reply to a toast 
given him at the annual dinner of the Company 
of Ship-owners, where Lord Liverpool, the 
Prime Minister, presided, also said: "A period 
has lately begun in which ministers have it in 
their power to apply the correct maxims of a 
deep philosophy to our national government." 
However ditl'erent the English Philosophy may 
be froin the German, when the very name is 
elsewhere a by-word and reproach, or used as 
some liateful thing, it is an occasion of rejoicing 
to see it honored in the mouths of English 
statesmen. 



It is an old maxim, falsely ascribed to Aris- 
totle in the sense that it expresses the stand- 
point of his philosophy: nihil est in intelleclu, 
quod non fuerit in sensu: — there is nothing in 
thought wliich was not first in sense, in expe- 
rience. It is only a misunderstanding when it 
is said, that the speculative philosophy will not 
grant this priirciple. But, on the other hand, 
it also maintains : nihil est in sensu, quod non 
fuerit in intellectu, — first, in the very general 
sense, that the mind (j/oij) or, with deejier sig- 
nificance of definition, the spirit, is the cause of 
the world ; and, secondly, in the more special 
sense, that our feelings in respect to justice, 
morals and religion, are feelings, and so expe- 
riences, in respect to matters which have their 
root and seat in thought. 



WHO THINKS ABSTRACTLY? 

FROM HEGEL'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

Thinks? Abstractly? — "Sauve qui peut!" 
"Save himself who can!" I hear a traitor ex- 
claim, who, bribed by the enemy, would decry 
this essay, as one that treats of Metaphysics. 
^or 'metaphysics' and 'abstract,' and, I had 
almost said, 'to think,' are words from which— 
as from one infected with the plague — every 
man is more or less disposed to run away. 

I do not however intend here auything so 
atrocious as an explanation of what is meant 
by 'thinking' and by 'abstract.' I am frightened 
enough myself when any one begins to ex- 
plain ; for, at a pinch, I understand everything 
myself. Besides, any explanation of the words, 
'to think' and 'abstract,' would be quite super- 
fluous. For it is even because the polite world 



HEGEL. 



457 



knows so well what is meant by 'abstract,' that 
it sliuns the abstract. As no one craves what 
he does not know, so no one can hate what he 
does not know. Neither is it intended, by 
cunning stratagem, to attempt to reconcile the 
polite world to the abstract, as if, e. g. under the 
cover of a light conversation, 'thinking' and 
'the abstract' should be tricked out, until, at 
last, ■without being recognised, and without 
awakening any abhorrence, they had crept into 
good company, and even been imperceptibly 
drawn in by said company, or, as they say in 
Suabia, " gezaunselt" in, — and then the author of 
the plot should come forward and uncover this 
otherwise strange guest, 'the abstract,' whom 
the whole company had been acknowledging 
and treating as a good friend, under a different 
name. These scenes of recognition, by which 
it is designed to instruct the world against its 
will, have this unpardonable fault — they mor- 
tily while they instruct; and they discover in 
the machinist the wish to acquire a little repu- 
tation by his arts. That mortitication and this 
vanity neutralize the intended eti'ect, and dissi- 
pate again the instruction purcliased at such a 
price. 

Besides, the stratagem, in this instance, if any 
such had been designed, is already defeated; 
inasmuch as its successful execution requires 
that the word of the enigma should not be pro- 
nounced at the outset. But that has been done 
in the present case, m the caption. If my essay 
had contemplated a ruse like that which has 
been described, tliese words, 'think" and 'ab- 
stract," ought not to have made their appear- 
ance in the commencement ; but, like the minis- 
ter of state in the play, they should wear an 
over-coat through the whole piece, and then in 
the last scene unbutton it,^nd let the star* of 
wisdom beam forth. But the unbuttoning of 
the metaphysical over-coat would not have so 
good an etiect as the unbuttoning of the minis- 
terial. It would otdy reveal a couple oC words; 
and the best of the joke was to consist in show- 
ing that the company had long been in posses- 
sion of the thing. So they would gain, in the 
end, nothing but the name; whereas the minis- 
terial star indicates sonielhing more real, to wit, 
a purse with money in it. 

It is presumed in good company — and that is 
the kind of company we are now in — that every 
one present knows what thinking' is, what 'ab- 
stract' is. We have only to inquire who it is 
that thinks abstractly. The design is not, as I 
have already remarked, to reconcile the com- 
par:y to these things, to expect of thejn that 
they should employ themselves with aiiything 
diflicult, to speak to their consciences fur heed- 
lessly neglecting what is so worthy and befitting 
a rational being. The object is rather to recon- 
cile the polite world with itself", in case it should 
feel — not exactly conscientious scruples on ac- 

* III nihi»'i(in to the star worn on the breast by cert.iin 
dignilaries. — Trans. 

3h 



count of said neglect — but yet inwardly, at 
least, a certain respect for abstract thinking, as 
for something exalted, and should turn from it 
not because it is too mean, but because it is too 
liigh, not because it is too common, but because 
it is too distinguislied ; or, contrariwise, because 
it seems to be an espece, something out of the 
way, something whereby one is, not distin- 
guished in general society as by new finery, 
but rather excluded from it, or made ridiculous 
in it, as by a poor dress, or by a rich one, where 
the setting of the diamonds is old-i"ashioned, or 
where the embroidery, though never so costly, 
lias long since come to be "Chinese." 

Who thinks abstractly? The uncultivated 
man, not the cultivated. People who belong 
to good society do not think abstractly, because 
it is too easy, because it is too low — low, not 
according to outward condition; — they abstain 
from it, not out of empty hauteur, which afl'ects 
to look with contempt on what is above its capa- 
city, but on account of tlie intrinsic littleness of 
the thing. 

The prepossession and respect for abstract 
thinking is so great, that refined noses will begin 
to scent and anticipate siitire or irony here. But 
as my readers are readers of the Morgenblatt, 
they know that a price is paid for satire; and 
they must suppose that I would rather earn that 
price, and concur to obtain it, than give forth 
my matters in this way, without remuneration. 

1 need but adduce, in defence of m.y proposi- 
tion, certain examples, which, as every one will 
allow, imply it. We will suppose, then, a mur- 
derer is led to the place of execution. To the 
common people he is nothing more than a mur- 
derer. Ladies, perhaps, will remark that he is 
a powerful, handsome, interesting man. But 
the people before mentioned, think that remark 
shocking. " Wliat! a murderer handsome ? How 
can any one be so evil-minded as to think a 
murderer handsome'? It is to be feared you are 
not much better than murderers yourselves." 
"This is the corruption of morals which reigns 
among the higher classes," adds, perhaps, a 
priest, who knows the reason of things and the 
hearts of men. 

One who understands human nature, investi- 
gates the course which the education of this 
murderer has taken ; he finds in liis history, in 
his bringing-up, bad domestic relations between 
his father and his mother; finds a monstrous 
severity exercised towards him on the occasion 
of some light otfence, — a severity which has 
embittered his feelings in relation to the civil 
order; — finds a first reaction against this order, 
which caused his expulsion from it, and made 
it iiupossible for him, thenceforward, to main- 
tain himself otherwise than by crime. There 
may be some who, when they hear this account 
of the matter, will say: that man wishes to 
apologize for this murderer! I remember to 
have heard, in my youth, a burgomaster com- 
plain that writers of books were going too far, 
were endeavoring to extirpate Christianity and 
39 



458 



HEGEL. 



justice altogether ; that some one had written a 
defence of suicide! — dreadful! too dreadful! 
On inquiry, it appeared that he had in his mind 
the " Sorrows of Werter."' 

This is thinking abstractly, — to see in a 
murderer nothing but the abstract fact that he 
is a murderer; and by means of this single 
quality to expunge all else, all that is human in 
him. 

Quite otherwise did a refined, sentimental 
Leipzig world. They bestrewed andbewreathed 
the wheel, and the criminal who was bound 
upon it, with flower-garlands. But this, again, 
is an abstraction of an opposite kind. Chris- 
tians may well practise rosicruciauism, or rather 
cruciroseism, and wreathe the cross with roses. 
The cross is a long-since hallowed gibbet and 
wheel. It has lost its one-sided signification as 
an instrument of degrading punishment, and 
gives, on the contrary, the idea of the highest 
sorrow and the uttermost rejection, combined 
with extreme rapture and divine honor. The 
Leipzig cross, on the other hand, wreathed with 
violets and roses, represents an atonement in 
the manner of Kotzebue, a kind of maudlin 
agreetnent between sentiment and vice. 

It was after a very different fashion that I 
once heard a vulgar old crone — a spital woman 
— slay the abstraction of a murderer, and raise 
him again to honor. The severed head was 
placed upon the scaffold, and the sun was 
shining. "How beautifully," said she, "God's 
sun of grace illumines Binders head!' People 
say to a wight against whom they are incensed, 
" You are not worthy that the sun should shine 
upon you!" That woman saw that the mur- 
derer's head was shone upon by the sun, and 
consequently was still worthy of the sun's light. 
She raised him from the punishment of the 
scatTold into the sun-grace of God. She did not 
bring about the atonement with violets and sen- 
timental vanity; but she saw him received with 
grace into a higher sun. 

"Old woman! your eggs are rotten!" says 
the female purchaser to the huckster-woman. 
"What!" replies the latter; "my eggs rotten! 
Belike, you are rotten yourself. Do you say that 
of my eggs ? You 1 Didn't the lice eat up 
your lather on the public road? Didn't your 
mother run off with the French? Didn't your 
grandmother die in the Spital ? Go ! get you a 
whole smock, to go witli your gauze necker- 
chief! Everybody knows where that necker- 
chief, and where all your caps come from. If 
there v/ere no officers, many a girl would not 



be so prinked up now-a-days. And if mis- 
tresses would look more to their housekeeping, 
there's many a one would sit in the stocks. Go! 
patch the holes in your stockings!" In short, 
she does not leave her a whole thread. She 
thinks abstractly, and concludes her, together 
with neckerchief, caps, smock, &c., with fingers 
and other parts, also with her father and all her 
relations, under the single crime of having 
charged her (the huckster) with rotten eggs. 
Everything about her is colored through and 
through with these rotten eggs; whereas, on the 
contrary, those officers, of whom the huckster- 
woman spoke, — if (what is very doubtful) there 
is anything in the story, — must have seen some- 
thing very diff'erent. 

To come from the maid to servants: — a ser- 
vant fares nowhere so badly as with men of in- 
ferior rank and small income. The higher the 
rank of the master, the better the condition of the 
servant. Here, again, the common man thinks 
more abstractly. He is haughty towards his 
servant, relates to him as to a servant only. To 
this one predicate he holds fast. A servant 
fares best with Frenchmen. The man of rank 
is familiar with his servant. The Frenchman 
is "hail! fellow, well met!" with him. When 
they are alone, the servant leads the conversa- 
tion. See Diderot's Jacques et son maitre. The 
master does nothing but take snuff and look at 
his watch; and, for the rest, lets the servant 
have his way. The man of rank knows that 
the servant is not merely a servant, that he is 
acquainted with the news of the city, knows 
the girls, and has good projects in his head. 
He asks hiin about these things, and the servant 
may say what he knows on the subjects on 
which the master questions him. With a French 
master, the servant may not only do this, but 
may also bring his own matter on the tapis, and 
have and maintain his own opinion. And if 
the master wants anything, he is not to com- 
mand, but he must first reason his own opinion 
into the servant, and then give him a good word, 
in order that his own opinion may retain the 
ascendancy. 

In military life, the same distinction is found. 
In Austria, the soldier can be flogged; conse- 
quently, he is a vile fellow; for one who has a 
passive right to be flogged, is a vile fellow. 
And so the common soldier passes with the 
olficer for this abstraction, a floggable subject, 
one with whom a gentleman who has a unilurni 
and Port d'ejjie must have intercourse. And 
that is to give one's self to the Devil. 



JOHANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE. 



ZscHOKKE has become known to the Ameri- 
can Public, within a few years past, by trans- 
lations of several of his tales. But Zschokke is 
something more than a mere story-teller. He is 
known in Germany as an historical writer, and 
all his works discover the moral philosopher, 
well versed in human nature and human af- 
fairs, and one who has pondered deeply the 
social and individual destination of man. 

He was born, according to WolfTs Encyclo- 
pajdia of German Literature, at Magdeburg, 
March 22d, 1771, received a classical educa- 
tion in his native city, and studied at Frankfort 
on the Oder, where he afterwards took up his 
residence, and in 1793 was made Professor of 
Philosophy. He soon resigned this office, and 
moved to Graubiindten, (Grisons,) where he 
undertook the management of a seminary of 
education. At the time of the French inva- 
sion he acted as mediator, devoting himself 
exclusively to the good of the country which 
he had adopted as a second father-land. He 
was made Government's Commissary for seve- 



ral Cantons, and officiated for some time aa 
Lieutenant Governor at Basel. He then re- 
tired to Castle Biberstein in Aargau, but was 
soon summoned anew into public life, and made 
Superintendent of the Mining and Forest de- 
partments. In 1815, he was made member of 
the general Council of the Cantons. In 1829, 
he resigned all his public offices, and since that 
time has devoted himself exclusively to lite- 
rary pursuits, living and laboring, as author by 
profession, at Aarau. 

Zschokke has tried his Imnd at almost every 
species of literary production, and has been 
successful in all. He excels as narrator, com- 
bining artistic judgment with exuberant fancy, 
great power of characterization, a lively man- 
ner, and a style admirably suited to his mate- 
rial; natural, but at the same time dignified 
and correct. But his influence has been great- 
est as historian and popular teacher, skilled to 
comprehend and penetrate the spirit of the 
time, and indefatigable in developing and dif- 
fusing sound views of men and things. 



LEAVES FROM THE JOURNAL OF A 
POOR VICAR IN WILTSHIRE.* 

Dec. 15, 17C4. — Received to-day from Dr. 
Snarl, £10 sterling, beinu my lialf-year's salary. 
Tlie receipt even of tliis liardly-earned sum 
was attended with many uncomfortable cir- 
cumstances. 

Not until I had waited an hour and a half in 
the cold ante-room was I admitted to the pre- 
sence of his Reverence. He was seated in an 
easy-chair at Ijis writing-desk. My money was 
lying by liim, reatly counted. My low bow he 
returned witli a lofty side-nod, while he slightly 
pushed back his beautiful black silk cap, and 
immediately drew it on again. Really he is a 
man of traich dignity. I can never approach 

* From "The Gift," 1844, Pliiltdelphia, Carey & Hart. 
rranplated hy Rev. W. H. Furiioss. The traiishitor ven- 
tures the conje<:tiire that the original fragment from 
whicli Zschokke took the idea of thi.-i journal, and which 
appeared in the British Majiazine (J7ij6), was written by 
Gohldrnith. It may he, as tlie Gernjan writer suggests, 
the germ of the " Vicar of Wakefield," which appeared 
first in J772. 



him without awe. I do not believe I should 
enter the king's presence with less composure. 

He did liot urge me to be seated, although he 
well knew that I had this very morning walked 
eleven miles in the bad weather, and that tlie 
hour and a half's standing in the ante-room had 
not much helped to rest my wearied limbs. He 
pointed me to the money. 

My heart beat violently when I attempted to 
introduce the subject which I had so long thouglit 
over, of a little increase of my salary. I shall 
never be able to conquer my timidity, even in 
the most righteous cause. Twice, with an agony 
as if I were about to commit a crime, I endea- 
vored to break ground. Memory, words, and 
voice failed me. The sweat started in great 
drops on my forehead. 

"What do you wish?" said the Doctor, very 
politely. 

"I am — everything is so dear — scarcely able 
to get along in these hard times, with this small 
salary." 

"Small salary, Mr. Vicar ! How can you 
think so? I can at any time procure another 
vicar for £15 sterling a year." 

(459) 



460 



ZSCHOKKE. 



"For £15! Without a family, one might in- 
deed get along with that sum.' 

"Your family, Mr. Vicar," said the doctor, in- 
quiringly, "has not received any addition, I 
trust. Yon have only two daughters?" 

"Only two. your Reverence; but they are 
growing up. My Jenny, the eldest, is now 
eighteen, and Polly, the younger, will soon be 
twelve." 

" So much the better. Can't your girls work?" 

I was about to reply, when he cut me short 
by rising and observing, while he went to the 
window and drummed with his fingers ou the 
pane, that he had no time to talk with me to- 
day. "Think it over," he concluded, "whether 
you will retain your place at £15 a year, and 
let me know. If you relinquish it, I hope you 
will have a better situation for a New Year's 
present." 

He bowed very politely, and again touched 
his cap. I swept up the money, and took my 
leave. I was thunderstruck. He had never 
received nor dismissed me so coldly before. 
Without doubt somebody has been speaking ill 
of me. He did not once invite me to dinner, as 
had always before been his custom. I had de- 
pended upon it, for I came from home without 
breaking my fast. I bought a loaf in the outskirts 
of the town at a baker's shop, which I had ob- 
served in passing, and took my way home. 

How cast down was I as I trudged along! I 
cried like a child. The bread I u as eating was 
wet with ray tears. 

But i'y, Thomas ! Shame upon,thy faint heart ! 
Lives not the gracious Goil. still? What if thou 
hadst lost the place entirely? And it is only £5 
less! It is indeed a quarter of tiiy whole little 
yearly stipend, and it leaves barely lOd. a day 
to feed and clothe three of us. What is there 
left for us? Who clothes the lilies of the field ! 
Who feeds the young ravens ! We must deny 
ourselves some of our luxuries. 

Dec. 16. — I do believe Jenny's an angel. Her 
soul is even more beautiful than her body. I 
am almost ashamed of being her father. She is 
so nmch better and more pious than I. 

I had not the courage yesterday to tell my 
girls the bad news. When I mentioned it to- 
day, Jenny at first looked very serious, but sud- 
denly slie brightened up and said, "Thou art 
disquieted, father !" 

" Should I not be so?" 

"No, thou shouldst not." 

"Dear child, we shall never be free from 
debt and trouble. I do not know how we can 
stand it. Our need is sore. £15 hardly suffice 
for the bare necessaries of life. Who will as- 
sist us?' 

Instead of answering, Jenny gently passed 
one arm round my neck, and pointed upwards 
with the other. — "He, there!" said she. 

Polly seated herself on my lap, patted my 
face, and said, "I want to tell thee something. 
I dreamed last night that it was New Year's 



day, and that the king came to C There 

was a splendid show. The king dismounted 
from his horse before our front door, and came 
in. We had nothing to set before him, and 
he commanded some of his own dainties to be 
brought in dishes of gold and silver. The kettle- 
drums and trumpets sounded outside; and only 
think, with the sound of the music, in came 
some people with a bishop's mitre upon a satin 
cushion, a New Year's present for thee ! It 
looked very funny, like the pointed caps of the 
bishops in the old picture-book. But it became 
thee right grandly. Yet I laughed myself almost 
out of breath ; and then Jenny waked me up, 
which made me quite angry. This dream has. 
certainly something to do with a New Year's 
present. It is only fourteen days to New 
Year's." 

I said to Polly, "Dreams are but Seems;"' but 
she said, " Dreams come from God." 

I believe no such thing. Still I write the 
dream down, to see whether it be not a com- 
forting hint from Heaven. A New Year's pre- 
sent would be acceptable to all of us. 

All day I have been at my accounts. I do 
not like accounts. Reckoning and money mat- 
ters distract my head, and make my heart 
empty and heavy. 

Dec. 17. — My debts, God be praised, are all 
now paid, but one. At five different places I 
paid off £7 lis. sterling. I have therefore left 
in ready money, £2 9s. This must last a half- 
year. God help us ! 

The black hose that I saw at tailor Cutbay's I 
must leave unpurchased, although I need them 
sorely. They are indeed pretty well worn, yet 
still in good condition, and the price is reason- 
able. But Jenny needs a cloak a great deal 
more. I pity the dear child when I see her 
shivering in that thin camlet. Polly must be 
satisfied with the cloak which her sister has 
made for her so nicely out of her old one. 

I must gi ve up my share of the ne w spaper which 
neighbor Westburn and I took together. It goes 
hard with me. Here in C , without a news- 
paper one knows nothing of the course of affairs. 
At the horse-races at Newmarket, the Duke of 
Cumberland won £0000 of the Duke of Grafton. 
It is wonderfid how literally the words of Scrip- 
ture are always fulfilled, "To him who haili, 
shall be given," and those other words, too, 
"From him who hath not, shall be taken away." 
I must lose £5 of even my poor salary. 

Fy, Thomas, already murmuring again ! and 
wherefore? For a newspaper, which thou art 
no longer able to take? Shame on thee ! Thou 
mayst easily learn frona others whether General 
Paoli succeeds in maintaining the freedom of 
Corsica. The French have indeed promised 
assistance to the Genoese ; but Paoli has 20,000 
veterans. 

Dec. 18. — Ah! how happy are we poor people 
still! Jenny has got a grand cloak at the slop- 



ZSCHOKKE. 



4G1 



shop for a mere song, and now she is sitting 
there with Polly, ripping it to pieces, in order to 
make it np anew. Jenny understands how to 
trade and bargain better than I. But they let 
her have things at her own price, her voice is 
so gentle. We have now joy upon joy. Jenny 
wants to appear in the new cloak for the first 
time on New Year's Day. Polly lias a hundred 
comments and predictions about it. I wager, 
the Dey of Algiers liad not greater pleasure in 
the costly present which the Venetians made 
him, the two diamond rings, the two watches 
set with brilliants, the pistols inlaid with gold, 
the costly carpets, the rich housings, and the 
20,000 sequins in cash. 

Jenny says we must save the cloak in eat- 
ables. Until New Years, we must buy no 
meat. Tliis is as it should be. 

Neighbor Westburn is a noble man. I told 
him yesterday I must discontinue my subscrip- 
tion for the newspaper, because I am not sure 
of my present salary, nor even of my place. He 
shook my hand and said, "Very well, then I 
will take the paper, and you shall still read it 
with me." 

One must never despair. There are more 
good men in tlie world than one thinks, espe- 
cially among the poor. 

The same day. Eve. — The baker is a crabbed 
man. Although I owe him nothing, yet when 
Polly went to fetch a loaf, and found it very 
small and badly risen or half-burnt, he struck 
up a quarrel with her, so that people stopped 
in the street. He declared that he would not 
sell upon trust — that we must go elsewhere for 
our bread. I ];itied Polly. 

I wonder huw the people here know every- 
thing. Every one in the village is telling how 
the doctor is sioing to put another curate in my 
place. It will be the death of me. 

The butcher, even, must have got a hint of it. 
It certainly was not without design that he sent 
his wife to me with complaints about the bad 
times, and the inipossihility of selling any longer 
for anything but cash, bhe was indeed very 
polite, and could not find words to express her 
love and respect for us. She advised us to go 
to Colswood, and buy the little meat we want 
of him, as he is a richer man, and is able to wait 
for his money. I cared not to tell the good wo- 
man how that usurer treated us a year ago, 
when he charged us a penny a pound more than 
others for his meat, and, when his oaths and 
curses could not help him out, and he could not 
deny it, how he declared roundly that he must 
receive a little interest when he was kept out 
of his money a whole year, and then showed us 
tlie door. 

I still have in ready money £2 Is. 3d. What 
shall I do, if no one will trust me, so that I may 
pay my bills quarterly'; And if Dr. Snarl ap- 
points another curate, then must I and my poor 
children be turned upon the street! 

Be it so ; God is in the street also ! 



Dec. 19, early. Ji. M. — I awoke very early to- 
day, and pondered what I shall do in my diffi- 
cult situation. I thought of Master Sitting, my 
rich cousin at Cambridge; only poor people 
have no cousins, only the rich. Were New 
Y'^ear's day to bring me a bishop's mitre, accord- 
ing to Polly's drearw, then I should have half 
England for my relations. 

I have written, and sent by the post, the fol- 
lowing letter to the Rev. Dr. Snarl : 

" I write with an anxious heart. It is said 
that your reverence intends to appoint another 
curate in my stead. 1 know not whether tlie 
report has any foundation, or whether it has 
arisen merely from my having mentioned to 
some persons the interview 1 had with you. 

" The office with wUicli you entrusted me I 
have discharged with zeal and fidelity ; I have 
preached the word of God in all purity ; I have 
heard no complaints. Even my inward monitor 
condemns me not. I humbly requested for a 
little increase of my small salary. Your reve- 
rence spoke of reducing the small stipend, 
which scarcely suffices to procure me and my 
family the bare necessaries of life. Let youi 
humane heart decide. 

"I have laboured sixteen years under your 
reverence's pious predecessors, and a year and 
a half under yourself I am now fifty years 
old. My hair begins to grow gray. Without ac- 
quaintances, without patrons, without the pros- 
pect of another living, without the means of 
earning my bread in any other way, mine and 
my children's fate depends upon your compas- 
sion. If you fail us, there remains no support 
for us but the beggar's staff. 

"My daughters, gradually .grown up, occasion, 
with the closest economy, increased expense. 
My eldest daughter, Jenny, supplies the place 
of a mother to her sister, and conducts our do- 
mestic concerns. We keep no maid; my daugh- 
ter is maid, cook, washerwoman, tailoress, and 
even shoemaker, while I am the carpenter, 
mason, chimney-sweeper, woodcutter, gardener, 
farmer, and wood-carrier of the household. 

"God's mercy has attended us hitherto. We 
have had no sickness. We could not have paid 
for medicines. C is a little place. 

"My daughters have in vain offered to do 
other work, such as washing, mending, and 
sewing. They very rarely get any. Here in 
the country every one does her own housework ; 
none are rich. 

" It will be a hard task to carry me and mine 
through the year upon £20; but it will be harder 
still if I am to attempt it upon £15. But I throw 
myself on your compassion and on God, and 
pray your reverence at least to relieve me of 
this anxiety." 

After I had finished this letter, I threw my- 
self upon my knees, (while Polly carried it to 
the post-office,) and prayed for a happy issue. 
I then became wonderfully clear and calm in 
my mind. Ah! a word to God is always a 
word from God — so cheerfully came I from my 
39* 



462 



ZSCHOKKE. 



little chamber, which I had entered with a 
heavy heart. 

Jenny sate at work at the window. She sate 
there with the repose and grace of an anjtel. 
Light seemed to stream from her looks. A slen- 
der sunbeam came through the window, and 
transfigured the whole place. I was in a hea- 
venly state. I seated myself at the desk, and 
wrote my sermon, "On the joys of poverty.'' 

I preach in the pulpit as much to myself as 
to my hearers ; and I come from church edified, 
if no one else does. If others do not receive 
consolation from my words, 1 find it myself It 
is with the clergyman as witli the physician. 
He knows the power of his medicines, but not 
always their etfect upon the constitution of 
every patient. 

Thesameday. A.M. — This morning I received 
a note from a stranger who had tarried over 
night at the inn. He begs me, on account of 
urgent affairs, to come to him. 

I have been to him. I found him a handsome 
young man of about six-and-twenty, with noble 
features and a graceful carriage. He had on an 
old well-worn surtout and boots, which still bore 
the marks of yesterday's travel. His round hat, 
although originally of a finer material than 
mine, was still far more defaced and shabby. 
The young man appeared, notwithstanding the 
derangement of his dress, to be of good family. 
He had on at least a clean shirt of the finest 
linen, which perhaps had just been given him 
by some charitable hand. 

He led me into a private room, begged par- 
don a thousand times for having troubled me, 
and proceeded to inform me in a very humble 
manner, that he found himself in most painful 
circumstances, that he knew nobody in this 
place, where he had arrived last evening, and 
had therefore had recourse to me as a clergy- 
man. He was, he added, by profession, an 
actor, but without employment, and intending 
to proceed to Manchester. He had expended 
nearly all his money, and had not enough to 
pay his fare at the inn — to say nothing of the 
expense of proceeding on his journey. Accord- 
ingly he turned in his despair to nie. Twelve 
shillings would be a great assistance to him. 
He promised, if I would favor him with that 
advance, that he would honorably and thank- 
fully repay it, so soon as he was again con- 
nected with any theatre. His name is John 
Fleetman. 

There was no necessity of his painting his 
distress to me so at large. His leatures ex- 
pressed more trouble than his words. He pro- 
bably read something of tlie same kind in my 
face; for as he turned his eyes upon me, he 
seemed struck with alarm, and exclaimed, 
"Will you leave me then without help?" 

1 stated to him that my own situation was 
full of embarrassment, that he had asked of me 
nothing less than the fourth part of all the 
money I had in the world, and that I was in 



great uncertainty as to the further continuance 
of my office. 

He immediately became cold in his manner, 
and, as it were, drew back into himself, while 
he remarked, "You comfort the unfortunate 
with the story of your own misfortunes. I ask 

nothing of you. Is there no one in C who 

has pity, if he has no wealth V' 

I cast an embarrassed look at Mr. Fleetman, 
and was ashamed to have represented my dis- 
tressed situation to him as a reason for my re- 
fusal to assist him. I instantly thought over all 
my townsmen, and could not trust myself to 
name one. I did not perhaps know their hearts 
well enough. 

I approached him, and laid my hand upon 
his shoulder, and said, "Mr. Fleetman, you 
grieve me. Have a little patience. You see I 
am poor. I will help you if lean. 1 will give 
you an answer in an hour." 

I went home. On the way I thought to my- 
self, "How odd! the stranger always comes 
first to me, and an actor to a clergyman ! There 
must be something in my nature that attracts 
the wretched and the needy, like a magnet. 
Whoever is in need conies to me, who have the 
least to give. When I sit at table with stran- 
gers, one of the company is sure to have a dog 
who looks steadily at what I am eating, and 
comes and lays his cold nose directly on my 
knee." 

When at home, I told the children who the 
stranger was, and what he wanted. I wished 
for Jenny's advice. She said tenderly, " I know, 
father, what thou thinkest, and therefore 1 have 
nothing to advise." 

"And what do I think?" 

"Why, that thou wilt do unto this poor actor 
as thou hopest God and Dr. Snarl will do unto 
thee." 

I had thought no such thing, but I wished I 
had. I got the twelve shillings, and gave tliem 
to Jenny to carry to the traveller. I did not care 
to listen to his thanks. It humbles me. Ingra- 
titude stirs my spirit up. And, besides, I had 
my sermon to prepare. 

The same day. Eve. — The actor is certainly a 
worthy man. When Jenny returned from the 
inn, she had much to tell about him, and also 
about the landlady. This woman had found 
out that her guest had an empty pocket, and 
Jenny could not deny that she had brought him 
some money. So Jenny had to listen to a long 
sermon upon the folly of giving, when one has 
nothing himself, and the danger of helping va- 
grants, when one has not the wherewithal to 
clothe his own children. "The shirt is nearer 
than the coat." "To feed one's own maketh 
fat,'' &c. &c. 

I had just turned to my sermon again, when 
Mr. Fleetman entered. He could not, he said, 

leave C without thardnng his benefactor, 

by whose means he had been delivered from 
the greatest embarrassment. Jenny was just 



ZSCHOKKE. 



463 



setting the table. We had an omelet and some 
turnips. 1 invited the traveller to dine with us. 
He accepted the invitation. It was very timely, 
he intimated, for lie had eaten a very scanty 
breakfast. Polly brought some beer. We had 
not for a long while fared so well. 

Mr. Fluetman seemed to enjoy himself with 
us. He had quite lost that anxious look he ha<l, 
yet there was the shy, reserved manner about 
him, which is peculiar to the unfortunate. He 
inferred that we were very happy, and of that 
we assured him. He supposed also that I was 
richer and better to do in the world than I de- 
sired to appear. There he was mistaken. With- 
out doubt the order and cleanliness of our par- 
lor dazzled the good man, the clearness of the 
windows, the neatness of the curtains, of the 
dinner-table, the floor, and the brightness of our 
tables and chairs. One usually finds a great 
lack of cleanliness in the dwellings of the poor, 
because they do not know how to save. But 
order and neatness, as I always preached to my 
sainted wife and to my daughters, are great 
save-alls. Jenny is a perfect mistress therein. 
She almost surpasses her mother, and she is 
bringing up her sister Polly in the same way. 
Her sharp eyes not a fly-mark can escape. 

Our guest soon became quite familiar and in- 
timate with us. He spoke more, however, of 
our situation than of his own. The poor man 
must have some trouble on his heart, I hope not 
upon his conscience. I remarked that he often 
broke ofl' suddenly in conversation, and became 
depressed, then again he would exert himself 
to be cheerful. God comfort him! 

As he was quitting us after dinner, I gave 
him much friendly counsel. Actors, I know, are 
rather a light-minded folk. He promised me 
sacredly, as soon as he should have money, to 
send back my loan. Ha must be sincere in that, 
for he looked very honest, and several times 
asked, how long I thought I should be able with 
the remainder of my ready money to meet the 
necessities of my household. 

His last words were, "It is impossible it 
should go ill with you in the world. You have 
heaven in your breast, and two angels of God 
at your side." With these words, he pointed to 
Jenny and Polly. 

Dec. 20. — The day has passed very quietly, 
but I cannot say very agreeably, for the grocer, 
Jones, sent me his bill for the year. Consider- 
ing what we had had of him, it was larger than 
we had expected, although we had had nothing 
of which we did not ourselves keep an account. 
Only he had raised the price of all his arti- 
cles. Otherwise, his account agreed honestly 
with ours. 

Tlie worst is the arrears of my last year's bill. 
He begged for the payment of the same, as he 
is in great need of money. Tlie whole of what 
I owe him amounts to eighteen shillings. 

I went to see Mr. Jones. He is a very polite 
and reasonable man. 1 hoped to satisfy him by 



paying him in part, and promising to pay the 
remainder by Easter. But he was not to be 
moved, and he regretted that he should be 
forced to proceed to extremities. If he could, 
he would gladly wait; but only within three 
days he would have to pay a note which had 
just been presented to him. With a merchant, 
credit is everything. 

To all this there was nothing to be said in 
reply, after my repeated requests for delay had 
proved vain. Should I have let him go to law 
against me, as he threatened? I sent hini the 
money, and paid ofl" the whole debt. But now 
my whole property has melted down to eleven 
shillings. Heaven grant that the actor may 
soon return what I loaned him. Otherwise I 
know not what help there is for us. 

Now go to, thou man of lit'le faith, if thou 
knowest not, God knoweth. Why is thy heart 
cast down? What evil hast thou done? Poverty 
is no crime. 

Dec. 24. — One may be right happy after all, 
even at the poorest. We have a thousand plea- 
sures in Jenny's new cloak. She looks as beauti- 
ful in it as a bride. But she wishes to wear it the 
first time abroad at church on New Year's day. 

Every evening she reckons up, and shows 
me with how little expense she has got through 
the day. We are all in bed by seven o'clock, to 
save oil and coals. That is no great hardship. 
The girls are so much the more industrious in 
the day, and they chat together in bed until mid- 
night. We have a beautiful supply of turnips and 
vegetables. Jenny thinks we can get through 
six or eight weeks, without running in debt. That 
were a stroke of management without parallel. 
And until then, we all hope that Mr. Fleetman 
will keep his word like an honest man, and pay 
us back the loan. If I appear to distrust him, it 
awakens all Jenny's zeal. She will allow no 
evil of the comedian. 

He is our constant topic. The girls especially 
make a great deal out of him. His appearance 
interrupted the unifornnty of our life. He will 
supply us with conversation for a full half year. 
Pleasant is Jenny's anger, when the mischievous 
Polly exclaims, "But he is an aclor!" Then 
Jenny tells of the celebrated actors in London 
who are invited to dine with the princes of the 
royal family; and she is ready to prove that 
Fleetman will become one of the first actors in 
the world, for he has fine talents, and a grace- 
ful address and well-chosen phrases. " Yes, in- 
deed !" said the sly Polly to-day, very wittily, 
"beautiful phrases! he called thee an angel." 
"And thee too," cried Jenny, somewhat vexed. 
"But I was only thrown into the bargain," re- 
joiticd Polly, "he looked only at thee." 

This chat and childish raillery of my children 
awakened my anxiety. Polly is growing up ; 
Jenny is eighteen. What prospect have I of 
seeing these poor children provided for? Jenny 
is a well-bred, modest, handsome maiden; but 
all C knows our poverty. We are therp'brn , 



464 



ZSCHOKKE. 



little regarded, and it will be difficult to find a 
husband for Jenny. An angel without money 
is not thought half so much of now-a-days, as 
a devil with a bag full of guineas. Jenny's 
only wealth is her gentle face. That every- 
boily looks kindly on. Even the grocer, Jones, 
when she carried him his money, gave her a 
pound of almonds and raisins for a present, and 
told her how he was grieved to take my money, 
and that, if I bought of him, he would give me 
credit till Easter. He has never once said so 
mtich to me. 

When I die, who will take care of my deso- 
late children? Who ! the God of Heaven. They 
are at least qualified to go to service anywhere. 
I will not distress myself about the future. 

Dec. 26. — Two hard days these have been. 
I have never had so laborious a Christmas. I 
preached my two sermons in two days five 
times in four ditferent churches. The road was 
very bad, and the wind and weather fearful. 
Age is beginning to make itself felt. I have not 
the freshness and activity I once had. Indeed, 
cabbage and turnips, scantily buttered, with 
only a glass of fresh water, do not aflbrd much 
nourishment. 

I have dined both days with Farmer Hurst. 
The people in the country are more hospitable 
by far than here in the town, where nobody has 
thought of inviting me to dinner these six 
months. Ah! could I have only had my daugh- 
ters with me at table! What profusion was 
there! Could they have only had for a Christ- 
mas feast what the farmer's dogs received of 
the fragments of our meal ! They did have 
some cake, and they are feasting on it now 
while I write. It was lucky that I had courage, 
when the farmer and his wife pressed me to 
eat more, to say that, with their leave, I would 
carry a little slice of the cake home to my 
daughters. The good-hearted people packed me 
a little bag full, and, besides, as it rained piti- 
fully, sent me home in their wagon. 

Plating and drinking are indeed of little im- 
portance, if one has enough to satisfy his hun- 
ger and thirst. Yet it may not be denied that a 
comfortable provision for the body is an agree- 
able thing. One's thoughts are clearer. One 
feels with more vivacity. 

I am very tired. My conversation with 
Farmer Hurst was noteworthy. I will write it 
oil" to-morrow. 

Dec. 27. — We have lived to know what per- 
fect joy is. But one must be moderate in his joys. 
The girls must learn self-restraint, and practise 
themselves therein. Therefore I lay aside the 
packet of money which Mr. Fleetman has sent. 
I will not break the seal until after dinner. My 
daughters are Eve's daughters. They are dying 
of curiosity to know what Mr. Fleetman writes. 
They are examining the address, and the packet 
IS passing from one to the other three times in 
a minute. 



Indeed, I am more disturbed than rejoiced. 
I lent Mr. Fleetman only twelve shillings, and 
he sends me back £5. God be praised! He 
must have been very successful. 

How joy and sorrow interchange ! I went 
early this morning to the alderman, Mr. Field- 
son, for I was told yesterday that the wagoner 
Brook at Watton Basset had, on accountof his em- 
barrassments, destroyed himself. Some eleven 
or twelve years ago I went security for him to 
the amount of £100. He was distantly related 
to my sainted wife. The bond has never been 
cancelled. The man has latterly had much 
trouble, and given himself up to drinking. 

The alderman comforted me not a little. He 
said he had heard the report, but that it was 
very doubtful whether Brook had destroyed 
himself. There had been no authentic intelli- 
gence. So I returned home comforted, and 
prayed by the way that God would be gracious 
to me. 

I had hardly reached the house, when Polly 
ran to meet me, exclaiming, almost breathless, 
" A letter ! a letter from Mr. Fleetman, father, 
with j£5 ! But the pat^ket has cost sjeven pence." 
Jenny, with blushing looks, handed it to me be- 
fore I laid down my hat and staff. The chil- 
dren were half out of their wits with joy. So 
I pushed aside their scissors, and said, "Do you 
not see, children, that it is harder to bear a great 
joy with composure than a great evill I have 
often admired your cheerfulness when we were 
in the greatest want, and knew not where we 
were to find food for the next day. But now 
the first smile of fortune puts you beside your- 
selves. To punish you, I shall not open the let- 
ter nor the packet of money until after dinner." 

Jenny would have it that it was not the 
money, but Mr. Fleetman's honesty and grati- 
tude that delighted her, and that she only wanted 
to know what he wrote and how he was ; but I 
adhered to my determination. This little curi- 
osity must learn to practise patience. 

The same day. Eve. — Our joy is turned into 
sorrow. The letter with the money came not 
from Mr. Fleetman, but from the Rev. Dr. Snarl. 
He gives me notice that our engagement will 
terminate at Easter, and he informs me that 
until that time I may look about for another 
situation, and that he has accordingly not only 
paid me up my salary in advance, that I may 
bear any travelling expenses I may be at, but 
also directed the new vicar, my successor, to 
attend to the care of the parish. 

Thus the talk of the people hero m town was 
not wholly without foundation, and it may also 
be true, what is said, that the new vicar had 
received his appointment thus readily, because 
he has married a near relative of his Reverence, 
a lady of doubtful reputation. So I must lose 
my office and my bread for the sake of such a 
person, and be turned into the street with my 
poor children, because a man can be found to 
buy my place at the price of his own honor. 



ZSCHOKKE. 



465 



Jenny and Polly turned deadly pale, when tliey 
found that the letter came not from Mr. Fleet- 
man, but from the Doctor, and that the money, 
instead of being the generous return of a grate- 
ful heart, was the last wretched payment for my 
long and laborious services. Polly threw her- 
self sobbing into a chair, and Jenny left the 
room. My hand trembled as I held the letter 
containing my formal dismissal. But I went 
into my little chamber, locked myself in, and 
fell upon my knees and prayed, while Polly 
wept aloud. 

I rose from my knees refreshed and com- 
forted, and took my Bible ; and the first words 
upon which my eyes fell were, "Fear not, for I 
have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy 
name ; thou art mine." 

Then all fear vanished out of my heart. I 
looked up, and said, " Yea, Lord, I am thine." 

As Polly appeared to have ceased weeping, 
I went back into the parlor ; but when 1 saw 
her upon her knees praying, with her clasped 
hands resting on a chair, I drew back and shut 
the door very softly, that the dear soul might 
not be disturbed. 

After some lime I heard Jenny come in. I 
then returned to my daughters. They were sit- 
ting at the window. 1 saw by Jenny's eyes 
that she had been giving relief to her anguish 
in solitude. They both looked timidly at me. 
I believe they feared lest they should see des- 
pair depicted on my countenance. But when 
they saw that I was quite composed, and that I 
addressed them with cheerfulness, they were 
evidently relieved. I took the letter and the 
money, and humming a tune, threw them into 
my desk. They did not allude to what had 
happened the whole day. This silence in them 
was owing to a tender consideration for me; 
with me it was fear lest I should expose my 
weakness before my children. 

Dec. 28. — It is good to let the first storm go 
by, without looking one's troubles too closely in 
the face. We have all had a good night's sleep. 
We talk freely now of Dr. Snarls letter, and of 
my loss of office, as of old atl'airs. We propose 
all kinds of plans for the future. The bitterest 
thing is that we must be separated. We can 
think of nothing better than that Jenny and 
Polly should go to service in respectable families, 
while I betake myself to my travels to seek 
sonjewhere a place and bread for myself and 
children. 

Polly has again recovered her usual cheerful- 
ness. She brings out again her dream about 
)he bishoj/s mitre, and gives us much amuse- 
ment, bhe counts almost too superstitiously 
upon a New Year's present. I have some- 
times thought much of dreams, but I do not be- 
lieve in them. 

As soon as the new vicar, my successor, shall 

nave arrived, and is able to assume the oHice, I 

shall hand over to him the parish-books, and 

take my way in search of bread elsewhere. 

3i 



In the meantime I will write to a couple of old 
friends at Salisbury and Warminster, to request 
them to find good places for my daughters, as 
cooks, seamstresses, or chambermaids. Jenny 
would be an excellent governess for little chil- 
dren. 

I will not leave my daughters liere. The 
place is poor, the people are unsocial, proud, 
and have the narrow ways of a small town. 
They talk now of nothing but the new vicar. 
Some are sorry that I must leave, but I know 
not who takes it to heart. 

Dec. 29. — I have written to-day to my Lord 
Bishop of Salisbury, and laid before him in 
lively terms the sad, helpless situation of my 
children, and my long and faithful services in 
the vineyard of '.iie Lord. He must be a hu- 
mane pious man. May God touch his heart! 
Among the three hundred and four parishes of 
the county of Wiltshire, there must certainly be 
found for me at least some little corner ! 1 do 
not ask much. 

Dec. .30. — The bishop's mitre that Polly 
dreamt of must soon make its appearance, 
otherwise I shall have to go to jail. 1 see now 
very plainly that the jail is inevitable. 

I am very weak, and in vain do I exert my- 
self to practise my old heroism. Even strength 
fails me for fervent prayer. My distress is too 
much for me. 

Yes, the jail is unavoidable. I will say it to 
myself plainly, that I may become accustomed 
to the prospect. 

The All-merciful have mercy on my dear 
children ! I may not — I cannot tell them. 

Perhaps a speedy death will save me from 
the disgrace. I feel as if my very bones would 
crumble away; fever-shivering in every limb, 
I cannot write for trembling. 

Some hours after. — Already I fee] more com- 
posed. I would have thrown myself into the 
arms of God and prayed. But I was not well. 
I lay down on my bed. I believe I have slept, 
perhaps also I i'ainted. Some three hours have 
passed. My daughters have covered my leet 
with pillows. I am weak in body, but my 
heart is again fresh. Everything which has 
happened, which I have heard, flits before me 
like a dream. 

So the wagoner Brook has indeed made way 
with himself Alderman Fieldson has called 
and given me the intelligence. He had the 
coroner's account, together with the notice of 
my bond. Brook's debts are very heavy. I 
must account to Withell, a woollen-drai)er of 
Trowbridge, for the hundred pounds sterlitig. 

Mr. Fieldson had good cause to commiserate 
me heartily. Good God! a hundred pounds 
sterling! How shall I ever obtain it^ AH that 
1 and my children have in the world would not 
bring a hundred shillings. Brook used to be 
esteemed an upright and wealthy man. I never 



466 



ZSCHOKKE. 



tliouglit that he would come to such an end. 
The property of my wife was consumed in her 
long sickness, and I had to sacrifice the few 
acres at Bradford which she inherited. Now I 
ain a begi^ar. Ah ! if I were only a free beggar! 
I must go to prison, if Mr. Withell is not mer- 
ciful. It is impossible for me even to think of 
paying him. 

Same day. Eve. — I am ashamed of my weak- 
ness. What! to faint! to despair! Fy ! And 
yet believe in a Providence! And a priest of 
the Lord ! Fy, Thomas ! 

I have recovered my composure, and done 
what I should. I have just carried to the post- 
office a letter to Mr. Withell, at Trowbridge, in 
which I have stated my utter inability to pay 
the bond, and confessed my?elf ready to go to 
jail. If he has any human feeling, he will have 
pity on me ; if not, he may drag me away, 
whithersoever he will. 

When I came from the office, I put the cou- 
rage of my children to the proof I wished to 
prepare them for the worst. Ah! the maidens 
were more of men than the man, more of Chris- 
tians than the priest. 

I told them of Brook"s death, of my debt, and 
of the possible consequences. They listened 
earnestly and in great sorrow. 

"To prison!" said Jenny, silently weeping, 
while she threw her arms around me. "Ah, 
thou good, poor father, thou hast done no wrong, 
and yet hast to bear so much! I will go to 
Trowbridge ; I will throw myself at Witliell's 
feet; I will not rise until he releases thee!"' 

"No," cried Polly, sobbing, "do not think of 
such a thing. Tradesmen are tradesmen. They 
will not for all thy tears give up a farthing of 
father's debt. I will go the woollen-draper, 
and bind myself to live upon bread and water, 
and be his slave, until I have paid him with 
my labor what father owes." 

In forming such plans, they gradually grew 
more composed. But they saw also the vanity 
of their hopes. At last said Jenny, " Why all 
these useless plans ? Let us wait for Mr. 
Withell's answer. If he will be cruel, let him 
be so. God is also in the jail. Father, go to 
jail. Perhaps thou wilt be better there than 
with us in our poverty. Go, for thou goest 
without guilt. There is no disgrace in it for 
thee. We will both go to service, and our 
wages will procure thee everything needful. I 
will not be ashamed even to beg. To go a-beg- 
ging for a father has something honorable and 
holy in it. We will come and visit thee from 
time to time. Thou shall be well taken care 
of. We will fear no more." 

"Jenny, thou art right," said Polly; "who- 
ever fears, does not believe in God. I am not 
afraid. I will be cheerful — as cheerful as I can 
be, separated from father and thee." 

Sucli conversations cheered my heart. Fleet- 
man was right when he said that I had two 
angels of the Lord at my side. 



Dec. 31. — The year is ended. Thanks be to 
Heaven, it has been, with the exception of some 
storms, a right beautiful and happy year! It 
is true, we often had scarcely enough to eat- 
still we have had enough. My poor salary has 
often occasioned me bitter cares, still our cares 
have had their pleasures. And now I scarcely 
possess the means of supporting myself and my 
children half a-year longer. But how many 
have not even as much, and know not where 
to get another day's subsistence ! My place 
have I lost. In my old age I am without office 
or bread. It is possible that I shall spend the 
next year in a jail, separated from my good 
daughters. Still Jenny is right; God is there 
also in the jail ! 

To a pure conscience there is no hell even 
in hell, and to a bad heart no heaven in heaven. 
I am very happy. 

Whoever knows how to endure privation is 
rich. A good conscience is better than that 
which the world names honor. As soon as we 
are able to look with indifference upon what 
people call honor and shame, then do we be- 
come truly worthy of honor. He who can des- 
pise the world enjoys heaven. I understand 
the gospel better every day, since I have learned 
to read it by the light of experience. The scho- 
lars at Oxford and Cambridge study the letter, 
not the spirit. Nature is the best interpreter 
of the Scriptures. 

With these reflections I conclude the year. 

I am very glad that I have now for some 
time persevered in keeping this journal. Every- 
body should keep one. One may learn more 
from himself than from the wisest books. When, 
by daily setting down our thoughts and feelings, 
we in a manner portray ourselves, we can see 
at the end of the year how many different faces 
we have. Man is not always like himself. 
He who says he knows himself, can answer 
for the truth of what he says only at the mo- 
ment. Few know what they were yesterday; 
still fewer what they will be to-morrow. 

A day-book is useful also, because it helps us 
to grow in faith in God and Providence. The 
whole history of the world does not teach us 
so much about these things as the thoughts, 
judgments, and feelings of a single individual 
for a twelvemonth. 

I have also had this year new confirmation 
of the truth of the old saying, " Misfortunes sel- 
dom come singly, but die darkest hour is just 
before morning." When things go hard with 
me, then am I most at my ease, always except 
ing the first shook, for then I please myself with 
the prospect of the relief which is sure to sue 
oeed, and I smile because nothing can disturb 
me. On the other hand, when everything goes 
according to my wishes, I am timid and anxious, 
and cannot give myself up freely to joy. 1 dis- 
trust the continuance of my peace. Those are 
the hardest misfortunes which we allow to taKe 
us by surprise. It is likewise true that trouble 
looks more terrible in the distance than when 



ZSCHOKKE. 



467 



it is upon us. Clouds are never so black when 
near as they seem in the distance. 

I have learnt from all my calamities to con- 
sider, vt-ith the quickness of lightning, what 
■will be their worst effect upon me. So I pre- 
pare myself for the worst, and it seldom comes. 

This also I find good — I sometimes play with 
my hopes, but I never let my hopes play with 
me. So I keep them in check. I have only to 
remember how rarely fortune has been favor- 
able to me ; then all air castles vanish as if 
they were ashamed to appear before me. Alas 
for him who is the sport of his hopes ! He 
pursues will-o'-the-wisps into bogs and mire. 

New Year's Day, 1765. A. M. — A wonderful 
and sad affair opens the year. Here follows 
its history. 

Early, about six o'clock, as I lay in bed think- 
ing over my sermon, I heard a knocking at the 
front door. Polly was up and in the kitchen. 
She ran to open the door and see who was 
there. Such early visits are not usual witli us. 
A stranger presented himself with a large box, 
which he handed to Polly with these words: 

"Mr. ■' (Polly lost the name) "sends this 

box to the Rev. Vicar, and requests him to be 
very careful of the contents." 

Polly took the box with joyful surprise. The 
man disappeared. Polly tapped lightly at my 
chamber door to see whether I was awake. I 
answered, and she came in, and wishing me 
"a happy new year," as well as "good morn- 
ing," added laughing, "you will see now, dear 
father, whether Polly's dreams are not pro- 
phetic. The promised bishop's mitre is come !" 
And then she told me how a New Year's pre- 
sent had been given her for me. It vexed me, 
that she had not asked more particularly for the 
name of my unknown patron or benefactor. 

While she went out to light a lamp and call 
Jenny, I dressed myself. I caimot deny that I 
was burning with curiosity. For hitherto the 

New Year's presents for the Vicar of C a 

had been as insignificant as they were rare. I 
suspected that my patron, the farmer, whose 
good-will I appeared to have won, had meant 
to surpri<e me with a box of cake, and I ad- 
njired his modesty in sending me the present 
before it was light. 

When I entered the parlour, Polly and Jenny 
were standing at the table on which lay the 
box directed to me, carefully sealed, and of an 
unusual size. I had never seen exactly such a 
box before. I lifted it, and found it pretty 
heavy. In the top were two smoothly cut round 
holes. 

With Jenny's help, I opened the box very 
cautiously, as I had been directed to handle the 
conterits carefully. A fiue white cloth was 

removed, and lo ! but no, our astonishment 

is indescribable. We all exclaimed with one 
voice, " Good God !" 

'I'here lay a little child asleep, some six or 
eight weeks old, dressed in the finest linen, 



with rose-colored ribands. Its little head rested 
upon a soft blue silk cushion, and it was well 
wrapt up in a blanket. The covering as well 
as the little cap, was trimmed with the costliest 
Brabant lace. 

We stood some moments gazing at it with 
silent wonder. At last Polly broke out into a 
comical laugh, and cried, "What shall we do 
with it? This is no bishop's mitre!' Jenny 
timidly touched the cheek of the sleeping babe 
with the tip of her finger, and in a tone full 
of pity, said, "Poor, dear little creature! thou 
hast no mother, or might as well have no mo- 
ther! Great God! to cast off such a lovely, 
helpless being! Only see, father, only see, 
Polly, how peacefully and trustfully it sleeps, 
unconscious of its fate, as if it knew that it is 
lying in God's hand. Sleep on, thou poor, for- 
saken one! Thy parents are perhaps too high 
in rank to care for thee, and too happy to permit 
thee to disturb their happiness. Sleep on, we 
will not cast thee out. They have brought thee 
to the right place. I will be thy mother." 

As Jenny was speaking, two large tears fell 
from her eyes. I caught the pious, gentle- 
hearted creature to my breast and said, " Be a 
mother to this little one! The stepchildren of 
fortune come to her stepchildren. God tries 
our faith — no, he does not try it. He knows it. 
Therefore is this forsaken little creature brought 
to us. We do not indeed know how we shall 
subsist from one day to another, but He knows, 
who has appointed us to be parents to this or- 
phan." 

Thus the matter was soon settled. The child 
continued to sleep sweetly on. In the mean- 
while, we exhausted ourselves in conjectures 
about its parents, who were undoubtedly known 
to us, as the box was directed to me. Polly, 
alas! could tell us nothing more of the person 
who brought it than she had already told. Now, 
while the little thing sleeps, and I run over my 
New Year's sermon upon " the Power of the 
Eternal Providence," my daughters are holding 
a council about the nursing of the poor stranger. 
Polly exhibits all the delight of a child. Jenny 
appears to be much moved. With me, it is as 
if I entered upon the New Year in the midst 
of miracles, and — it may be superstition, or it 
may be not — as if this little child were sent to 
be our guardian angel in our need. I cannot 
express the feelings of peace, the still happiness 
which I have. 

Same day. Eve. — I came home greatly ex- 
hausted and weary with the sacred labors of 
tlie day. I had a long and rugged walk. But 
I was inspirited by a happy return home, by 
the cheerfulness of my daughters, by our plea- 
sant little parlor. The table was ready laid 
for me, and on it stood a flask of wine, a New 
Year's present from an unknown benevolent 
hand. 

The looks of the lovely little child in Jenny's 
arms refreshed me above all things. Polly 



468 



ZSCHOKKE. 



showed me the beautiful little bed of our nurs- 
ling, the dozen fine napUiiis, the dear little caps 
and night-clothes, which were in the box, and 
then a sealed packet of money directed to me, 
which they had found at the feet of the child 
when it awoke, and they took it out. 

Anxious to learn something of the parentage 
of our little unknown inmate, I opened the 
packet. It contained a roll of twenty guineas 
and a letter, as follows: 

"Relying with entire confidence upon the 
piety and humanity of your Reverence, the un- 
happy parents of this dear child commend it to 
your care. Do not forsake it. We will testify 
our gratitude when we are at liberty to make 
ourselves known to you. Although at a dis- 
tance, we shall keep a careful watch, and know 
everything that you do. The dear boy is named 
Alfred. He has been baptized. His board for 
the first quarter accompanies this. The same 
sum will be punctually remitted to you every 
three months. Take the child. We commend 
him to the tenderness of your daughter Jenny." 

When I had read the letter, Polly leaped 
■with joy, and cried, "There's the bishop's mi- 
tre!" Bountiful Heaven! how rich had we 
suddenly become! We read the letter a dozen 
times. We did not trust our eyes to look at the 
gold upon the table. What a New Year's pre- 
sent! From my heaviest cares for tlie future 
was I thus suddenly relieved. But in what a 
strange and mysterious way! In vain did I 
think over all the people I knew, in order to 
discover who it might be who had been forced 
by birth or rank to conceal the existence of their 
child, or who were able to make such a liberal 
compensation for a simple service of Christian 
charity. I tasked my recollection, but I could 
think of no one. And yet it was evident that 
these parents were well acquainted with me 
and mine. 

Wonderful are the ways of Providence! 

Jan. 2. — Fortune is heaping her favors upon 
me. This morning I again received a packet 
of money, £12, by the post, with a letter from 
Mr. Fleetman. It is too much. For a shilling 
he returns me a pound. Things must have 
gone well with him. He says as much. I 
cannot, alas, thank him, for he has forgotten to 
mention his address. God forbid I should be 
puffed up with my present riches. I hope now 
in time to pay off honestly my bond to Mr. 
Withell. 

When I told my daughters that I had received 
a letter from Mr. Fleetman, there was a new 
occasion for joy. I do not exactly understand 
what the girls have to do with Mr. Fleetman. 
Jenny grew very red, and Polly jumped up 
laughingly, and held up both her hands before 
Jenny's face, and Jenny behaved as if she was 
right vexed with the playful girl. 

I read out Fleetrnari's letter. But I could 
scarcely do it, for the young man is an enthu- 
siast. He writes many flattering things which 



I do not deserve. He exaggerates everything, 
even indeed when he speaks of the good Jenny. 
I pitied the poor girl while I read. I did not 
dare to look at her. The passage, however, 
which relates to her, is worthy of note. It runs 
thus : 

"When, excellent sir, I went from your door, 
I felt as if I were quitting a father's roof for the 
bleak world. I shall never forget you, never 
forget how happy I was with you. I see you 
now before me, in your rich poverty, in your 
Christian humility, in your patriarchal simpli- 
city. And the lovely, fascinating Polly; and 
the — ah! for your Jenny I have no words! In 
what words shall one describe the heavenly 
loveliness by which everything earthly is trans- 
figured? For ever shall I remember the mo- 
ment when she gave me the twelve shillings, 
and the gentle tone of consolation with which 
she spoke to me. Wonder not that I have the 
twelve shillings still. I would not part with 
them for a thousand guineas. I shall soon per- 
haps explain everything to you personally. 
Never in my life have I been so happy or so 
miserable as I am now. Coinmend me to your 
sweet daughters, if they still bear me in re- 
membrance." 

I conclude from these lines that he intends 
to come this way again. The prospect gives 
me pleasure. In his unbounded gratitude, the 
young man has perhaps sent me his all, beca\ise 
I once lent him half of my ready money. That 
grieves me. He seems to be a thoughtless youth, 
and yet he has an honest heart. 

We have great delight in the little Alfred. 
The little thing laughed to-day upon Polly, as 
Jenny was holding him, like a young mother, in 
her arms. The girls are more handy with the 
little citizen of the world than I had anticipated. 
But it is a beautiful child. We have bought him 
a handsome cradle, and provided abundantly 
for all his little wants. The cradle stands at 
Jenny's bedside. She watches day and night, 
like a guardian spirit, over her tender charge. 

Jan. 3. — To-day, Mr. Curate Thomson arrived 
with his young wife and sent for me. I went 
to him immediately at the inn. He is an agree- 
able man, and very polite. He informed me 
that he was appointed my successor in office, 
that he wished, if I had no objections, to enter 
immediately upon his duties, and that I might 
occupy the parsonage until Easter: he would in 
the meanwhile take up his abode in lodgings 
prepared for him at Alderman Fieldson's. 

I replied that, if he pleased, I would resign 
my office to him immediately, as I should thus 
be more at liberty to look out for anodier situa- 
tion. I desired only permission to preach a 
farewell sermon in the churches in which I 
had for so many years declared the word of the 
Lord. 

He then said that he would come in the after- 
noon to examine the state of the parsonage. 
— He has been here with his wife and Alderman 



ZSCHOKKE. 



469 



Fieldson. His lady was somewhat haughty, and 
appears to be of high birth, for there was no- 
tliini< in the house that pleased her, and she 
haldly deigned to look at my daughters. When 
she saw the little Alfred in the cradle, she 
turned to Jenny, and asked whether she were 
already married. The good Jenny blushed up 
to her hair, and shook her little head by way 
of negative, and stammered out something. I 
had to come to the poor girl's assistance. My 
lady listened to my story with great curiosity, 
and drew up her mouth, and shrugged her 
shoulders. It was very disagreeable, but I said 
nothing. I invited them to fake a cup of tea. 
But they declined. Mr. Curate appeared to be 
very obedient to tlie slightest hint of the lady. 
We were very glad when the visit was over. 

Jan. 6. — Mr. Withell is an excellent man, to 
judge from his letter. He sympatliizes with 
me in regard to my unfortunate bond, and com- 
forts me with the assurance that I must not dis- 
quiet myself if I am not able to pay it for ten 
years or ever. He appears to be well ac- 
quainted with my circumstances, for he alludes 
to them very cautiously. He considers me an 
honest man. That gratifies me most. He shall 
not find his confidence misplaced. I will go to 
Trowbridge as soon as I can, and pay Mr. 
Withell Fleetman's £12 sterling, as an instal- 
ment of my monstrous debt. 

Although Jenny insists that she sleeps soundly, 
that little Alfred is very quiet o' nights, and only 
wakes once, when she gives him a drink out of 
his little bottle, yet I feel anxious about the 
maiden. She is not so lively by far, as for- 
merly, although she seems to be much happier 
than when we were every day troubled about 
our daily bread. Sometimes she sits with her 
needle, lost in a reverie, dreaming with open 
eyes : or her hands, once so active, lie sunk 
upon her lap. When she is sj^oken to, she 
starts, and has to bethink herself what was 
said. All this evidently comes from the inter- 
ruption of her proper rest. But she will not 
hear a word of it. We cannot even persuade 
her to take a little nap in the daytime. She 
declares that she feels perfectly well. 

I had no idea that she had so much vanity. 
Fleetman's praises have not displeased her. 
She has asked me for his letter, to read once 
more. And she has not yet returned it to me, 
but keeps it in her work-basket! 

I don't care, for my part! the vain thing! 

Jan. 8. — My farewell sermon was accom- 
panied with the tears of most of my hearers. 
I see now at last that my parishioners love me. 
They have expressed their obligations on all 
hands and loaded me with gifts. I never be- 
fore had such an abundance of provisions in 
the house, so many dainties of all kinds, and so 
much wine. A hundredth part of my present 
plenty would have made me account myself 
over-fortunate in past days. We are really 



swimming in plenty. But a gooilly portion has 
already been disposed of. I know some poor 

families in C e, and Jenny knows even 

more than I. The dear people share in our 
pleasures. 

1 was moved to the inmost by my sermon. 
With tears had I written it. It was a sketch of 
my whole past course from my call and settle- 
ment. I am driven from the vineyard as an 
unprofitable servant, and yet I have not labored 
as a hireling. Many noble vines have I planted, 
many deadly weeds cut away. I am driven 
from the vineyard where I have watched, and 
taught, and warned, and comforted, and prayed. 
I have shrunk from no sick bed. I have 
strengthened the dying for the last conflict with 
holy hope. I have gone after sinners. I have 
not left the poor, desolate. I have called back 
the lost to the way of life. Ah ! all these souls 
that were knit to my soul, are torn from me— 
why should not my heart bleed? But God's 
will be done! 

Gladly would I now off"er to take charge of 
the parish without salary, but my successor has 
the oflace. I have been used to poverty from 
my birth, and care has never forsaken me since 
I stepped out of my boy's-shoes. I have enough 
for myself and my daughters in little Alfred's 
board. We shall be able indeed to lay up 
something. I would never again complain of 
wind and weather beating against my grey 
hairs, could I only continue to break the bread 
of life to my flock. 

Be it so! I will not murmur. The tear which 
drops upon this page, is no tear of discontent. 
I ask not for riches and good days, nor have I 
ever asked. But, Lord! Lord! drive not thy 
servant for ever from thy service, although his 
powers are small. Let me again enter thy 
vineyard, and with thy blessing win souls. 

Jan. 13. — My journey to Trowbridge has 
turned out beyond all expectation. I arrived 
late with weary feet at the pleasant little old 
city, and could not rouse myself from sleep until 
late the next morning. After I had put on my 
clean clothes (I had not been so finely dressed 
since my wedding-day — the good Jenny shows 
a daughter's care for her father,) I left the inn 
and went to Mr. Withell'e. He lives in a splendid, 
great house. 

He received me somewhat coldly at first; but 
when I mentioned my name, he led me into his 
little office. Here I thanked him for his great 
goodness and consideration, told him how I had 
happened to give the bond, and what hard for- 
tunes had hitherto been mine. I then laid my 
£12 upon the table. 

Mr. Withell looked at me for a while in 
silence, with a smile, and with sonie emotion. 
He then extended his hand, and shook mine, 
and said, "I know all about you. I have in- 
formed myself particularly about your circum- 
stances. You are an honest man. Take your 
jEl2 back. I cannot find it in my heart to rob 
40 



you of your New Year's present. Rather let 
me add a pound to it, to remember me by." 

He arose, brought a paper from another room, 
opened it and said, "You know this bond and 
your signature ■? I give it to you and your chil- 
dren." He tore the paper in two, and placed 
it in my hand. 

I could find no words, I was so deeply 
moved. My eyes filled. He saw that I would 
thank him, but could not, and he said, "Hush! 
hush ! not a syllable, I pray you. This is the 
only thanks I desire of you. T would gladly 
have forgiven poor Brook the debt, had he only 
dealt fratikly with me." 

I don't know a more noble-hearted man than 
Mr. Withell. He was too kind. He would have 
me relate to him much of my past history. He 
introduced me to his wife, and to the young 
gentleman his son. He had my little bundle, 
containing my old clothes, brought from the inn, 
and kept me at his house. The entertainment 
was princely. The chamber in which 1 slept, 
the carpet, the bed, were so splendid and costly 
that I hardly dared to make use of them. 

The next day Mr. Withell sent me home in 
his own elegant carriage. I parted with my 
benefactor with a heart deeply moved. My 
children wept with me for joy, when I showed 
them the bond. "See," said I, "this light piece 
of paper was the heaviest burthen of my life, 
and now it is generously cancelled. Pray lor 
the life and prosperity of our deliverer!" 

Jan. IC. — Yesterday was the most remarkable 
day of my life. We were sitting together in the 
forenoon; I was rocking the cradle, Polly was 
reading aloud, and Jenny was seated at the 
wiiidow^ with her needle, when she suddenly 
jumped up, and then fell back again deadly 
pale into her chair. We were all alarmed, and 
cried, " What is the matter ?" She forced a 
smile, and said, " He is coming !" 

The door opened, and in came Mr. Fleetman 
in a beautiful travelling cloak. We greeted him 
right heartily, and were truly glad to see him so 
unexpectedly, and, as it appeared, in so much 
better circumstances than before. He embraced 
me, kissed Polly, and bowe<i to Jenny, who had 
not yet recovered from her agitation. Her pale 
looks did not escape him. He inquired anxiously 
about her health. Polly replied to his questions, 
and he then kissed Jenny's hand, as though he 
would beg her pardon for having occasioned 
her such an alarm. But there was nothing to 
be said about it, for the poor girl grew red again 
like a newly-blown rose. 

I called for cake and wine, to treat my guest 
and benefactor better than on a former occa- 
sion; but he declined, as he could not tarry 
long, and he had company at the inn. Yet at 
Jenny's request, he sate down and took some 
wine with us. 

As he had spoken of the company which had 
come with him, I supposed that it must be a 
company of comedians, and inquired whether 



they intended to stop and play in C , observ- 
ing that the place was too poor. He laughed 
out, and replied, " Yes, we shall play a comedy, 
but altogether gratis." Polly was beside her- 
self with joy, for she had long wanted to see a 
play. She told Jenny, who had gone for the 
cake and wine. Polly inquired whether many 
actors had come with him. "A gentleman and 
lady," sai<l he, "but excellent players." 

Jenny appeared unusually serious. She cast 
a sad look at Fleetman, and asked, "And you— 
will you also appear?" This was said in that 
tone peculiarly soft, yet very penetrating, which 
I have seldom observed in her, and only upon 
rare occasions, and at the most serious moments. 

Poor Fleetman himself trembled at her tone, 
so like the voice of the angel of doom. He 
looked up to her with an earnest gaze, and ap- 
peared to struggle with himself for an answer, 
and then advancing towards her a step, he said, 
"Miss, by my God and yours, you alone can 
decide that!" 

Jenny dropped her eyes. He continued to 
speak. She answered. I could not compre- 
hend what they were about. They spoke — 
Polly and I listened with the greatest attention, 
but we neither of us understood a word, or 
rather we heard words without any sense. And 
yet Fleetman and Jenny appeared not only to 
understand one another perfectly, but, what 
struck me as very strange, Fleetman was deeply 
moved by Jenny's answers, although they ex- 
pressed the veriest trifles. At last Fleetman 
clasped his hands passionately to his breast, 
raised his eyes, streaming with tears, to heaven, 
and with an impressive appearance of emotion, 
exclaimed, "Then am I indeed unhappy!' 

Polly could hold out no longer. With a comi- 
cal vivacity, she looked from one to the other, 
and at last cried out, " I do believe that you 
two are beginning to play already!" 

He pressed Polly's hand warmly, and said, 
"Ah ! that it were so!" 

I put an end to the confusion by pouring out 
the wine. We drank to the ■welfare of our liiend. 
Fleetman turned to Jenny, and stammered out, 
"Miss, in earnest, my welfare ?" She laid her 
hand upon her heart, cast down her eyes, and 
drank. 

Fleetman immediately became more com- 
posed. He went to the cradle, looked at the 
child, and when Polly and I had told him its 
history, he said to Polly, with a smile, " Then 
you have not discovered that I sent you this 
New Year's present?" 

We all exclaimed in utter amazement, "Who! 
you?" He then proceeded to relate what fol- 
lows: "My name," said he, "is not Fleetman. ' 
I am Sir Cecil Fairford. My sister and myself 
have been kept out of our rightful property by 
my father's brother, who took advantage of cer- 
tain ambiguous conditions in my father's will, 
and involved us in a long and embarrassing 
lawsuit. We have hitherto lived with difficulty 
upon the little property left us by our mother 



ZSCHOKKE. 



471 



who died early. My sister has suffered most 
from the tyranny of her uncle, wlio was her 
guardian, and wlio had destined her for the 
son of an intimate and powerful friend of his. 
But my sister, on the other hand, was secretly 
contracted to the young Lord Sandom, whose 
father, then living, was opposed to their mar- 
riage. Without the knowledge either of my 
uncle or the old lord, they were secretly mar- 
ried. The little Alfred is their son. My sister, 
under the pretence of benefiting her health and 
availing herself of sea-bathing, left the house 
of her guardian, and put herself under my pro- 
tection. When the child was born, our great 
concern was to find a place for it where it would 
have the tenderest care. 1 accidentally heard 
tttimching account of the poverty and humanity 

of the parish minister of C , and I came 

bithor to satisfy myself The manner in which 
1 wiis treated by you decided me. 

" I have forgotten to mention that my sister 
never returned to her guardian. For about six 
months ago I won the suit against him, and 
entered into possession of my patrimony. My 
uncle instituted a new suit against me for with- 
drawing my sister from his charge; but the old 
Lord ^random died suddenly a few days ago of 
apoplexy, and my brother-in-law has made his 
marriage public. So that the suit falls to the 
ground, and all cause for keeping the child's 
birth secret is removed. Its parents have now 
come with me to take the child away, and I 
liave come to take away you and your family, 
if the proposal 1 make you shall be accepted. 

"During the lawsuit in which I have been 
engaged, the living, which is in the gift of my 
lamily, has remained unoccupied. I have at my 
disposal this situation, which yields over £200 
per anninn. You, sir, have lost your place. 1 
shall not be happy unless you come and reside 
near me, and accept this living." 

God only knows how I was affected at these 
words. My eyes were blinded with tears of 
joy. I stretched out my hands to the man who 
came a messenger from heaven. I fell upon 
his breast. Polly threw her arms around him 
with a cry of delight. Jenny thankfully kissed 
the baronets hand. But he snatched it from 
her with visible agitation, and left us. 

My liap.py children were still holding me in 
their embraces, and we were still mingling our 
tears and congratulations, when the baronet re- 
turned, bringing his brother-in-law. Lord San- 
dom, with his wife. The latter was an uncom- 
monly beautiful young lady. Without saluting 
us, slie ran to the cradle of her child. She 
knelt down over the little Alfred, kissed his 



cheeks, and wept freely with mingled pain and 
delight. Her lord raised her up, and had much 
trouble in composing her. 

When she had recovered her composure, 
and apologized to us all 'or her b haviour, she 
thanked first me and then Polly in the most 
touching terms. Polly disowned all obligation, 
and pointed to Jenny, who had withdrawn to 
the window, and said, " My sister there has 
been its motlier !' 

Lady Sandom approached Jenny_ gazed at her 
long in silence, and with evidently delighted sur- 
prise, and then glanced at her brother with a 
smile, and folded Jenny in her arms. The dear 
Jenny, in her modesty, scarcely dared to look 
up. "I am your debtor," said my lady, "but 
the service you have rendered to a mother's 
heart it is impossible for me to repay. Become 
a sister to me, lovely Jenny; sisters can have 
no obligations between thein." As they em- 
braced each other, the baronet approached. 
"There stands my poor brother," said my lady; 
" as you are now my sister, he may stand nearer 
to your heart, dear Jenny, may he not?" 

Jenny blushed and said, " He is my father's 
benefactor." 

"Will you not be," replied the lady, "the 
benefactress of my poor brother? Look kindly 
on him. If you only knew how he loves you!" 

The baronet took Jenny's hand and kissed it, 
and said, as Jenny struggled to withdraw it, 
"Miss,will you be unkind tome? lam unhappy 
without this hand.'' Jenny, much disturbed, let 
her hand remain in his. The baronet then led 
my daughter to me, and begged me for my 
blessing. 

"Jenny," said I, "it depends upon thee. Do 
we dream? Canst thou love him? Do thou 
decide." 

She then turned to the baronet, who stood 
before her, deeply agitated, and cast upon him 
a lull, penetrating look, and then took his hand 
in both hers, pressed it to her breast, looked 
up to heaven, and softly whispered, " God has 
decided," 

I blessed my son and my daughter. They 
embraced. There was a solemn silence. All 
eyes were wet. 

Suddenly Polly sprang up, laughing through 
her tears, and flung herself upon my neck, 
while she cried, "There! we have it! The 
New Year's present ! Bishop's mitres upon 
bishop's mitres!" 

Little Alfred awoke. 

It is in vain — I cannot describe this day 
My happy heart is full, and I am continually 
interrupted. 



FKIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL. 



Born 1772. Died IS29. 



Friedrich, a younger brother of A. W. von 
Schlegel, was born at Hanover, five years 
later. Destined by his father to mercantile 
pursuits, he was placed for that purpose in a 
counting-room at Leipzig; but feeling a strong 
predilection for Letters, and discovering more 
than ordinary capacity, he was recalled and 
suffered to take his own course. He studied 
Philology in Gottingen and in Leipzig, during 
which time he read every author of note in the 
Latin and Greek languages. He then resided 
for awhile in Berlin and in Dresden, published 
his "Greeks and Romans," 1797, and the fol- 
lowing year, his "Poetry of the Greeks and 
Romans," a continuation of the former. In 
1800, he went as Privaldacenl (private teacher) 
to Jena, where he labored in conjunction with 
his brother and others, of like views, and pub- 
lished several poems. In 1803, at Cologne, he 
went over to the Roman Catholic church,* to- 
gether with his wife, a daughter of Mendels- 
sohn. He next resided for several years in 
Paris, where he lectured on Philosophy, and 
where he published his "Eurnpa." While 
here he devoted himself to the study of the 
southern languages, and particularly to that of 
India. He also published, 1804, a collection 
of romantic poems of the middle ages, from 
printed sources and manuscripts; and illustra- 
tions of the history of Joan of Arc, drawn from 
the Notices et Exlraits. His Sprache und 
Weisheit der Indier belongs to this period. 

In 1808 he returned to Germany, and was 
made secretary of the Austrian Government at 
Vienna, where he exerted a powerful influence 
by his proclamations against Napoleon. After 
the conclusion of the peace, he gave lectures 
in Vienna, on modern history and on the lite- 
rature of all nations. In 1815, he was ap- 
pointed by Prince Metternich, Austrian Coun- 
sellor of Legation at the Diet in Frankfort. In 
1818 he returned to Vienna, where he lived 
as Secretary of the Court, and devoted himself 

* Accnrrling to Wiilft'in the Encyclopudie der Deutscken 
J^ationaUiUeratur. The Connersationslcxicon refers this 
apostasy to a later date,— 1808. 



to literary pursuits. During this period he 
published his " View of the present Political 
Relations." In 1820 he undertook a periodical 
called Concordia, the object of which was to 
reconcile the different opinions on Church and 
Slate. In 1827 he gave a course of lectures 
in Vienna, on the Philosophy of Life, which 
was published the following year. In Decem- 
ber 1828, he began another course in Dresden, 
on the Philosophy of Language and of the 
Word. These lectures he did not live to com- 
plete, but died in the midst of the course, Ja- 
nuary 11th, 1829. It has been noted as em- 
blematic of the man, that the last word which 
came from his pen was aber (but). This was 
written at eleven o'clock at night. At one, 
he breathed his last. 

Friedrich von Schlegel is thought to have 
surpassed his brother in originality, to have 
equalled him in depth and extent of learning, 
but to fall far behind him in point of taste and 
clearness. " Like his brother he opened to 
Poetry and to Science in Germany, new and 
hitherto unknown regions. He was the first 
who specially directed attention to the great 
intellectual treasures of the Indians, and intro- 
duced among us the studies relating to these. 
Later, after his change of faith, he assailed, in 
the most decided manner, French democracy 
and frivolity; but then, in his capacity of phi- 
losophical historian, he became an opponent of 
religious and political liberty and enlighten- 
ment, and completely lost himself at last in 
misty speculations and politico-religious vaga- 
ries."* With regard to this " change of faith," 
and the criticisms and imputations to which it 
gave rise, Mr. Carlyle judges thus: " Of Schle- 
gel himself and his character and spiritual his- 
tory we can profess no thorough or final under- 
standing; yet enough to make us view him 
with admiration and pity, nowise with harsh, 
contemptuous censure; and must say, with 
clearest persuasion, that the outcry of his being 
' a renegade,' &c., is but like other such out. 



* Wolff's Encyclopudie, 



(472) 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



473 



cries, a jiidgrnent where there was neither jury, 
nor evidence, nor judge. The candid reader 
in tliis book itself,* to say nothing of all the 
rest, will find traces of a high, far-seeing, ear- 

* Schlecel's last work ; Lectures on the Philosophy of 
Language, Slc, 



nest spirit, to whom 'Austrian Pensions' and 
the Kaiser's crown and Austria altogether, 
were but a light matter to the finding and vi- 
tally appropriating of truth. Let us respect 
the sacred mystery of a Person ; rush not irre- 
verently into man's Holy of Holies !" 



LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
HISTORY. 

From the Traoslalion o[ BobinBOD. 
THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 

The Chinese empire is the largest of all the 
monarchies now existing on the earth, and on 
this account alone may well challenge the at- 
tention of the historical inquirer. It is not ab- 
solutely the greatest in territorial extent, though 
even in this respect it is scarcely inferior to the 
greatest ; but in point of population it is, in all 
probability, the first. Spain, could we now 
include in the number of her possessions her 
American colonies, would exceed all other em- 
pires in extent. The same may be said of 
Russia, with her colonies and boundless pro- 
vinces in the north of Asia. But, great as the 
population of Russia may be, considered in it- 
self and relatively to the other European states, 
it can sustain no comparison with that of China. 
England, with the East Indies and her colonial 
possessions in the three divisions of the globe, 
Polynesia, Africa, and America, has indeed a 
very wide extent, and perhaps, including the 
hundred and ten millions that own her sway in 
India, comes the nearest, in point of population, 
to China. Of the amount of the Chinese popu- 
lation, wliich is not certainly known, that of In- 
dia may furnish a criterion for a conjectural and 
probable estimate. However, as this vast region 
is everywhere intersected by navigable rivers 
anil canals, everywhere studded with large and 
populous cities, and enjoys a climate as genial, 
or even still more genial, and certainly far more 
salubrious, than that of India ; as, like the latter 
country, it everywhere presents to the eye the 
richest culture, and is in all appearance as 
much peopled, or over-peopled, we may take 
India, whose total population is by no means 
included in the hundred andten millions under 
British rule, as furnishing a pretty accurate 
standard for the computation of the Chinese 
population. Now, when we consider that even 
China proper is larger than the whole western 
peninsula of India, and that the vast coun- 
iries dependent on China, such as Thibet and 
Southern Tartary, are very populous, the con- 
jectural calculation of the English writer whom 
I follow in these remarks on the Chinese popu- 
lation, and who reckons it at one hundred and 
filly millions, may be regarded as very mode- 
rale, and might, with perfect safety, be consi- 
derably raised. Thus then the Chinese popu- 
lation is nearly as large as the whole population 
3 K 



of Europe, and constitutes, if not a fourth, at 
least a fifth, of the total population of the globe. 

Cursory comparisons of this kind are not 
without value. The history of civilization, form- 
ing the basis, and as it were the outward body, 
of the philosophy of history, which should be 
the inner and highest senso of the whole, is 
deeply interesting in all that refers to the general 
condition of humanity. And such an interest, 
which does not of itself lie in mere statistical 
calculations, but in the outward condition of 
mankind, as the symbol Oi" its inward state, 
may very well belong to comparisons of this 
nature. 

The interest, however, which the philosophic 
historian should take in all that relates to hu- 
manity in general, and to the various nations 
of the earth, ought not to be regulated by the 
false standard of an indiscriminate equality, 
considering all nations of equal importance, and 
paying equal attention to all, without distinction. 
This would imply insensibility to man's higher 
nature, or ignorance of it. But this interest 
should be measured not merely by the popula- 
tion of a state, or by geographical extent of ter- 
ritory, or by externSl power, but by population, 
territory and power combined — by moral worth 
and intellectual pre-eminence, by the scale of 
civilization to which the nation has attained. 
The Tongoosses, thougli a very widely-diffused 
race — the Calmucks, though they have much to 
claim our attention, compared with the other 
nations of central Asia, cannot certainly excite 
equal interest, or hold a place in the history 
of human civilization with the Greeks or the 
Egyptians; though the territory of Egypt itself 
is certainly not particularly large, nor, according 
to our customary standard of population, were 
its inhabitants, in all probability, ever very 
numerous. In the same way, the Empire of 
the Moguls, which embraced China itself, has 
not the same importance in our eyes as the 
Roman Empire, either in its rise or in its fall. 
Writers of universal history have not however 
always avoided this fault, and have been too 
much disposed to place all nations on the same 
historical footing, — on the false level of an in- 
discriminate eciuality ; and to regard humanity 
in a mere physical point of view, and according 
to the natural classification of tribes and races. 
In these sketches of history, the high and die 
noble is often ranked with the low and the 
vulgar ; and neither what is truly great, nor 
what is of lesser importance (for this, too, should 
40* 



474 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



not be overlooked), has its due place in these 
portraits of mankind. 

A numerous, or even excessive population, is 
undoubtedly an essential element of political 
power in a state ; but it is not the only, nor in 
any respect the principal indication of the civi- 
lization of a country. It is only in regard to 
civilization that the population of China de- 
serves our consideration. Although in these 
latter times, when Europe, by her political as- 
cendancy over the otiier parts of the world, 
has proved the preeminence of her arts and 
civilization, England and Russia have become 
the immediate neighbors of China towards the 
north and west, yet these territorial relations 
aflect not the rest of Europe ; and China, when 
we leave out of consideration its very import- 
ant commerce, cannot certainly be accounted a 
political power in the general system. Even 
in ancient, as well as in modern times, China 
never figured in the history of Western Asia or 
Europe, and had no connection whatever with 
their inhabitants ; but this great country has 
ever stood apart, like a world within itself, in 
the remote, unknown Eastern Asia. Hence, 
the earlier writers of universal history have 
taken little or no notice of tliis great empire, 
shut out as it was from the confined horizon of 
their views. And this was natural, when we 
consider that the conquests and expeditions of 
the Asiatic nations were considered by these 
writers as subjects of the first importance. 
No conquerors have ever marched from China 
into Western Asia, like Xerxes, for instance, 
who passed from the interior of Persia to 
Athens; or Alexander the Great, who extended 
his victorious march from his small paternal 
province of Macedon to beyond the Indus, and 
almost to the borders of the Ganges, though 
the latter river, in despite of all his efforts, he 
was unable to reach But great victorious ex- 
peditions have prO( eeded not from China, but 
from Central Asia, and the nations of Tartary, 
who have invaded China itself; though in 
those invasions the manners, mind, and civili- 
zation of the Chinese have evinced their power, 
since their Tartar conquerors, in the earliest 
as in the latest times, have, after a few gene- 
rations, invariably conformed to the manners 
and civilization of the conquered nation, and 
become more or less Chinese. Not only the 
great population and flourishing agriculture 
of this fruitful country, but the cultivation of 
Bilk, lor which it has been celebrated from all 
antiquity, the culture of the tea -plant, which 
forms such an important article of European 
trade, as well as the knowledge of several 
most useful medicinal productions of nature, 
and unique, and, in their way, excellent pro- 
ducts of industry and manufacture, prove the 
very high degree of civilization to which this 
people have aitained. And why should not 
that people be entitled to a high place, or one 
of the highest among civilized nations, which 
bad known, many centuries before Europe, the 



art of printing, gunpowder, and the magnet— 4 
those three so highly celebrated and valuable 
discoveries of European skill 1 Instead of the 
regular art of printing with transposable letters, 
which would not suit the Chinese system of 
writing, this people make use of a species of 
lithography, which, to all essential purposes, is 
the same, and attended with the same efl'ects. 
Gunpowder serves in China, as it did in Europe 
in the infancy of the discovery, rather for amuse- 
ment and fireworks, than for the more serious 
purposes of war and conquest; and though this 
people are acquainted with the magnetic needle, 
they have never made a like extended applica- 
ation of its powers, and never employ it, either 
in a confined river and coasting navigation, or 
on the wide ocean, on which they never venture 
The Chinese are remarkable, too, for the ut- 
most polish and refinement of manners, and 
even for a precise civility and love of stately 
ceremonial. In many respects, indeed, their 
politeness and refinement almost equal those 
of European nations, or at least are far supe- 
rior to what we usually designate by the term 
of oriental manners — a term which, in our 
sense, can apply only to the nearer Mahometan 
countries of the Levant. Of this assertion, we 
may find a sufficient proof in any single tale 
that portrays the present Chinese life and man- 
ners ; in the novel, for instance, translated by 
M. Remusat. In their present manners and 
fashions, however, there are many things utterly 
at variance with European taste and feelings, 
I need only mention the custom of the digni- 
taries, functionaries, and literary men letting 
their nails grow to the length of birds' claws, 
and that other custom in women of rank, of 
compressing their feet to an extreme diminu- 
tiveness. Both customs, according to the re- 
cent account of a very intelligent Englishman, 
serve to mark and distinguish the upper class ; 
for the former renders the men totally incapa- 
ble of hard or manual labor, and the latter im- 
pedes the woman of rank in walking, or at 
least gives lier a mincing gait, and a languid, 
delicate and interesting air. These minute 
traits of manners should not be overlooked in 
the general sketch of the nation, for they per- 
fectly correspond to many other characteristic 
marks and indications of the unnatural stiff- 
ness, childish vanity, and exaggerated refine- 
ment, which we meet with in the tnore im- 
portant province of its intellectual character. 
Even in the basis of all intellectual culture, the 
language, or rather the writing of the Chinese, 
this character of refinement, pushed beyond all 
bounds and all conception, is visible, while, on 
the other hand, it is coupled with great intel- 
lectual poverty and jejuneness. A language 
where there are not many more than three hun- 
dred, not near four hundred, and (according to 
the most recent critical investigation) only 272 
monosyllabic primitive roots without any kind 
of grammar; where the not merely various, but 
utterly unconnected significations of one and the 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



475 



same word are marked, in the first place, by a 
varying modulation of tlie voice, according to a 
fourfold method of accentuation ; in the next 
place and chiefly, by the written characters, 
which amount to the prodigious number of 
eighty thousand, while the Egyptian hieroglyphs 
do not exceed the number of eight hundred — 
such a language must needs be the most arti- 
ficial in the whole world ; — an inference, not 
invalidated by the fact that, out of that great 
number of all actual or possible written charac- 
ters, but a fourth part perhaps is really in use, 
and a still less portion is necessary to be learned. 
As the meaning, especially of more complex 
notions and abstract ideas, can be fully fixed 
and accurately determined only by such artifi- 
cial ciphers, the language is far more dependent 
on these written characters than on living 
sound ; for one and the same sound may often 
be designated by 160 different characters, and 
have as many significations. It not rarely occurs 
that the Chinese, when they do not very well 
understand each other in conversation, have re- 
course to writing, and by copying down these 
ciphers are enabled to divine each other's mean- 
ing, and become mutually intelligible. Indeed, 
it furnishes labor sufficient to fill up the life of 
man, for even the European scholars who have 
engaged in this study find it a matter of no 
small difficulty, to devise a system whereby a 
dictionary, or ratlier a systematic catalogue of 
all these written characters may be composed, 
to serve as a fit guide on this ocean of Chinese 
signs. But we shall again have occasion to 
recur to this subject; and, indeed, it is only in 
connection with the peculiarities of the Chinese 
mind that this writing system can be properly 
explained and understood in its true meaning, 
or rather its meaningless construction and ela- 
borateness. 

Although the construction of canals, and all 
the regulations of water-carriage, could have 
attained only by degrees to their present state 
of perfection, still this alone would prove the 
very early attention which this people had 
given to the arts of civilized life. Mention is 
often made of them in the old Chinese histories 
and imperial annals ; and the canals of China, 
like the Nile in Egypt, were ever the objects of 
most anxious solicitude to the government. 
These annals, whenever they have occasion to 
speak of those great inundations and destructive 
fioods wliich are of such frequent occurrence in 
Chinese history, invariably represent the atten- 
tion bestowed on water-courses and water-regu- 
lations as the most certain mark of a wise, 
benevolent and provident administration. On 
the other hand, the neglect of this most import- 
ant of administrative concerns is ever regarded 
as the proof of a wicked, reckless and unfortu- 
nate reign ; and in these histories some great 
calamity, or even violent catastrophe, is sure to 
follow, like a stroke of divine vengeance, on 
this unpardonable neglect of duty. 

The long succession of the diiferent native 



dynasties of China, Tchin, Han, Tung, and 
Sung, down to the Moguls, which fills the dif- 
fuse annals of the empire, furnishes few im- 
portant data on the intellectual progress of the 
Chinese; and everything of importance to the 
object of our present inquiries, that can be ga- 
thered out of the mass of political history, may 
be reduced to a very few plain facts. The Eng- 
lish writer, whom we have already cited, though 
otherwise inclined to a certain degree of scep- 
ticism in his views, fixes the commencement 
of the historical ages of authentic history in the 
ancient dynasty of Chow, eleven hundred years 
before the Christian era. The first fact of im- 
portance, as regards the moral and intellec- 
tual civilization of China, is, that this country, 
originally divided into many small principali- 
ties and under petty sovereigns, whose power 
was more limited, enjoyed a greater share of 
liberty. The great burning of the books, of 
which more particular mention will be pre- 
sently made, as well as the erection of the 
great wall, are attributed to the first general 
emperor of all China, Chihoangti ; in whose 
reign, too, Japan became a Chinese colony, or 
received from China a political establishment. 
At a still later period, as in the fifth century of 
our era, and again at the time of the Mogul con- 
quest under Zingis Khan, China was divided 
into two kingdoms, a northern and a southern. 
But there is another fact already mentioned, 
that throws still stronger light on the high civili- 
zation of China — it is, that at every period 
when this empire has been conquered by the 
Moguls and Tartars, the conquerors, overcome 
in their turn by the ascendancy of Chinese civili- 
zation, have, within a short time, invariably 
adopted tlie manners, laws, and even the lan- 
guage of China, and thus its institutions have 
remained, on the whole, unaltered. But here 
is a circumstance in Chinese history particularly 
worthy of our attenlion. In no state in the 
world do we see such an entire, absolute, and 
rigid monarchical unity as in that of China, 
especially under its ancient form; although this 
government is more limited by laws and man- 
ners, and is by no means of that arbitrary and 
despotic character which we are wont to attri- 
bute to the more modern oriental states. In 
China, before the introduction of the Indian re- 
ligion of Buddhu, there was not even a distinct 
sacerdotal class — there is no nobility, no heredi- 
tary class with hereditary rights — education, and 
employment in the service of the state, form the 
only marks of distinction ; and the men of let- 
ters and government functionaries are blended 
together in the single class of Mandarins ; but 
the state is all in all. However, this absolute 
monarchical system has not conduced to the 
peace, stability, and permanent prosperity of 
the state, for the whole history of China, from 
beginning to end, displays one continued series 
of seditions, usurpations, anarchy, changes of 
dynasty, and other violent revolutions and catas- 
trophes. This is proved by the bare statement 



476 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



of facts, though tlie official language of the im- 
perial annals ever concedes the final triumph 
to the monarchical principle. 

Tlie same violent revolutions occurred in the 
department of science and of public doctrines, 
as in the instance already cited of the general 
burning of the books by order of the first gene- 
ral emperor, when the men of letters, or at least 
a party of them, were persecuted, and four 
hundred and sixty followers of Confucius burnt. 
This act of tyranny undoubtedly supposes a 
very violent contest between factions — an im- 
portant political struggle between hostile sects, 
and a mighty revolution in the intellectual 
world. At the same time too, a favorite of 
this tyrannical prince introduced a new system 
of writing, which has led to the greatest confu- 
sion, even in subsequent ages. Such an intellec- 
tual revolution is doubtless evident on the intro- 
duction of the Indian religion of Buddhu, or Fo, 
(according to the Chinese appellation,) which 
took place precisely three-and-thirty years after 
the foundation of Christianity. The conquest of 
China by the Moguls, under Zingis Khan, oc- 
curred at the same time that their expeditions 
towards the opposite quarter of Europe spread 
terror and desolation over Russia and Poland, 
as far as the confines of Silesia. This conquest 
produced a reaction, and a popular revolution, 
conducted by a common citizen of China, by 
name Chow, restored the empire; this citizen 
al'terwards ascended the throne, and became 
the founder of a new Chinese dynasty. The 
emjjerors of the present dynasty of Mantchou 
Tartars, that has now governed China since the 
miildle of the seventeenth century, are distin- 
guished for their attachment to the old customs 
and institutions of China, and even to its lan- 
guage and science ; and their elevation to the 
throne has given rise to many great scientific 
enterprises, and has been singularly favorable 
to the investigations of those European scholars, 
whose object it is to make us better acquainted 
with China. But at the- moment I am speaking, 
a great rebellion has broken out in the northern 
part of the kingdom, and in the opposite extre- 
mity the Christians are exposed to a more than 
ordinary persecution. 

These few leading incidents in Chinese his- 
tory may suffice to make known the principal 
epochs in the intellectual progress and civiliza- 
tion of this people. As the constitution and 
development of the human mind are in each 
of those ancient nations closely connected with 
the nature of their language, and even some- 
times (as in the case of the Chinese) with their 
system of writing, the language of the latter 
people being, on account of its amazing copious- 
ness, less fit for conversation than for writing, I 
shall now make a few remarks on the very 
artificial mode of Chinese writing, which is 
perfectly unique in its kind : but I shall confine 
my observation to its general character, and 
shall forbear entering into the vast labyrinth of 
the eighty thousaiid cipher-signs of speech, and 



all the problems and difficulties which they in 
volve. The Chinese writing was undoubtedly 
in its origin symbolical, though the rude marks 
of those primitive symbols can now scarcely 
be discerned in the enigmatical abbreviations, 
and in the complex combinations of the charac- 
ters at present in use It is no slight problem 
even for the learned of China to reduce, with 
any degree of certainty, the boundless quantity 
of their written characters to their simple ele- 
ments and primitive roots: in this, however, 
they have succeeded, and have shown that all 
these elements are to be found in the two Viun- 
dred and fourteen symbols, or keys of writing, 
as they call them. The Chinese characters of 
the primitive ages comprise only representa- 
tions, indicated by a few rude strokes, of those 
first simple objects which surround man while 
living in the most simple state of society — 
such as the sun and moon, the most familiar 
animals, the common plants, the implements 
of human labor, weapons, and the different 
parts of human dwellings. This is the same 
rude symbolical writing which we find among 
other civilized nations, the Americans, for ex- 
ample, and among them, the Mexicans in par- 
ticular. 

The celebrated French orientalist, Abel Re- 
musat, who in our times has infused a new 
life into the study of Chinese literature, and 
especially thrown on the whole subject a much 
greater degree of clearness than originally be- 
longed to it, has, in liis examination of this first 
very meagre outline of the infant civilization 
of China, wherein lie discovers the then very 
contracted circle of Chinese ideas, made many 
intelligent observations, and many historical 
deductions. And if, as he conjectures, the dis- 
covery of Chinese writing must date its origin 
four thousand years back, this would bring it 
within three or four generations from the de- 
luge, according to the vulgar era — an estimate 
which certainly is not exaggerated. If this 
European scholar, intimately conversant as 
he is with Cliinese antiquities and science, is 
at a loss adequately to describe his astonish- 
ment at the extreme poverty of these first sym- 
bols of Chinese writing, so no one, doubtless, 
possesses in a higher degree than himself all 
the necessary attainments to enable him to ap- 
preciate the immeasurable distance between 
this first extreme jejuneness of ideas, and the 
boundless wealth displayed in the latter artifi- 
cial and complex writing of the Chihese. 

But when, among other things, he calls our 
attention to the fact that, in this primitive writ- 
ing, even the sign or symbol of a priest is want- 
ing—a symbol which together with the class 
itself must exist among the very rudest nations 
— I must concur in the truth of the remark : for 
he himself adduces, among other characters, 
one which must represent a magician. Now 
among the heathen nations of the primitive age, 
the one personage was certainly identical with 
the other, as even among the Cainites was very 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



477 



probably the case. Even the combination of 
several of those simple characters, which gene- 
rally serve to denote the more abstract ideas, 
seem often, or at least originally, not to have 
been regulated by any profound principle of 
symbolism, but to have arisen merely out of the 
vulgar perceptions or impressions of every-day 
life. For instance, the character denoting hap- 
piness is composed of tvv'o signs, of vifhioh one 
represents an open mouth, and the other a 
handful of rice, or rice by itself. Here we see 
no allusion is made to any very lofty or chime- 
rical idea of happiness, or to any mystic or spi- 
ritual conception of it ; but, as this written cha- 
racter well evinces, the Chinese notion of hap- 
piness is simply represented by a mouth filled 
and saturated with good wine. Another ex- 
ample of nearly the same kind, given by Re- 
musat with a sort of polite reluctance, is the 
character designating woman, which, when 
doubled, signifies strife and contention, and 
when tripled, immoral and disorderly conduct. 
How widely removed are all those coarse 
and trivial combinations of ideas from an ex- 
quisite sense — a deep symbolism of Nature — 
from those spiritual emblems in the Egyptian 
hieroglyphics, so far as they have been deci- 
phered ; although these emblems may have 
been, and were in fact, applied to the purpose 
of alphabetic usage. In the hieroglyphics there 
is, besides the bare literal meaning, a high sym- 
bolic inspiration, like a soul of life, the breathing 
of a high, indwelling spirit, a deeply felt signi- 
ficancy, a lofty and beautiful design apparent 
through the dead characters denoting any par- 
ticular name or fact. 

But independently of this boundless chaos of 
written characters, the Chinese undoubtedly 
possess a system of scientific symbols and sym- 
bolical signs, which constitute the substance 
of their most sacred book, the I-King, which 
signifies the book of unity, or, as others explain 
it, tlie book of changes; and either name will 
agree with the meaning of those symbols which, 
when rightly understood, and conceived in the 
spirit of early antiquity, will appear to be of a 
very remarkable and scientific nature. There 
are only two primary figures or lines, from 
which proceed originally the four symbols and 
the eight kona or condjinations representing 
Nature, which form the basis of die high Chi- 
nese philosophy. These first two primary prin- 
ciples are a straight, unbroken line, and a line 
broken or divided into two. If these first sim- 
ple elements are doubled, namely, two straight 
lines put under each other like our arithmetical 
sign of equation, and two broken or divided 
lines also put together, the different lines are 
formed. According as one broken line occu- 
pies the upper or the lower place, there are 
two possible variations — when put together, 
there are four possible variations ; and these 
constitute the four symbols. But if three lines 
of these two kinds, the straight and the broken, 
are united or placed under each other, so, ac- 



cording to the number or the upper, middle or 
lower place of either species of line, there are 
eight possible combinations, and these are the 
eight kona, which, together with the four sym- 
bols, refer to the natural elements, and to the 
primary principles of all things, and serve as 
the symbolical expression, or scientific designa- 
tion of these. 

What is now the real sense and proper sig- 
nification of those scientific primary lines among 
the Chinese, which exert an influence over the 
whole of their ancient literature, and upon 
which they themselves have written an incre- 
dible number of learned commentaries? Leib- 
nitz supposed them to contain a reference to the 
modern algebraical discoveries, and especially 
to the binary calculation. Other writers, espe- 
cially among the English, drawing their obser- 
vations more from real life, remark on the other 
hand, that this ancient system of mystical lines 
serves at present the purpose of a sort of ora- 
cular play of questions, like the turning up of 
cards among Europeans, and is converted to 
many superstitious uses, especially for making 
pretended discoveries in alchemy, to which the 
Chinese are very much addicted. But this is 
only an abuse of modern times, which no longer 
understand this primitive system of symbolical 
signs and lines. The high antiquity of these 
lines and of the eight kona can be the less a 
matter of doubt, as even mythology has ascribed 
them to the primitive patriarch of the Chinese, 
Fohi, who is represented as having espied these 
lines on the back of a tortoise, and having thence 
deduced the written characters; which many 
of the learned Chinese wish to derive from 
these eight kona or combinations of the first 
symbolical lines. But the French scholar, whom 
I have more than once had occasion to name, 
and who is well able to form a competent opi- 
nion on the subject, is most decidedly opposed 
to this Chinese derivation of all the written 
characters from the eight kona; and it would 
appear, indeed, that the latter differ totally from 
the common system of Chinese writing, and 
must be looked upon as of a distinct scientific 
nature. 

Perhaps we may find a natural explanation 
of the true,, and not very hidden sense of these 
signs, by comparing the fundamental doctrines 
of the elder Greek philosophy and science of 
Nature. Thus, in the writings of Plato, tnention 
is often made of the one and of the other, or of 
unity and duality, as the original elements of 
Nature and first principles of all existence. By 
this is meant the doctrine of the first opiiosilion 
and of the many oppositions derived from the 
first; and also of the possible, and conceivable, 
or required adjustment and compromise be- 
tween the two, and of the restoration of the 
first unity and eternal equality anterior to af 
opposition, and which terminates and absorbs 
in itself all discord. Thus these eight kona, 
and mathematical signs or symbolical lines ol 
ancient China, would comprise nothing moro 



478 



F. SCHLEGELi 



ihan a dry outline of all dynamical speculation 
and science. And it is therefore quite consistent 
that the old sacred book whicli contains these 
principles of Chinese science should be termed 
either the book of unity or the book of changes; 
for doubtless this title refers to the doctrine of 
an al)!?olute unity, as the fundamental principle 
of all things, and to the doctrine of differences, 
or oppositions or changes springing out of that 
first unity. 

This doctrine of an opposition in all things — 
in tliou{;ht as in nature — will become more ap- 
parent if we reflect on the new and brilliant 
discoveries in natural philosophy. For as in 
this science, the oxygen and hydrogen parts in 
the chemistry of metals, or the positive or nega- 
tive end of electrical jihenomena, in the attract- 
ing and repelling pole of magnetism, reveal 
such an opposition and dynamic play of living 
powers in nature; so in this philosophy of 
China, the abstract doctrine of this opposition 
and dynamical change of existence seems to be 
laid down with a sort of mathematical gene- 
rality, as the basis of all future science. In our 
higher natural philosophy, indeed, all this has 
been proved from facts and experience ; and, 
besides, this dynamic life forms but one element, 
and the one branch of the science to be ac- 
quired ; and a philosophy founded entirely on 
this dynamical law of existence, without any 
regard to the other and higher principle of in- 
ternal experience and moral life, intellectual 
intuition and divine revelation, would be at 
best a very partial system, and by no means of 
general application ; or if a general application 
of such a system were made, it must lead to 
endless mistakes, errors and contradictions. 
That such a system of dynamical speculation 
and science, if extended to objects where it 
cannot be corroborated by facts, to all things 
divine and human, real, possible, or impossible, 
will undoubtedly lead to such a chaotic con- 
fusion of ideas, we have had a memorable ex- 
XJerience in the German "Philosophy of Nature" 
of the last generation; a philosophy which con- 
sisted in a fanciful play of thought with Polari- 
ties, and oppositions, and points of indifference be- 
tween them, but which has been long appreciated 
in its true worth and real nature, and consigned 
to its proper limits. 

Thus this outline of the old Chinese symbols 
of thought, which have a purely metaphysical 
import, would lay before us the most recent 
error'giothed in the most antique forin — but the 
Chinese system is in itself very remarkable and 
important. The fundamental text of the old 
sacred book on this doctrine of unity and oppo- 
sitions, and which may now be easily compre- 
hended, runs thus, according to Remusat's lite- 
ral translation: "The great first principle has 
engendered or produced two equations and dif- 
ferences, or primary rules of existence: but the 
two primary rules or two oppositions, namely, 
Yn and Yang, or repose and motion (the affirm- 
utive and negative as we might otherwise call 



them), have produced four signs or symbols; 
and the four symbols have produced the eisjht 
kona, or further combinations." These eight 
kona are kien, or ether, kui, or pure water, li, 
or pure fire, tchin, or thunder, siun, the wind, 
kan, common water, ken, a mountain, and kuen, 
the earth. 

On this ancient basis of Chinese philosophy, 
proceeding from indiflerence to differences, was 
afterwards founded the rationalist system of 
Lao-tseu, whose name occurs somewhat earlier 
than that of Confucius. The Taosse, or disci- 
ples of Reason, as the followers of this philoso- 
pher entitle themselves, have very much de- 
generated, and have become a complete athe- 
istical sect; though the blame of this must be 
attributed, not to the founder, but to his disciples 
only. It is however acknowledged that the 
atheistical principles of this dead science of 
reason, have been very widely ditfused through- 
out the Chinese empire, and for a certain period 
were almost generally prevalent. 

As it is necessary to keep in view a certain 
chronological order, in our investigations of the 
progressive development of Chinese intellect, I 
may he.-e observe that, as far as European re- 
search has been able to ascertain, we may dis- 
tinguisri three principal and successive epochs 
in the history both of the religion and science 
of China. The first epoch is that of sacred tra- 
dition, and of the old constitution of the Chinese 
empire, and discloses those primitive views, 
and that primitive system of ethics, on which 
the empire was founded. The second, which 
we may fix about six centuries before our era, 
is the period of scientific philosophy, pursu- 
ing two opposite paths of inquiry. Cotifucius 
applied his attention entirely to the more prac- 
tical study of ethics, with which, indeed, the 
old constitution, history, and sacred traditions 
of the Chinese were very intimately connected ; 
and the pure morality of Confucius, which was 
the first branch of Chinese philosophy known 
in Europe, excited to a high degree the enthu- 
siasm of many European scholars, who, by their 
too exclusive admiration, were prevented frojn 
forming a right estimate of the general character 
of Chinese philosophy. 

Another system of philosophy, purely specu- 
lative and widely different from the practical 
and ethical doctrine of Confucius, was the sys- 
tem of Lao-tseu and his school, whence issued 
the above-mentioned rationalist sect of Taosse, 
that has at last fallen into atheism. As to the 
question whether Lao-tseu travelled into the 
remote West, or in case he came only as far as 
Western Asia, whether he derived his system 
from the Persian or Egyptian doctrines, or me- 
diately from the Greek philosophy — this ques- 
tion I shall not here stop to discuss, for the 
matter is very doubtful in itself, and, were it 
even proved, still all the doctrines borrowed 
from the West were invested in a form purely 
Chinese, and clothed in quite a native garb. 
Those signs in the I-King, we have already 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



479 



spoken of, evidently comprise the germ of such 
an absoiuie, negative, and consequently athe- 
istic rationalism — a mechanical play of idle ab- 
stractions. The third epoch in the progress of 
Chinese opinions is formed by tlie introduction 
of the Indian religion of Buddha or of Fo. The 
great revolution which had previously occurred 
in the old doctrines and manners of Cliina ; and 
the ruling spirit of that false and absolute ra- 
tionalism, had already paved the way for the 
foreign religion of Buddha, which, of all the 
Pagan imitations of truth, occupies the lowest 
grade. 

Tlie old sacred traditions of the Chinese are 
not so overlaid, nor disfignred with fictions, as 
those of most other Asiatic nations ; those of the 
Indians, for example, and of the early nations 
of Pagan Europe; but their traditions breathe 
the purer spirit of genuine history. Hence, the 
poetry of the Chinese is not mythological, like 
that of other nations, but is either lyrical, (as in 
the Shi-King, a book of sacred songs, composed 
or compiled by Confucius,) or is entirely con- 
fined to the representation of real life, and of 
the social relations — as in the modern tales and 
novels, several of which have been translated 
into the European languages. 

The old traditions of the Chinese have many 
traits of a kindred character with, or at least of 
a strong resemblance to, the Mosaic revelation, 
and even to the sacred traditions of the nations 
of Western Asia, particularly the Persians ; and 
in these traditions we find much that either 
corroborates the testimony of Holy Writ, or at 
least affords matter for further comparison. We 
have before mentioned the very peculiar man- 
ner in which the Chinese speak of the great 
Flood, and how their first progenitors struggled 
against the savage waters, and how this task 
was afterwards neglected by bad or improvi- 
dent rulers, who, in consequence of this neglect, 
were brought to ruin. 

I will cite but one instance, where the pa- 
rallel is indeed remarkable. In the I-King, 
mention is made of the fallen dragon, or of the 
spirit of the dragon, that, for his presumption in 
wishing to ascend to heaven, was precipitated 
into the abyss; and the words in which this 
event is described are precisely the same, or at 
least very similar to those which our Scriptures 
ajiply to the rebel angel, and the Persian books 
to Aluiman. However, this dragon is whimsi- 
cally, we might almost say, artlessly, made the 
sacred symbol of the Chinese Empire and the 
Emperor. The paternal power of the latter is 
understood in a much too absolute sense ; not 
only is the Emperor styled the lord of heaven 
and earth, and even the sun of God, but his will 
is revered as the will of God, or rather com- 
pletely identified with it; and even the most 
determined eulogists of the Chinese constitution 
and manners, cannot deny that the monarch is 
almost the object of a real worship. Chris- 
tianity teaches that all power is from God; but 
it does not thereby declare that all power is one 



and the same with God. Even a dominion 
over nature and her powers is ascribed to tne 
Emperor of China, as the illustrious lord of 
heaven and earth. 

Moreover, no hereditary nobility, no classes 
separated by distinctions of birth, exist in this 
country, as in India. The Emperor, half iden- 
tified with the Deity, had alone the privilege i.." 
ancient times of otfering on the sacred heights 
of the great sacrifice to God. Some European 
writers have, from this circumstance, conceived 
the Chinese constitution to be theocratic ; but if 
it be so, it is only in its outward form or original 
mould; for it would be difficult to show in it 
any trace of a true, vital theocracy. All that 
pomp of sacred ceremony and religious titles, 
so strangely absurd, forms a striking contrast 
with real history, and with that long succession 
of profligate and unfortunate reigns, and per- 
petual revolutions, which fill most of the pages 
of the Chinese annals. We should err greatly, 
were we to regard all these high imperial titles 
as the mere swell and exaggeration of Eastern 
phraseology. The Chinese speak of their celes- 
tial Empire of the Medium, as they call their 
country, in terms which no Euroi)ean writer 
would apply to a Christian state ; and such, in- 
deed, as the Scriptures and religious authors use 
in reference only to the kingdom of God. They 
cannot conceive it possible for the earth to con- 
tain two emperors at one and the same time, 
and own the sway of more than one such abso- 
lute lord and master. Hence, they look on 
every solemn foreign embassy as a debt of 
homage; nor is this sentiment the idle effect of 
vanity or fancy — it is a firm and settled belief, 
perfectly coinciding with the whole system of 
their religious and political doctrines. 

THE HIITDOOS. 

When Alexander the Great had attained the 
object of his most ardent desires, and, realizing 
the fabulous expedition of Bacchus and his train 
of followers, had at last reached India, the 
Greeks found this vast region, even on this side 
of the Ganges — (Ibr that river, the peculiar ob- 
ject of Alexander's ambition, the conqueror, in 
despite of all his efforts, was unable to reach) — 
the Greeks found this country extensive, fertile, 
highly cultivated, populous, and filled wiih 
flourishing cities, as it was divided into a num- 
ber of great and jietty kingdoms. They found 
there an hereditary division of castes, such as 
still subsists ; although they reckoned not four, 
but seven, a circumstance, however, which, as 
we shall see later, argues no essential diri'er- 
ence in the division of Indian classes at that 
period. They remarked, also, that the country 
was divided into two religious parties or sects, 
the Brachmans and the Safnatieans. By the first, 
the Greeks designated the followers of the reli- 
gion of Brahma, as well as of Vishnoo and Siva, 
a religion which still subsists, anil is more 
deeply rooted and more widely diffused and 
prevalent in India than any other religiou* 



480 



F. SCHLEGEI.. 



system ; distinguished as it is by its leading 
dogma of the transmigration of souls, whiclr has 
exerted the miglitiest influence on every depart- 
ment of thought, on the whole bearing of Indian 
philosophy, and on the whole arrangement of 
Indian life. But by the Greek denomination of 
Samaneans we must certainly understand the 
Buddhists, as, among the rude nations of cen- 
tral Asia, and in other countries, the priests of 
the religion of Fo bear at this day the name of 
Schamans. These priests indeed appear to be 
little better than mere sorcerers and jugglers, as 
are the priests of all idolatrous nations that are 
sunk to the lowest degree of barbarism and 
superstition. The word itself is pure Indian, 
and occurs frequently in the religious and meta- 
physical treatises of that people ; for originally, 
and before it had received such a mean accep- 
tation among those Buddhist nations, it had 
quite a philosophical sense, as it still has in the 
Sanscrit. This word denotes that equality of 
mind, or that deep internal equanimity, which, 
according to the Indian pliilosophy, must pre- 
cede, and is indispensably requisite to the per- 
fect union with the Godhead. In general, all 
the names by which Buddha, the priests of his 
religion, and its important and fundamental 
doctrines are known, whether in Thibet, or 
among the Mongul nations, in Siam, in Pegu, or 
in Japan — in general, we say, all those names 
are pure Indian words; for the tradition of all 
those nations, with unanimous accord, deduces 
the origin of this sect from India. 

The name of Buddha, which the Chinese have 
changed or shortened into that of Fo, is rather 
an honorary appellation, and is expressive of 
the divine wisdom with which, in the opinion 
of his followers, he was endowed ; or which 
rather, according to their belief, became visible 
in his person. The period of his existence is 
fixed by many at six hundred years, by others 
again at a thousand years, before the Christian 
era. His real and historical name was Gau- 
tama; and it is remarkable that the same name 
was home by the author of one of the principal 
philosophical systems of the Hindoos, the Nyaya 
philosophy, the leading principles of which will 
be the subject of future consideration, when we 
come to speak of the Indian philosophy. Indeed, 
the dialectic spirit, which pervades the Nyaya 
philosophy, would seem to be of a kindred na- 
ture and- like origin with the confused meta- 
physics of the Buddhists. But the names, not- 
withstanding their identity, denote two different 
persons; although even the founder of the dia- 
lectic system, like almost all other celebrated 
names in the ancient history, traditions and 
sciences of die Indians, figures in the character 
of a mydiological personage. But we must first 
take a view of the state of manners, and the 
state of political civilization, in Intlia, in order 
to be able to form a right judgment and estimate 
of the intellectual and scientific exertions of its 
inhabitants, and of the peculiar nature and ten- 
dency of the Indian opinions. 



By the manner in which the Greek writers 
speak of the two religious parties into which 
Alexander found the country divided, it can 
scarcely be doubted that the Buddhists at that 
period were far more nuinerous, and more ex- 
tensively diffused throughout India, than they 
are at the present day, and this inference is 
even corFoborated by many historical vouchers 
of the Indians themselves. Although the Budd- 
hists are now but an obscure sect of dissenters 
in the western peninsula, they are still tolera- 
bly numerous in several of its provinces; while, 
on the other hand, they have complete posses- 
sion of the whole eastern and Indo-Chinese 
peninsula. Besides this sect, there are many 
other religious dissenters even in Hindostan ; 
such, for instance, as the sect of Jains, who 
steer a middle course between the followers of 
the old and established religion of Brahma and 
the Buddhists; for, like the latter, they reject the 
Indian division and system of castes. * * • 
This singular phenomenon of Indian life has 
even some points of connection with a capital 
article of their creed, the doctrine of the trans- 
migration of souls — a doctrine which will be 
later the subject of our inquiries, and which 
we shall endeavor to place in a nearer and 
clearer light. In showing the influence of the 
institution of castes on the state of manners in 
India, I may observe, in the first place, that in 
this division of the social ranks there is no dis- 
tinct class of slaves, (as was indeed long ago 
remarked by the Greeks,) that is to say, no such 
class of bought slaves — no men, the property 
and merchandise of their fellow-men — as ex- 
isted in ancient Greece and Rome, as exist even 
at this day among Mahometan nations; and, as 
in the case of the Negroes, are still to be found 
in the colonial possessions of the Christian and 
European states. The laboring class of the 
Sudras is undoubtedly not admitted to the high 
privileges of the first classes, and is in a state 
of great dependence upon these ; but this very 
caste of Sudras has its hereditary and clearly 
defined rights. It is only by a crime, that a 
man in India can lose his caste, and the rights 
annexed to it. These rights are acquired by 
birth, except in the instance of the ofl'spring of 
unlawful marriages between persons of difler- 
ent castes. The fate of these hapless wretches 
is indeed hard — harder, almost, than that of 
real slaves among other nations. Ejected, ex- 
communicated as it were, loaded with maledic- 
tion, they are regarded as the outcasts of society, 
yea, almost of humanity itself. This terrible 
exclusion, however, from the rights of citizen- 
ship, occurs only in certain clearly specified 
cases. There are even some cases of exception 
explicitly laid down, where a marriage with a 
person of different caste is permitted, or where 
at least the only consequence to the children of 
such marriage is a degradation to an inferior 
class of society. But the general rule is, that a 
lawful marriage can be contracted only witli a 
woman of the same caste. Women particinate 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



481 



in all the rights of their caste ; in the high pre- 
rogatives of Brahmins, if they are of the sacer- 
dotal race, although there are not and never 
were priestesses among the Indians, as among 
the other lieathen nations of antiquity; or in 
the privileges of nobility, if tltey belong to the 
caste of the Cshatriyas. These privileges which 
belong and are secured to women, and this par- 
ticipation in the rights and advantages of their 
respective classes, must tend much, undoubt- 
edly, to mitigate the injurious effects of poly- 
gamy. The latter custom has ever prevailed, 
and still prevails in India, though not to the 
same degree of licentiousness, nor with the 
same unlimited and despotic control as in Ma- 
hometan countries ; but a plurality of wives is 
there permitted only under certain conditions, 
and with certain legal restrictions, consequently 
in that milder form under which it existed of 
old in the warm climes of Asia, and according 
to the patriarchal simplicity of the yet thinly 
peopled world. The much higher social rank, 
and better moral condition of the female sex in 
India, are apparent from those portraits of In- 
dian life, which are drawn in their beautiful 
works of poetry, whether of a primitive or a 
later date, and from that deep feeling of ten- 
derness, that affectionate regard and reverence, 
with which the character of woman and her 
domestic relations are invariably represented. 
These few examples suffice to show the moral 
effects of the Indian division of castes ; and 
while they serve to defend this institution 
against a sweeping sentence of condemnation, 
or the indiscriminate censure of too partial pre- 
judice, they place the subject in its true and 
proper light, and present alike the advantages 
and defects of the system. 



When the Greeks, who accompanied or fol- 
lowed Alexander into India, numbered seven 
instead of four castes in that country, they did 
not judge inaccurately the outward condition 
of things, but they paid not sufficient attention 
to the Indian notion of castes; and their very 
enumeration of those castes proves they had 
some points of detail. In this enumeration, 
they assign the first rank to the Brachinans, or 
wise men ; and by the artisans, they no doubt 
understood the trading and manufacturing class 
of the Vaisyas. The counsellors and intendants 
of kings and princes do not constitute a distinct 
caste, but are mere officers and functionaries, 
who, if they be lawyers, belong to, and must be 
taken from, the caste of Brahmins; though the 
other two upper castes are not always rigidly ex- 
cluded from these functions. The class, again, 
that tends the breeding of cattle, and lives by 
the chase, forms not a distinct caste, but merely 
follows a peculiar kind of employment. And 
when the Greeks make two castes of the agri- 
culturists and the warriors, tliey only mean to 
draw a distinction between the laborers and 
the masters, or the real proprietors of the soil. 



Even the name of Cshatriyas signifies landed 
proprietor ; and as in the old Germanic consti 
tiition, the arriere-ban was composed of landed 
proprietors, and the very possession of the soil 
imposed on the nobility the obligation of mili- 
tary service; so, in the Indian constitution, the 
two ideas of property in land and military ser- 
vice, are indissolubly connected. Some modern 
inquirers have attached very great importance 
to the undoubtedly wide and remarkable sepa- 
ration of the fourth or menial caste of Sudras 
from the three upper castes. They have thought 
they perceived, also, a very great difference in 
the bodily structure and general physiognomy 
of this fourth caste from those of the others; and 
have thence concluded that the caste of Sudras 
is descended from a totally different race, some 
primitive and barbarous people whom a more 
civilized nation, to whom the three upper castes 
must have belonged, have conquered and sub- 
dued, and degraded to that menial condition, 
the lowest grade in the social scale — a grade to 
which the iron arm of law et«!rnally binds thein 
down. This hypothesis is, in itself, not very im- 
probable ; and it may be proved from history, 
that the like has really occurred in several 
Asiatic and even European countries. In the 
back-ground of old, mighty and civilized na 
tions, we can almost always trace the primeval 
inhabitants of the country, who, dispossessed 
of their territory, have been either reduced to 
servitude by their conquerors, or have gradually 
been incorporated with them. These primitive 
inhabitants, when compared witli their latei 
and more civilized conquerors, appear indeed 
in general rude and barbarous, though we find 
among them a certain number of ancient cus 
toms and arts, which by no means tend to con 
firm the notion of an original and universa 
savage state of nature. It is possible that thf 
same circumstances have occurred in India 
though this is by no means a necessary infer 
ence, for humanity in its progress follows not 
one uniform course, but pursues various and 
widely different paths; and hitherto, at least. 
no adequate historical proof has, in my opinion, 
been adduced for the reality of such an occii."- 
rence in India. It has also been conjectured 
that the caste of warriors, or the princes and 
hereditary nobility, possessed originally greater 
power and influence; and that it is only by 
degrees the race of Brahmins has attained to 
that great preponderance which it displays in 
later times, and which it even still possesses. 
We find, indeed, in the old epic, mythological, 
and historical poems of the Indians, many pas- 
sages which describe a contest between these 
two classes, and which represent the deified 
heroes of India victoriously defending the wise 
and pious Brahmins from the attacks of the 
fierce and presumptuous Cshatriyas. This ac- 
count, however, is susceptible of another inter- 
pretation, and should not be taken exclusively 
in this political sense. That in the brilliant 
period of their ancient and national dynasties 
41 



482 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



and governments, the princes and warlike nobi- 
lity possessed greater weight and importance 
than at present, is quite in the nature of things, 
and appears indeed to have been undoubtedly 
the case. From many indications in the old 
Indian traditions and histories, it would appear 
that the caste of Cshatriyas was partially, at 
least, of foreign extraction ; while those tradi- 
tionary accounts constantly represent the caste 
of Brahmins as the highest class, and nobler 
part, nay, the corner-stone of the whole com- 
munity. 

The origin of an hereditary caste of warriors, 
when considered in itself, may be easily ac- 
counted for, and it is nowise contrary to the na- 
ture of things that, even in a state of society 
where legal rights are yet undefined, the son, 
especially the eldest, should govern and admin- 
ister the territory or property which his deceased 
father possessed, and even in those cases where 
it was necessary, should take possession, admin- 
ister, and defend this property by open force 
and the aid of his dependants. 

But afterwards, when the social relations be- 
came more clearly fixed by law, and a union 
on a larger scale \yas formed by a general 
league, as the duties of military service were 
annexed to the soil, so the right to the soil was 
again determined by, and depended on, mili- 
tary service; now, in that primitive period of 
history, such a political union might have been 
formed by a common subordination to a higher 
power, or by a confederacy between several 
potentates ; and this has really been the origin 
of an hereditary, landed nobility, in many 
countries. 

The hereditary continuance or transmission 
of arts and trades, whereby the son pursues the 
occupation of the father, and learns and applies 
what the latter has discovered, has nothing sin- 
gular in itself, and appears indeed to contain its 
own explanation. But it is not easy, or, at least, 
equally so, to account for the exclusive distribu- 
tion and the exact and rigid separation of castes, 
particularly by any religious motives and prin- 
ciples, which are. however, indubitably con- 
nected with this mstitution. Still less can we 
understand the existence of a great, hereditary 
class of priests, eternally divided from the rest 
of the community, such as existed both in India 
and Egypt. To comprehend this strange phe- 
nomenon, we must endeavor to discover its 
origin, and trace it back, as far as is possible, to 
tire primitive ages of the world. If, for the 
sake of brevity, I have used the expression, "a 
class of hereditary priests," I ought to add, in 
order to explain my meaning more clearly, that 
the word priests must not be taken in that literal 
sense which antiquity attached to it; that the 
Brahmins are not confined merely to the func- 
tions of prayer, but are strictly and eminently 
theologians, since they alone are permitted to 
read and interpret the Vedas, while the other 
castes can read only with their sanction such 
passages of those sacred writings as are adapted 



to their circumstances, and the fourth caste are 
entirely prohibited from hearing any portion of 
them. The Brahmins are also the lawyers and 
physicians of India, and hence the Greeks did 
not designate them erroneously, when they 
termed them the caste of philosophers. * * 
* * * Among the Indians, the ruling prin- 
ciple of existence was the doctrine of the trans- 
migration of souls, which appears indeed to be 
the most characteristic of all their opinions, and 
was, by its influence on real life, by far the 
most important. We must in the first place 
remember, and keep well in our minds, that, 
among those nations of primitive antiquity, the 
doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not 
a mere probable hypothesis, which, as with 
many moderns, needs laborious researches and 
diffuse argumentations, in order to produce con- 
viction on the mind. Nay, we can hardly give 
the name of faith to this primitive conception ; 
for it was a lively certainty, like the feeling of 
ones own being, and of what is actually pre- 
sent; and this firm belief in a mere future 
existence exerted its influence on all sublunary 
art'airs, and was often the motive of mightier 
deeds and enterprises, than any more earthly 
interest could inspire. I said above, that the 
doctrine of the transmigration of souls was not 
unconnected with the Indian system of castes ; 
for the most honorable appellation of a Brahmin 
is Tvija, that is to say, a second time born, or 
regenerated. On one hand, this appellation re- 
fers to that spiritual renovation and second 
birth of a life of purity consecrated to God, as 
ill this consists the true calling of a Brahmin, 
and the special purpose of his caste. On the 
other hand, this term refers to the belief that 
the soul, after many transmigrations through 
various forms of animals, and various stages of 
natural existence, is permitted in certain cases, 
as a peculiar recompense, when it has gone 
through its prescribed cycle of migrations, to 
return to the world, and be born in the class of 
Brahmins. This doctrine of the transmigration 
of souls through various bodies of animals or 
other forms of existence, and even through more 
than one repetition of human life (whether such 
migrations were intended as the punishment of 
souls for their viciousness and impiety, or as 
trials for their further purification and amend- 
ment) — this doctrine which has always been, 
and is still so prevalent in India, was held like 
wise by the ancient Egyptians. This accord- 
ance in the faith of these two ancient nations, 
established beyond all doubt by historical testi- 
mony, is indeed remarkable ; and even in the 
minutest particulars on the course of migration 
allotted to souls, and on the stated periods and 
cycles of that migration, the coincidence is often 
perfectly exact. In this doctrine there was a 
noble element of truth — the feeling that man, 
since he has gone astray and wandered so far 
from his God, must needs exert many efforts 
and undergo a long and painful pilgrimage 
before he can join the source of all perfection;— 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



483 



the firm conviction and positive certainty that 
nothing detective, impure, or defiled with eartlily 
stains, can enter the pure region of perfect spirits, 
or be eternally united to God ; and that thus, 
before it can attain to this blissful end, the im- 
mortal soul must pass through long trials and 
many purifications. It may now well be con- 
ceived, and indeed the experience of this life 
would prove it, that suffering, which deeply 
pierces the soul, anguish, that convulses all the 
members of existence, may contribute, or may 
even be necessary to the deliverance of the soul 
from all alloy and pollution, as, to borrow a 
comparison from natural objects, the generous 
metal is melted down in fire and purged from 
its dross. It is certainly triie that the greater 
the degeneracy and the degradation of man, the 
nearer his approximation to the brute ; and 
when the transmigration of the immortal soul 
through the bodies of various animals is merely 
consitlered as the punishment of its former 
transgressions, we can very well understand 
the opinion which supposes that man, who, by 
his crimes and the abuse of his reason, had de- 
scended to the level of the brute, should at last 
be transformed into the brute itself But what 
could have given rise to the opinion that the 
transmigration of souls through tlje bodies of 
beasts was the road or channel of amendment, 
was destined to draw the soul nearer to infinite 
perfection, and even to accomplish its total 
union with the Supreme Being, from whom, in 
all appearance, it seemed calculated to remove 
it further? And as regards a return to the pre- 
sent state and existence Of man, what thinking 
person would ever wish to return to a life 
divided and fluctuating as it is, between desire 
and disgust, wasted in internal and external 
strife, and which, though brightened by a few 
scattered rays of truth, is still encompassed 
with the dense clouds of error ; — even though 
this return to earthly existence should be ac- 
complished in the Brahminical class so highly 
revered in India, or in the princely and royal 
race so highly favored by fortune? There is in 
all tliis a strange mixture and confusion of the 
ideas of this world with those of the next; and 
how the latter is separated from the former by 
an impassable gulf, they seem not to have been 
sufficiently aware. Both these ancient nations, 
the Egyptians as well as the Indians, regarded, 
with few exceptions, the Metempsychosis, not 
as an object of joyfid hope, but rather as a 
calamity impending over the soul; and whether 
they considered it to be a punishment for earthly 
transgressions, or a slate of probation — a severe 
but preparatory trial of purification — they still 
looked on it as a calamity, which to avert or to 
mitigate, they deemed that no attempt, no act, 
no exertion, no sacrifice, ought to be spared. 

In the manner, however, in which these two 
nations conceived this doctrine, there was a 
striking and funrlamental difference; and if the 
leading tenet was the same among both, the 
7iew8 which each connected with it were very 



dissimilar. Deprived, as we are, of the old 
books and original writings of the Egyptians, 
we are unable perfectly to comprehend and 
seize their peculiar ideas on this subject, and 
state them with the same assurance as we can 
those of the Indians, whose ancient writings we 
now possess in such abundance, and which in 
all main points perfectly agree with the accounts 
of the ancient classics. But we are left to infer 
the ideas of the Egyptians on the Metempsy- 
chosis only from their singular treatment of the 
dead and the bodies of the deceased; from that 
sepulchral art (if I may use the expression) 
which with them acquired a dignity and an im- 
portance, and was carried to a pitch of refine- 
ment, such as we find among no other people; 
from that careful and costly consecration of the 
corpse, which we still regard with wonder and 
astonishment in their mummies and other monu- 
ments. That all these solemn preparations, and 
the religious rites which accompanied them, that 
the inscriptions on the tombs and mummies had 
all a religious meaning and object, and were 
intimately connected with the doctrine of the 
transmigration of souls, can admit of no doubt, 
though it is a matter of greater dilficulty to 
ascertain with precision the peculiar ideas they 
were meant to express. Did the Egyptians 
believe that the soul did not separate imme- 
diately from the body which it has ceased to 
animate, but only on the decay and putrefaction 
of the corpse? Or did they wish, by their art 
of embalmment, to preserve the body from 
decay, in order to deliver the soul from the 
dreaded transmigration ? The Egyptian treat- 
ment of the dead would certainly seem to 
imply a belief that, for some time at least after 
death, there existed a certain connection be- 
tween the soul and body. Yet we cannot adopt 
this supposition to an unqualified extent, as it 
would be in contradiction to those symbolical 
representations that so frequently occur in Egyp- 
tian art, and in which the soul, immediately 
after death, is represented as summoned before 
the judgment-seat of God, severely accused by 
the liostile demon, but defended by the friendly 
and guardian spirit, who employs every resource 
to procure the deliverance and acquittal of the 
soul. Or did the Egyptians think that by all 
these rites, as by so many magical expedients, 
they would keep off the malevolent fiend from 
the soul, and obtain for it the succour of good 
and friendly divinities? Now, that the gates 
of hieroglyphic science have been at last opened, 
we may trust that a further progress in the 
science will disclose to us more satisfactory in- 
formation on all these topics. 

The Indians, however, who always remained 
total strangers to the mode of burial and treat- 
ment of the dead practised in Egypt, adopted a 
very different course to procure the deliverance 
of the human soul from ti-ansinigration : they 
had recourse to philosophy, to the highest aspir- 
ings of thought towards God, to a total and 
lasting immersion of feeling in the unikthoin- 



484 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



able abyss of the divine essence. They have 
never doubted that by this means a perfect 
union with the Deity might be obtained even 
in this life, and tliat thus the soul, emanci- 
pated from all mutation and migration through 
the various forms of animated nature in this 
world of illusion, might remain forever united 
with its God. Such is the object to which all 
the different systems of Indian philosophy tend 
— such is the term of 'all their inquiries. This 
philosophy contains a multitude of the sub- 
limest reflections on the separation from all 
earthly things, and on the union with the God- 
head ; and there is no high conception in this 
department of metaphysics, unknown to the 
Hindoos. But this absorption of all thought 
and all consciousness in God — this solitary en- 
during feeling of internal and eternal union 
with the Deity, they have carried to a pitch 
and extreme that may almost be called a moral 
and intellectual self-annihilation. This is the 
same philosophy, though in a different form, 
which, in the history of European intellect 
and science, has received the denomination of 
mysticism. The possible excesses, the perilous 
abyss in this philosophy has been in general ac- 
knowledged, and oven pointed out in particular 
cases, where egotism or pride has been detected 
under a secret disguise, or where this total ab- 
straction of thought and feeling has spurned all 
limit, measure, an<l law. In general, however, 
the European mind, by its more temperate and 
harmonious constitution, by the greater variety 
of its attainments, and, above all, by the purer 
and fuller light of revealed truth, has been pre- 
served from those aberrations of mysticism 
which in India have been carried to such a 
fearful extent, not only in speculation, but in 
real life and practice; and which, transcending 
as they do all the limits of human nature, far 
exceed the bounds of possibility, or what men 
have in general considered as such. And the 
apparently incredible things which the Greeks 
related more than two thousand years ago, 
respecting the recluses of India, or Gymnoso- 
phists, as they called those Yogis, are found to 
exist even at the present day ; and ocular ex- 
perience has fully corroborated the truth of 
their narratives. 



Of the political history of India, little can be 
said, for the Indians scarcely possess any regu- 
lar history — any works to which we should 
give the denomination of historical ; for their 
history is interwoven and almost confounded 
with mythology, and is to be found only in the 
old mythological works, especially in their two 
gieat national and epic poems, the Ramayan 
and the Mahabarat, and in the eighteen Puranas 
(the most select and classical of the popular 
and mythological legends of India), and per- 
haps in the traditionary history of particular 
dynasties and provinces ; and even the works 
«ve have mentioned are not merely of a mytho- 



historical, but in a great measure of a theolo- 
gical and philosophical purport. The more 
modern history of Hindostan, from the first 
Mahometan conquest at the commencement of 
the eleventh century of our era, can indeed be 
traced with pretty tolerable certainty; but as 
this portion of Indian history is unconnected 
with, and incapable of illustrating the true state 
and progress of the intellectual refinement of 
the Hindoos, it is of no importance to our imme- 
diate object. The more ancient history of that 
country, particularly in the earlier perioil, is 
mostly fabulous, or, to characterize it by a softer, 
and at the same time more correct name, a his- 
tory purely mythic and traditionary; and it 
would be no easy task to divest the real and 
authentic history of ancient India of the garb 
of mythology and poetical tradition ; a task 
which at least has not yet been executed with 
adequate critical acumen. 

Chronology, too, shares the same fate with the 
sister science of history, for in the early period 
it is fabulous, and in the more modern, it is 
often not sufficiently precise and accurate. The 
number of years assigned to the first three 
epochs of the world must be considered as pos- 
sessing an astronomical import, rather than as 
furnishing any criterion for an historical use. It 
is only the fourth and last period of the world — 
the age of progressive misery and all-prevailing 
wo, which the Indians term Caliyug — that we 
can in any way consider an historical epoch ; 
and this, the duration of which is computed at 
four thousand years, began about a thousand 
years before the Christian era. Of the progress 
and term of this period of the world, considered 
in reference to the history of mankind, the In- 
dians entertain a very simple notion. They 
believe that the condition of mankind will be- 
come at first much worse, but will be afterwards 
ameliorated. The regular historical epoch, when 
the chronology of India begins to acquire greater 
certainty, and from which indeed it is ordina- 
rily computed, is the age of King Vikramaditya, 
who reigned in the more civilized part of India, 
somewhat earlier than the Emperor Augustus, 
in the West, perhaps about sixty years before 
our era. It was at the court of this monarch, 
that nine of the most celebrated sages and poets 
of the second era of Indian literature flourished j 
and among these was Calidas, the author of the 
beautiful dramatic poem of Sacontala, so gene- 
rally known by the English and German trans- 
lations. It was in the age of Vikramaditya, that 
the later poetry and literature of India, of which 
Calidas was so bright an ornament, reached its 
full bloom. The elder Indian poetry, particu- 
larly the two great epic poems above mentioned, 
entirely belong to the early and more fabulous 
ages of the world ; so far at least as the poets 
themselves are assigned to those ages, and figure 
in some degree, as fabulous personages. We 
may, however, observe that in the style of po- 
etry, in art, and even in the language itself, 
there reigns a very great difference between 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



485 



tViese primitive heroic poems, and the works of 
CaliJas and other contemporary poets — the dif- 
ference is at least as great as that which exists 
between Homer and Theocritus, or the other 
Bucolic poets of Greece. The oldest of the two 
epic poems of the Indians, the Ramayana, by 
the poer Valimki, celebrates Rama, his love for 
a royal princess, the beautiful Sita, and his con- 
quest of Lanka, or the modern Isle of Ceylon. 
Although in the old historical Sagas of the In- 
dians, we find mention made of far-ruling mo- 
narchs and all-conquering heroes, still these 
traditions seem to show, as in the instance first 
cited, that in the oldest, as in the latest times, 
prior to foreign conquest, India was not united 
in one great monarchy, but was generally par- 
celled out into a variety of states; and this fact 
serves to prove that such has ever been in gene- 
ral the political condition of that country. The 
whole body of ancient Indian traditions and 
mythological history is to be found in the other 
great epic of the Indians, the Mahabarata, whose 
author, or at least compiler, was Vyasa, the 
founder of the Vedanta philosophy, the most 
esteemed and most prevalent of all the philoso- 
phical systems of the Hindoos. 

******* 

In the whole Indian philosophy, there are in 
fact only three different modes of thought, or 
three systems absolutely divergent, and we 
shall give a sufficiently clear idea of these sys- 
tems, if we say that the first is founded on na- 
ture, the second on thought, or on the thinking 
self, and the third attaches itself exclusively to 
the revelation comprised in the Vedas. The 
first system, which seems to be one of the most 
ancient, bears the name of the Sanchya philo- 
sophy — a name which signifies "the philosophy 
of Numbers." This is not to be understood in 
the Pythagorean sense, that numbers are the 
principle of all things, or according to the very 
similar principle laid down in the books of 
I-King, where we find the eight kona, or the 
symbolic, primary lines of all existence. But 
the Sanchya system bears this name because it 
reckons successively the first principles of all 
things and of all being to the number of four or 
five-and-twenty. Among these first principles, 
it assigns the highest place to Nature, the second 
to understanding, and by this is meant not 
merely human understanding, but general and 
even Infinite Intelligence; so that we may con- 
sider this system as a very partial philosophy 
of Nature; and indeed it has been regarded by 
some Indian writers as atheistical — a censure 
in which the learned Englishman, Mr. Cole- 
brooke (to whose extracts and notices we are 
indebted for our most precise information on 
this whole branch of Indian literature), seems 
almost inclined to concur. This system was, 
however, by no means a coarse materialism, or 
a denial of the Divinity and of everything sa- 
cred. The doubts expressed in the passages 
cited by Mr. Colebrooke, are directed far more 
against the Creation than against God; they 



regard the motive which could have induced 
the Supreme Being, the Spirit of infinite perfec- 
tion, to create the external world, and the pos 
sibility of such a creation. 

This Sanchya Philosophy would be more 
properly designated in our modern philosophic 
phraseology as a system of complete Dualism, 
where two substances are represented as coex- 
istent — on one hand, a self-existent energy of 
Nature, which emanated, or eternally emanates, 
from itself; and on the other hand, eternal truth, 
or the Supreme and Infinite Mind. 

The Indian Philosophers in general were so 
inclined to regard the whole outward world of 
sense, as the product of illusion, as a vain and 
idle apparition, that we can well imagine they 
were unable to reconcile the creation of such a 
world (which appeared to them a world of 
darkness, or perhaps, on a somewhat higher 
scale, as an intermediate state of illusion,) with 
their mystical notion of the infinite perfection 
of the Supreme Being and Eternal Spirit. For 
even in Ethics they were wont to place the idea 
of Supreme Perfection in a state of .absolute 
repose, but not (at least to an equal degree) in 
the state of active energy or exertion. Great 
as the error of such a system of dualism may 
be, there is yet a mighty difference between a 
philosophy which denies, or at least miscon- 
ceives, the Creation, and one which denies the 
existence of the Deity ; for such atheism never 
occurred to the minds of those philosophers. 
The doctrine of a primary self-existing energy 
in Nature, or of the eternity of the Universe, 
may, in a practical point of view, appear as 
gross an error, but in philosophy we must make 
accurate distinctions, and forbear to place this 
ancient dualism on the same level with that 
coarse materialism, that destructive and athe- 
istic Atomical philosophy, or any other doctrines 
professed by the later sects of a dialectic Ra- 
tionalism. 

Valuable, undoubtedly, as are such extracts 
and communications from the originals in a 
branch of human science still so little known, 
yet they will not alone suffice, and, without a 
certain philosophic flexibility of talent in the 
inquirer, they will fail to afford him a proper 
insight into the true nature, the real spirit and 
tendency of those ancient systems of philosophy. 
That the Indian philosophy, even when it has 
started from the most opposite principles, and 
when its circuitous or devious course has 
branched more or less widely from the common 
path, is sure to wind round, and fall into the 
one general track — the uniform term of all In- 
dian philosophy — is well exemplified by the 
second part of the Sanchya system (called the 
Yoga philosophy), where we find a totally dif- 
ferent principle proclaimed; and while it ut- 
terly abandons the primary doctrine of a self- 
existent principle in Nature laid down in the 
first part of the philosophy, it unfohls those 
maxims of Indian mysticism which recur in 
every department of Hindoo literature. That 
41* 



(86 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



total absorption in the one thought of the Deity, 
that entire abstraction from all the impressions 
and notions of sense — that suspension of all 
outward, and in part even of inward life, ef- 
fected by the energy of a will tenaciously fixed 
and entirely concentrated on a single point, and 
by which, according to the belief of the Indians, 
miraculous power and supernatural knowledge 
are attained — are held up in the second part of 
the Sanchya system as the highest term of all 
mental exertion. The word, Yoga, signifies the 
complete union of ail our thoughts and faculties 
with God, by which alone the soul £an be freed, 
that is, delivered from the unhappy lot of trans- 
migration ; and this, and this only, forms the 
object of all Indian philosophy. 

The Indian name of Yogi is derived from the 
same word, which designates this philosophy. 
The Indian Yogi is a hermit or penitent, who, 
absorbed in this mystic contemplation, remains 
often for years fixed immovably to a single spot. 
In order to give a lively representation of a 
phenomenon so strange to us, which appears 
totally incredible and almost impossible, although 
it has been repeatedly attested by eye-witnesses, 
and is a well-ascertained historical fact, I will 
extract from the drama of Sacontala by the poet 
Calidas, a description of a Yogi, remarkable for 
its vivid accuracy, or, to use the expression of 
the German commentator, its fearful beauty. 
King Dushmanta inquires of Indra's charioteer 
the sacred abode of him whom he seeks; and 
to this the charioteer replies:* "A little beyond 
the grove, where you see a pious Yogi, motion- 
less as a pollard, holding his thick bushy hair 
and fixing his eyes on the solar orb. Mark — 
his body is half covered with a white ant's edi- 
fice made of raised clay; the skin of a snake 
supplies the place of his sacerdotal thread, and 
part of it girds his loins; a number of knotty 
plants encircle and wound his neck ; and sur- 
rounding birds' nests almost conceal his shoul- 
ders." We must not take this for the invention 
of fancy, or the exaggeration of a poet ; the ac- 
curacy of this description is confirmed by the 
testimony of innumerable eye-witnesses, who 
recount the same fact, and in precisely similar 
colors. During that period of wonderful phe- 
nomena and supernatural powers — the first 
three centuries of the Christian church — we 
meet with only one Simon Stylites, or column- 
stander; and his conduct is by no means held 
up by Christian writers as a model of imitation, 
but is regarded, at best, as an extraordinary ex- 
ception permitted on certain special grounds. 
In the Lulian forests and deserts, and in the 
neighborhood of those holy places of pilgrimage 
mentioned above, there are many hundreds of 
these hermits — those strange human phenomena 
of the highest intellectual abstraction or delusion. 
Even the Greeks were acquainted with them, 
and, among so many other wonders, make men- 

* We liave transcribed Sir William Jones' own words, 
as given in bis translation of Sacontala. 



tion of them, in their description of India, under 
the name of the Gymnosopliists. Formerlj 
such accounts would have been regarded as 
incredible, and as exceeding the bounds of pos- 
sibility; but such conjectures can be of no avail 
against historical facts repeatedly attested and 
undeniably proved. Now that men are better 
acquainted with the wonderful flexibility of 
human organization, and with those marvellous 
powers which slumber concealed within it, they 
are less disposed to form light and hasty deci- 
sions on phenomena of this description. The 
whole is indeed a inagical intellectual self-ex- 
altation, accomplished by the energy of the will 
concentrated on a single point: and this con- 
centration of the mind, when carried to this ex- 
cess, may lead not merely to a figurative, but to 
a real intellectual self-annihilation, and to the 
disorder of all thought, even of the brain. While 
on the one hand we must remain amazed at the 
strength of a will so tenaciously and persever- 
ingly fixed on an object purely spiritual, we 
must, on the other hand, be filled with profound 
regret at the sight of so much energy wasted for 
a purpose so erroneous, and in a manner so 
appalling. 

The second species of Indian philosophy, to- 
tally different from the other two kinds, and 
which proceeds not from Nature, but from the 
principle of thought and from the thinking self, 
is comprised in the Nyaya system, whose foun- 
der was Gautama, a personage whom several 
of the earlier investigators of Indian literature, 
particularly Dr. Taylor, in his Translation of 
the "Prabodha Chandrodaya" (page 116), have 
confounded with the founder of the Buddhist 
sect, as both bear the same name. But a closer 
inquiry has proved them to be distinct persons; 
and Mr. Colebrooke himself finds greater points 
of coincidence or affinity between the Sanchyd 
philosophy and Buddhism, than between tlie 
latter and the Nyaya system. This Nyaya phi- 
losophy, proceeding from the act of thought, 
comprises in the doctrine of particulars, distinc- 
tions and subdivisions, the application of the 
thinking principle; and this part of the system 
embraces all which among the Greeks went 
under the name of logic or dialectic ; and which 
with us is partly classed under the same head. 
Very many writings and commentaries have 
been devoted to the detailed treatment and ex- 
position of these subjects, which the Indians 
seem to have discussed with almost the saine 
ditfuseness, or at least copiousness, as the Greeks. 
Like the Indians, the learned Englishman, who 
has first unlocked to our view this department 
of Indian literature, has paid comparatively 
most attention to this second part of the Nyayd 
philosophy. But all this logical philosophy, 
though it may furnish one more proof (if such 
be necessary) of the extreme richness, variety, 
and refineinent of the intellectual culture of the 
Hindoos, yet possesses no immediate interest for 
the object we here propose to ourselves. Mr. 

I Colebrooke remarks, however, that the funda- 



F. SCHLEGEL. 



48'. 



mental tenets of this philosophy comprise, as 
indeed is evident, not merely a logic in the or- 
dinary acceptation of the word, but the meta- 
physics of all logical science. On this part of 
the subject, I could have wished that in the 
authentic extracts he has given us from the 
Sancrit originals, he had more distinctly educed 
the leading doctrines of the system, and thus 
furnished us with adequate data for forming 
a judgment on the general character of this phi- 
losophy, as well as on its points of coincidence 
with other systems, and with the philosophy of 
the Buddhists. For although it appears to be 
well ascertained that the religion of Buddha 
sprang from some perverted system of Hindoo 
philosophy, yet the points of transition to such 
a religious creed existing in the Indian systems 
of philosophy have not yet been clearly pointed 
out. The Vedanta philosophy must here evi- 
dently be excepted ; for to this Buddhism is as 
much opposed as to the old Indian religion of 
the Vedas. Moreover that endless confusion 
and unintelligibleness of the Buddhist metaphy- 
sics, which we have before spoken of, may first 
be traced to the source o." Idealism ; though in 
the progress of that philosophy, many errors 
have been associated with it, errors wliich even, 
in its origin, were most widely removed from 
it ; for every system of error asserts and even 
believes that it is perfectly consistent, though in 
none is such consistency found. 

The basis and prevailing tendency of lihe 
Nyaya system (to judge from the extracts with 
which we have been furnished) is most decid- 
edly ideal. On the whole we can very well 
conceive that a system of philosophy beginning 
with the higliest act of tliought, or proceeding 
from the thinking self, should run into a course 
of the most decided and absolute idealism, and 
that tiie general inclinatio.i of the Indian pliilo- 
sophers to regard the whole external world of 
sense as vain illusion, and to represent indivi- 
dual personality as absorbed in the Godhead 
by the most intimate union, should have given 
birth to a complete system of self-delusion — a 
diabolic self-idolatry, very congenial with the 
principles of that most ancient of all anti-chris- 
tian sects — the Buddhists. 

The Indian authorities cited by Colebrooke 
impute to the second part of the Nyaya philo- 
sophy a strong leaning to the atomical system. 
We must here recollect that, as the Indian mind 
pursued the most various and opposite paths of 
inquiry even in philosophy, there were besides 
the six most prevalent philosophic systems, re- 
ccignized as generally conformable to religion, 
several others in direct opposition to the esta- 
blished doctrines on the Deity and on religion. 
Among these the Charvaca. philosophy, which, 
according to Mr. Colebrooke, comprises the 
metaphysics of the sect of Jains, deserves a 
passing notice. It is a system of complete ma- 
terialism founded on the atomical doctrines, 
such as Epicurus taught, and which met with 
so much favor and adhesion in the declining 



ages of Greece and Rome ; doctrines which 
several moderns have revived in latter times, 
but which the profound investigations of natural 
philosophy, now so far advanced, will scarcely 
ever permit to take root again. 

The third species or branch of Indian philo- 
sophy, is that which is attached to the Vedas, 
and to the sacred revelation and traditions they 
contain. The first part of this philosophy — the 
Mimansd — is, according to Mr. Colebrooke, more 
immediately devoted to the interpretation of the 
Vedas, and most probably contains the funda- 
mental rules of interpretation, or the leading 
principles, whereby independent reason is made 
to harmonize with the word of revelation con- 
veyed by sacred tradition. The second or 
finished part of the system is called the Vedanta 
philosophy. The last word in this term, " Ve- 
danta," ■which is compounded of two roots, is 
equivalent to the German word ende (end), or 
still more to the Latin, finis, and denotes the 
end or ultimate object of any effort; and so the 
entire term Vedanta will signify a philosophy 
which reveals the true sense, the internal spirit, 
and the proper object of the Vedas, and of the 
primitive revelation of Brahma comprised there- 
in. This Vedanta philosophy is the one which 
now generally exerts the greatest influence on 
Indian literature and Indian life; and it is very 
possible that some of the six recognized, or at 
least tolerated, systems of philosophy, may have 
been purposely thiown into the back-ground, or, 
when they clashed too rudely with the princi- 
ples of the prevailing system, have been soft- 
ened down by their partisans, and have thus 
come to us in that state. A wide field is here 
opened to the future research and critical inqui 
lies of Indian scholars. 

This Vedanta philosophy is, in its general 
tendency, a complete system of Pantheism ; but 
not the rigid, mathematical, abstract, negative 
Pantheism of some modern thinkers ; for such 
a total denial of all personality in God, and of 
all freedom in man, is incompatible witli the 
attachment which the Vedanta philosophy pro- 
fesses for sacred tradition and ancient mytho- 
logy; and accordingly a modified, poetical, and 
half- mythological system of Pantheism, may 
here naturally be expected, and actually exists. 
Even in the doctrine of the immortality of the 
soul, and of the Metempsychosis, the ])ersonal 
existence of the human soul, inculcated by the 
ancient faith, is not wholly denied or rejected 
by this more modern system of philosophy; 
though on the whole it certainly is not exempt 
from the charge of Pantheism. But all the sys- 
tems of Indian philosophy tend more or less to 
one practical aim — namely, the final deliver- 
ance and eternal emancipation of the soul i'rom 
the old calamity — the dreaded fate — the fright- 
ful lot-^of being compelled to wander through 
the dark regions of nature — through the various 
forms of the brute creation — and to change ever 
anew its terrestrial shape. The second point 
in which the ditl'erent systems of Indian philo- 



«88 



F. SCHLEGEI . 



sopliy mostly agree is this, that the various 
sacrifices prescribed for this end in the Vedas, 
are not free from blame or vice, partly on ac- 
count of the eifusion of blood necessarily con- 
nected with animal sacrifice — and partly on 
account of the inadequacy of such sacrifices to 
the final deliverance of the soul, useful and 
salutary though they be in other respects. 

The general and fundamental doctrine of the 
Metempsychosis has rendered the destruction 
of animals extremely repulsive to Indian feel- 
ings, from the strong apprehension that a case 
may occur where, unconsciously and innocently, 
one may violate or injure the soul of some former 
relative in its present integument. But even 
the Vedas themselves inculcate the necessity 
of that sublime science which rises above na- 
ture, for the attainment of the full and final de- 
liverance of the soul; as is expressed in an old 
remarkable passage of the Vedas, thus literally 
translated by Mr. Colebrooke.* " Man must 
recognise the soul — man must separate it from 
nature — then it comes not again — then it comes 
not again." These last words signify, Then the 
soul is delivered from the danger of a return to 
earth — from the misfortune of transmigration, 
and it remains forever united to God ; a union 
which can be obtained only by that pure sepa- 
ration from nature, which is that sublimest sci- 
ence, invoked in the first words of this passage. 

Animal sacrifices for the souls of the departed, 
particularly for those of deceased parents, which 
were regarded as the most sacred duty of the 
son and of the posterity, were among those re- 
ligious usages which occupied an important 
place in the patriarchal ages, and were most 
deeply interwoven with the whole arrangement 
of life in tliat primitive period, as is evident 
from all those Indian rites, and the system of 
doctrines akin to them. These sacrifices are 
certainly of very ancient origin, and may well 
have been derived from the mourning father of 
mankind, and the first pair of hostile brothers. 
To tliese may afterwards have been added all 
that multitude of religious rites and doctrines, 
or marvellous theories respecting the immortal 
soul and its ulterior destinies. Hence the in- 
dispensable obligation of marriage for the Brah- 
mins, in order to insure the blessing of legiti- 
mate cifispring, regarded as one of the highest 

♦ See Colebrooke's article on the Vedas, in the eighth 
volume of Asiatic Besearches. 



objects of existence in the patriarchal ages, foi 
the prayers of the son only could obtain the 
deliverance, and secure the repose, of a departed 
parent's soul ; and this was one of his most 
sacred duties. The high reverence for women, 
among the Indians, rests on the same religious 
notion, as is expressed by the old poet in these 
lines : 

** Woman is man's better half. 
Woman is man's bosom friend, 
Woman is redemption's source. 
From Woman springs tlie liberator." 

This last line signifies, what we mentioned 
above, that the son is the Liberator appointed 
by God, to deliver by prayer the soul of his 
deceased father. The poet then continues: — 
" Women are the friends of the solitary — they 
solace him with their sweet converse; like to 
a father, in discharge of duty, consoling as a 
mother in misfortune." 

We should scarcely conceive it possible (and 
it certainly tends to prove the original power, 
copiousness and flexibility of the human mind) 
that, by the side of a false mysticism totally 
sunk and lost in the abyss of the eternally in- 
comprehensible and unfathomable, like the In- 
dian philosophy, a rich, various, beautiful and 
highly- wrought poetry should have existed. 
The Epic narrative of the old Indian poems 
bears a great resemblance to the Homeric poetry, 
in its inexhaustible copiousness, in the touching 
simplicity of its antique forms, in justness of 
feeling, and accuracy of delineation. Yet in its 
subjects, and in the prevailing tone of its My- 
thological fictions, this Indian Epic poetry is 
characterized by a style of fancy incomparably 
more gigantic, such as occasionally prevails in 
the mythology of Hesiod — in the accounts of the 
old Titanic wars — or in the fabulous world of 
.^schylus, and of the Doric Pindar. In the 
tenderness of amatory feeling, in the description 
of female beauty, of the character and domestic 
relations of woman, the Indian poetry may be 
compared to the purest and noblest effusions of 
Christian poesy; though, on the whole, from 
the Ihoroughly mythical nature of its subjects, 
and from the rhythmical forms of its speech, it 
bears a greater resemblance to that of the an- 
cients. Among the latter poets, Calidas, who 
is the most renowned and esteemed in the dra- 
matic poetry of the Indians, might be called, 
by way of comparison, an Idyllic and senti- 
mental Sophocles. 



NOVALIS. (FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG), 



Born 1772. Died 1801. 



NovAus is known as the associate of Tieck 
and the Schlegels in establishing the Romantic 
School of Poetry which blossomed in Germany 
toward the close of the last century. But No- 
valis possesses a significance independent of 
any clique, and, amid this famed constellation, 
shines as a particular star, with proper and in- 
dividual lustre. The literary firmament of 
Germany has many greater lights, but none 
fairer. His contributions to the national lite- 
rature are insignificant in extent, and consist, 
for the most part, of firagments and rhapsodies; 
but the little he wrote is instinct with a rare 
and noble spirit, and the effect has been alto- 
gether disproportionate to the bulk. 

A singular charm invests this youth. For 
youth he was at the time of his death. His pre- 
mature decease enhances the interest created 
by his lofty aims and his deep-eyed enthusiasm, 
imparting a certain ideal and heroic beauty to 
the early lost, whose germ of golden promise 
was not permitted to unfold in this present. 
Purity of heart, religious fervor, deep poetic 
feeling, and mystic inwardness, combined with 
true philosophic genius and scientific attain- 
ments far above the standard of general scho- 
larship, constitute his distinguishing charac- 
teristics. 

Friedrich von Hardenberg was born in the 
county of Mansfeld, in Saxony. His father 
(Baron von Hardenberg) and his mother were 
members of the Moravian Communion, pro- 
foundly religious, without narrowness or bigotry. 
He was one of eleven children, all of whom are 
said to have been distinguished by remarkable 
endowments of mind and heart. As a child, 
he was weakly, and discovered but little intel- 
lect. But after a dangerous illness, which oc- 
curred in his ninth year, he seemed to wake 
as from a dream, and thenceforward showed 
himself a youth of rare promise. He studied 
successively at the universities of Jena, Leipzig 
and Witlemberg, but chose a practical calling 
for his pursuit, in preference to the learned 
professions, and held an office under his father, 
wlio was director of the government salt-works 
in Saxony. 

3u 



The critical event of his life was the death 
of his betrothed, Sophie v. K., who is repre- 
sented as a being of preternatural beauty of 
person and of soul. " The first glimpse," says 
Tieck,* "of this beautiful and wondrous lovely 
form determined his whole life ; nay, we may 
say, that the sentiment which penetrated and 
animated liim became the theme of his whole 
life." * * * " All who knew this wonder- 
ful beloved of our friend, are agreed that no 
description can express with what a grace and 
heavenly charm this unearthly being moved, 
what beauty shone around her, wliat pathos 
and majesty invested her. Novalis became a 
poet whenever he spoke of her." She died the 
day but one succeeding her fifteenth birth-day, 
the 19th March, 1797. "No one dared to com- 
municate the tidings to Novalis. At length, 
his brother Carl undertook it. The mourner 
locked himself up for three days and nights, 
and then journeyed to Arnstadt, that, with 
faithful friends, he might he nearer the beloved 
spot which now concealed the remains of this 
most precious being." * * * "At this 
period, Novalis lived only in his grief; it be- 
came natural to him to regard the visible and 
the invisible world as one, and to distinguish 
between life and death only by his longing for 
the latter. At the same time, life became to 
him transfigured, and his whole being was dis- 
solved as in a lucid, conscious dream of a higher 
existence." 

Novalis died within four years from the date 
of this affliction. That term comprises near'.y 
all his writings. 

" Since he had so far outstripped his age, his 
country was authorized to expect extraordinary 
things of him, had not this early death over- 
taken him. The unfinished writings he has 
left behind him have already wrought much ; 
many of his great thoughts will exert their in- 
spiration in the future, and noble minds and 
deep thinkers will be enlightened and in- 
flamed by the scintillations of his spirit." 

* See the biographical sketch prefixed to Tieck and Fr. 
Schlegel's edition of Novalis' works, from which this ac 
count is taken. 

(189) 



490 



NOVALIS. 



"Novalis was tall, slender, and of noble pro- 
portions. He wore his light-brown hair in pen- 
dent locks ; his hazel eye was clear and gleam- 
ing ; and the complexion of his countenance, 
especially of the intellectual forehead, almost 
transparent." * * * "Profile and expres- 
sion resembled very nearly the Evangelist John, 
as we see him in the glorious great picture of A. 
Dilrer, preserved at Niirnberg and Miinchen." 

"His conversation was lively and loud, his 
gesticulation noble. I have never seen him 
wearied ; even when we continued the conver- 
sation far into the night, he put a stop to it 
only by an effort of the will, in order to rest, 
and still read before he slept. Ennui he knew 
not, even in oppressive company with mediocre 
heads, for he was sure to discover some person 
who could impart to him a new knowledge 
which might be of use to him, insignificant as 
it seemed. His kindliness, his open communi- 
cation, made him everywhere beloved. His 
skill in the art of conversation was so great, 
that inferior heads never perceived how far he 
overlooked them. Though in conversation he 
loved best to uncover the depths of the soul, 
and spoke with enthusiasm of the regions of 
the invisible, he was yet frolicsome as a child, 
jested with unembarrassed cheerfulness, and 
gave nimself to the jests of the company. 
Without vanity or pride of learning, a stranger 
to all affectation and hypocrisy, he was a 
genuine, true man, the purest and loveliest 
embodiment of a lofty, immortal mind." 

" His true studies, for several years, had 
been philosophy and physics. In the latter, 
his observations, combinations, and surmises, 
often outstripped his time. In philosophy, he 
studied especially Spinoza and Fichte. * * * 
His knowledge of mathematics and the me- 
chanic arts, especially mining, was remarkable. 
On the other hand, he was but little interested 
in the fine arts. Music he loved much, but 
had only a superficial knowledge of it; to 
sculpture and painting his mind was not much 
drawn, although he could express the most 
original ideas and the highest surmises respect- 
ing all these arts. Thus I remember, e.g. a. con- 
troversy respecting landscape-painting, in which 



I could not comprehend his view ; but the ex- 
cellent landscape-painter, Friedrich, in Dres- 
den, has since actualized it, in great part, out 
of his own rich, poetic mind. * * * Goethe 
had long been his study ; he preferred before 
all other works Wilhelm Meister, as little as 
one would suppose it, from his severe criticism 
of this work in his Fragments." * * * 

" It had become with him the most natural 
view to regard the commonest, nearest, as 
miraculous, and the strange, the supernatural, 
as something common. Thus, every-day life 
itself environed him like a wondrous tale, and 
that region which most men but surmise or 
doubt, as distant, incomprehensible, was to 
him a beloved home. Thus he invented, un- 
bribed by examples, a new mode of representa- 
tion; and in many-sidedness of reference, in 
his view of love, in his faith in it — as for him, 
at once, instructress, wisdom, religion ; — in 
that a single great life-moment and one deep 
pain and loss became the substance of his 
poetry and his contemplation, he alone among 
moderns resembles the sublime Dante, and 
sings to us, like him, an unfathomable mystic 
song, very different from that of many imitators 
who think they can put on and put off mysti- 
cism like an ornament. Therefore is, also, 
his Romance* consciously and unconsciously 
but the representation of his own mind and 
destiny ; as he himself makes his Heinrich 
say, in the fragment of the second part, that 
destiny and mind are names of one idea." 

Novalis did not leave the Lutheran Church 
for the Church of Rome, as has been falsely 
asserted.f 



* Heinrich yon Ofterdingen. 

t See Tieck's preface to the fifth edition of Novalis' 
works, in which he says: "I may affirm that to my 
friend Hardenberg this transition into another Christian 
Communion from the Lutheran, in which he was born, 
was utterly impossible." This fifth edition excludes the 
essay entitled "Christianity or Europe," which it seems 
had been inserted in the fourth edition without Tieck's 
consent, by Fr. von Schlegel, as seeming to favor Ro- 
manism. This essay, when offered for publication in the 
Athenaeum, in 1799, had been rejected by a committee 
of the friends of the author, consisting of Tieck, the two 
Schlegels, and Schelling, as •' weak and unsatisfactory," 
and altogether unworthy of Novalis' genius. 



NOVALIS, 



491 



FROM HEINRICH VON OFTERDINGEN* 

THE VISIT TO THE CAVE. 

[HEiifHicH is travelling, with his mother, to 
Augsburg, the residence of his grandfather. 
Several merchants, bound in the same direction, 
join their company. At an inn on the road 
they fall in with an aged miner, who entertains 
them with matters pertaining to his craft. At 
length, he proposes an expedition to some caves 
in the vicinity, in which he is joined by Hein- 
rich, by the merchants, and by several villagers.] 

The evening was cheerful and warm. The 
moon stood in mild glory above the hills, and 
caused wondrous dreams to arise in all crea- 
tures. Herself a dream of the sun, she lay above 
the introverted dream-world, and led Nature, 
divided with innumerable boundaries, back into 
that fabulous prime, when each germ still slum- 
bered within itself, and, solitary and untouched, 
longed in vain to unfold the dark fulness of its 
measureless being. The wonder-story of the 
evening mirrored itself in Heinrich's mind. It 
seemed to him as if the world reposed unco- 
vered within him, and exhibited to him, as to a 
guest, all its treasures and its hidden charms. 
The grand and simple appearance around him 
seemed to him so intelligible. He thought Na- 
ture incomprehensible to man, only because she 
piles up around him the nearest, the most inti- 
mate, with such lavishness of manifold expres- 
sion. The words of the old man liad opened a 
hidden tapestry-door within him. He saw that 
his little chamber was built contiguous to a lofty 
minster, out of whose floor of stone arose the 
grave fore-world, while from the dome, the 
clear, glad future, in the form of angel-children, 
hovered singing above it. Mighty voices trem- 
bled through the silvery song, and through tlie 
wide portals all creatures entered in, each ex- 
pressing its inner nature in a simple petition, 
and a dialect peculiar to itself. How did he 
wonder that this luminous view, which was 
now already become indispensable to his exist- 
ence, had so long been foreign to him ! Now 
he overlooked at once all his relations with the 
wide world around him, and comprehended all 
the strange conceptions and suggestions which 
he had often experienced in the contemplation 
of it. The story told by the merchants, of the 
youth who studied nature so diligently, and who 
became the son-in-law of a king, came into his 
mind, and a thousand other reminiscences of his 
life associated themselves, of their own accord, 
by a magic thread. 

While Heinrich gave himself up to his medi- 
tations, the company had approached the cave. 
The entrance was low; the old man took a 
torch, and clatnbering over some stones, entered 

* An unfinished Romance, which the author designed, 
he says, to be " an apotheosis of Poetry." The first part 
coiitainK the initiation of the poet; the second his Irans- 
finiirutiun. The name of the hero is that of an actual 
German poet or Minneainger of the 13th century.— Tr. 



first. A quite perceptible current of air streamed 
toward him, and the old man assured them that 
they might follow with safety. The most timid 
went last, and held their weapons in readiness. 
Heinrich and the merchants walked behind the 
miner, and the boy strode briskly by his side. 
The way, at first, was through a somewhat nar- 
row passage, but soon terminated in a very ex- 
tensive and lofty cave, which the glare of the 
torches was unable wholly to illumine. One 
saw, however, in the background, several open- 
ings, which lost themselves in the wall of rock. 
The floor was soft and tolerably even; likewise 
the walls and the ceiling were not rough or 
irregular. But what especially engaged the 
attention of all, was the countless multitude of 
bones and teeth which strewed the floor. Some 
of them were perfectly preserved, in others 
there were marks of corruption, and those which 
here and there protruded from the walls, seemed 
to have become petrified. Most of them were 
of unusual size and strength. The old miner 
rejoiced in these relics of a primeval age ; only 
the peasants had misgivings about them, for 
they regarded thein as manifest traces of beasts 
of prey at hand, although the old man pointed 
out to them most convincingly the evidences of 
an inconceivable antiquity, and asked thein if 
they had ever noticed any signs of ravages 
among their herds, or of the plunder of human 
neighbors, and whether they could regard these 
bones as those of known animals or men ? The 
old man wished now to penetrate farther into 
the mountain, but the peasants deemed it ad- 
visable for them to retreat, and to await his 
entrance before the cave. Heinrich, the mer- 
chants, and the boy, remained with the miner, 
and provided themselves with ropes and torches. 
They soon reached a second cave, and the old 
man did not forget to mark the passage through 
which they had entered, by a figure composed 
of bones, which he placed before it. Tlris cave 
resembled the first, and was equally rich in 
animal remains. 

Heinrich experienced a strange awe ; it struck 
him as if he were wandering through the fore- 
courts of the inner earth-palace. Heaven and 
earth were suddenly far removed from him ; 
and these dark, wide halls appeared to belong 
to a wondrous subterranean kingdom. He 
thought within himself, were it not possible 
that a separate world stirs this monstrous life 
beneath our feet? that unheard-of births have 
their being and their doings in the fastnesses 
of the earth, which the interior fire of the dark 
womb works up into gigantic forms of spirit- 
power? Might not, some time, these awful 
strangers, driven forth by the in-pressing cold, 
appear among us, while perhaps, at the same 
tiine, heavenly guests — living, speaking Powers 
of the star-world — becaine visible above our 
heads? Are these bones the remains of emi- 
grations toward the surface, or signs of a flight 
into the deeps? 

Suddenly, the old man called to the rest, and 



492 



NOVALIS. 



Ehowed them a human footstep quite fresh on 
the floor of the cave. No others appeared ; so 
he thought they might follow this trace without 
fear of meeting with robbers. * * * 

After some searching, they found in an angle 
of the side-wall, on the right, a sloping passage, 
into which the footsteps appeared to lead. Soon 
they thought they could perceive a brightness, 
which grew stronger the nearer they approached. 
A new vault, of greater extent than the former, 
opened itself before them, in the background of 
which they saw, sitting by a lamp, the figure of 
a man, who had a large book lying before him 
on a stone tablet, in which he seemed to be 
reading. He turned himself toward them, rose 
and came to meet them. He looked neither old 
nor young, no traces of time were perceptible 
in him, except his straight grey hairs, which 
were parted on the forehead. He had soles 
bound to his feet, and seemed to have no other 
clothing except a wide mantle which was folded 
about him, and made more prominent his large 
and noble form. It seemed as if he were re- 
ceiving expected guests in his dwelling. 

"It is kind in you to visit me," he said; "you 
are the first friends I have seen here, as long as 
I have lived in this place. It would seem that 
people are beginning to consider more atten- 
tively our large and wondrous house." The old 
man replied : " We did not expect to find here 
so friendly a host. We were told of wild beasts 
and goblins, and find ourselves very agreeably 
deceived. If we have disturbed you in your 
devotions and profound contemplations, pardon 
thus much to our curiosity." " Can any contem- 
plation be more delightful," said the unknown, 
" than that of glad and congenial human faces ? 
Do not think me a misanthrope, because you find 
nie in this solitude. I have not fled the world, 
I have only sought a place of rest, where I 
might pursue my meditations undisturbed." 
"Do you never repent your resolution? and are 
there not hours when you feel afraid, and when 
your heart longs for a human voice?" 

" Not now. There was a time, in my youth, 
when ardent enthusiasm induced me to become 
a recluse. Dim presentiments occupied my 
youthful imagination. I hoped to find full nou- 
rishment for my heart in solitude. Inexhaustible 
seemed to me the fountain of my inner life. 
But I soon perceived that one must bring with 
him abundance of experiences, that a young 
heart cannot be alone, nay, that it is only by 
manifold converse with his kind, that man can 
acquire a certain self-subsistence. * * * 
The dangers and vicissitudes of war, the high 
poetic spirit which accompanies a war-host, 
tore me from my youthful solitude, and deter- 
mined the fortunes of my life. It may be, that 
the long tumult, the numberless events which I 
witnessed, have expanded yet farther my taste 
for solitude. Innumerable reminiscences are 
entertaining company, — the more entertaining 
the more varied the glance with which we 
overlook them, and which now first discovers 



their true connection, the deep meaning of their 
sequence, and the import of their phenomena. 
The true understanding of human history does 
not unfold itself till late, and rather under the 
still influences of recollection, than imder tVie 
more powerful impressions of the present time. 
The nearest events seem but loosely connected, 
but they sympathize all the more wonderfully 
with remote ones ; and only then when one is 
in a condition to overlook a long series, and 
neither to take everything literally, nor, with 
wanton vagaries, to confound the true order, 
does one perceive the secret concatenation of 
the former and the future, and learn to com- 
pound history out of hope and memory. Only 
he, however, to whom the entire fore-time is 
present, can succeed in discovering the simple 
rule of history. We attain only to imperfect, 
cumbrous formulas, and may be glad if we can 
but find for ourselves an available prescript, 
which shall give us satisfactory solutions for our 
own short life. But I may ventme to affirm 
that every careful contemplation of the fates of 
life affords a deep and inexhaustible enjoyment, 
and, of all thoughts, exalts us most above earthly 
ills. Youth reads history only from curiosity, 
like an entertaining wonder-tale ; to riper age 
it becomes a heavenly, consoling and edifying 
friend, who by her wise discourses gently pre- 
pares us for a higher, more comprehensive 
career, and by means of intelligible images, 
makes us acquainted with the unknown world. 
The Church is the dwelling-house of History, 
and the still churchyard her emblematic flower- 
garden. Only aged. God-fearing men should 
write of History, whose own history is nearly 
at an end, and who have nothing more to hope 
for, but to be transplanted into the garden. Not 
gloomy and troubled will their account be; — 
rather, a ray from the cupola will exhibit every- 
thing in the most correct and beautiful light, 
and a holy Spirit will hover over those strangely 
moved waters." * * * " When I consider 
all these things aright, it seems to me as if the 
historian should be a poet also, for only poets 
understand the art of presenting events in their 
true connection. In their narratives and fables, 
I have observed with silent pleasure a delicate 
feeling for the mysterious spirit of life. There 
is more truth in their wonder-stories than in 
learned chronicles. Although the personages 
and their fortunes are fictitious, the sense in 
which they are invented is true and natural. It 
is to a certain extent indiflerent, as it regards 
our entertainment and our instruction, whether 
the persons in whose destinies we trace our 
own, actually lived or not. What we want is 
an intuition of the great, simple soul of the phe- 
nomena of time. If this wish is satisfied, we 
do not trouble ourselves about the accidental 
existence of the external figures." * * * 
" Since I have inhabited this cave," continued 
the recluse, " I have learned to meditate more 
of the olden time. It is indescribable how this 
study attracts. I can imagine the love which a 



NOVALIS. 



493 



miner must have for his handicraft. When 1 
look at these strange old bones which are ga- 
thered together here in such a mighty multitude, 
when I think of the wild time in which these 
foreign, monstrous animals, impelled, perhaps, 
by fear and alarm, crowded in dense masses 
into tliese caves, and here found their deatli ; 
when, again, I ascend to the times in which 
these caverns grew together, and vast floods 
covered the land, I appear to myself like a 
dream of the future, like a child of the everlast- 
ing peace. How quiet and peaceful, how mild 
and clear is Nature at the present day, com- 
pared with those violent, gigantic times! The 
most fearful tempest, the most appalling earth- 
quake in our days, is but a faint echo of those 
terrific birth-throes. It may be, that the vege- 
table and animal world, and even the human 
beings of that time, if any there were on single 
islands in this ocean, had a different structure, 
more firm and rude. At least, one ought not 
to charge the traditions, which tell of a race of 
giants, with fabrication." 

'•'It is pleasant," said the old man, "to observe 
the gradual pacification of nature. There ap- 
pears to have formed itself gradually, a more 
and more intimate agreement, a more peaceful 
communion, a mutual assistance and animation ; 
and we can look forward to ever better times. 
Possibly, here and there the old leaven may 
still ferment, and some violent convulsions may 
ensue, but we can discern, notwithstanding 
these, an almighty striving after a freer, a more 
harmonious constitution; and, in this spirit, each 
convulsion will pass by and lead us nearer to 
the great goal. It may be, that Nature is no 
longer so fruitful as formerly, that no metals or 
precious stones are formed in these days, that 
no more rocks and mountains arise, that plants 
and animals no longer swell up to such asto- 
nishing size and strength. But the plastic, en- 
nobling, social powers of Nature have increased 
all the more. Her disposition has become more 
receptive and delicate, her fantasy more mani- 
fold and emblematic, her touch lighter and more 
artistic. She approaches human kind ; and if 
once she was a wild-teeming rock, she is now 
a still, germinating plant, a mere human artist." 
******* 

Heinrich and the merchant? had listened at- 
tentively to this conversation, and the former, 
especially, experienced new developments in 
his fore-feeling soul. Many words, many thoughts, 
fell like quickening fruit-seed into his bosom, 
and transported him quickly from the narrow 
sphere of his youth to the height of the world. 
The hours just past lay like long years behind 
him, and it seemed to him as if he had never 
thought or felt otherwise than now. 

The recluse showed them his books; they 
were old histories and poems. Heinrich turned 
over the leaves of the large and beautifully-illu- 
miiiated manuscripts. The short lines of the 
verses, the titles, single passages, and the neat 
pictures which appeared here and there, like 



embodied words, for the purpose of seconding 
the imagination of the reader, excited mightily 
his curiosity. The recluse remarked his inward 
joy, and explained to him the singular repre- 
sentations. The most manifold life-scenes were 
depicted there. Battles, funeral solemnities, 
wedding -festivals, shipwrecks, caves and pa- 
laces, kings, heroes, priests, old men and young, 
men in foreign costume, and strange animals, 
appeared in various alternations and connec- 
tions. Heinrich could not see his fill, and would 
have desiied nothing better than to stay with 
the recluse, who attracted him irresistibly, and 
to be instructed by him concerning tliese books. 
Meanwhile the old man asked if there were 
any more caves, and the recluse answered that 
there were several very spacious ones in the 
vicinity, and that he would accompany him 
thither. The old man was ready, and the re- 
cluse, who had noticed the pleasure which 
Heinrich had in his books, induced him to re- 
main behind, and to entertain himself with these 
during their absence. Heinrich was glad to 
remain with the books, and thanked him heartily 
for the permission. He turned over the leaves 
with infinite joy. At length there fell into his 
hands a book written in a foreign language, 
which appeared to him to bear some resem- 
blance to the Latin and to the Italian. He longed 
very much to know the language, for the book 
particularly pleased him, although he understood 
not a word of it. It had no title, but he found, 
in seeking, several pictures. They seemed to 
him strangely familiar, and as he gazed more 
attentively, he discovered his own form quite 
distinguishable among the figures. He started 
and thought he had been dreaming, but after 
repeated inspection, he could not doubt the per- 
fect similitude. He could scarcely believe his 
senses when, presently, he discovered in one 
of the pictures, the cave, with the recluse and 
the old man by his side. By degrees, he found 
in other pictures the Eastern maid, his parents, 
the count and countess of Thiiringen, his friend 
the court-chaplain, and many others of his ac- 
quaintance. But their garments were diflerent, 
and they appeared to belong to another age. A 
great number of figures he knew not how to 
name, yet they seemed familiar to him. He 
saw his similitude in various situations. To- 
ward the end of the book, he appeared larger 
and nobler. A guitar was lying on his arm, 
and the countess was handing him a garland. 
He saw himself at the Imperial court, on ship- 
board, in close embrace with a slender, lovely 
maiden, in battle with wild-looldng men, in 
friendly converse with Saracens and Moors. A 
man of earnest aspect appeared frequently in 
his company. He conceived a profound reve- 
rence for this lofty figure, and was rejoiced to 
see himself arm in arm with him. The last 
pictures were dark and unintelligible ; but some 
of the forms of his dream surprised him wilh 
intense delight. The conclusion appeared to 
be wanting. Heinrich was much troubled, and 
A-2 



494 



NOVALIS. 



wished nothing more ardently than to be able 
to read the book and to possess it entire. He 
viewed the pictures again and again, and was 
confused when lie heard the company returning. 
An unaccountable shame came over him. He 
did not dare to make known his discovery, and 
merely asked the recluse, as unconcernedly as 
possible, respecting the title and the language. 
He learned that it was written in the Proven5al 
tongue. "It is a great while since I have read 
it," said the recluse ; " I do not remember ex- 
actly the subject. All I know is, that it is a 
Romance of the wonderful fortunes of a poet, 
in which poetry is represented and lauded in 
manifold relations. The conclusion is wanting 
to this copy, which I brought with me from Je- 
rusalem, where I found it among the effects of 
a deceased friend, and kept it as a memorial 
of him. 

THE POET AND HIS BATTOHTER. 

The journey was now ended. It was toward 
evening when our travellers arrived, safe and 
in good spirits, in the world-renowned city of 
Augsburg, and rode through the lofty streets to 
the house of old Schwaning. * * * They 
found the house illuminated, and a merry music 
reached their ears. " What will you wager," 
said the merchants, "that your grandfather is 
giving a merry entertainment? We come as if 
called. How surprised he will be at the unin- 
vited guests ! Little does he dream that the 
true festival is now to begin." 

******** 

Among the guests, Heinrich had noticed a 
man who appeared to be the person that he had 
seen often at his side, in that book. His noble 
aspect distinguished him before all the rest. A 
cheerful earnestness was' the spirit of his counte- 
nance. An open, beautifully arched brow; great, 
black, piercing and firm eyes; a roguish trait 
about the merry mouth, and altogether clear and 
manly proportions made it significant and attract- 
ive. He was strongly built, his movements were 
easy and full of expression, and where he stood, 
it seemed as if he would stand forever. Hein- 
rich asked his grandfather about him. " I am 
glad," said the old man, " that you have re- 
marked him at once. It is my excellent friend 
Klingsohr, the poet. Of his acquaintance and 
friendship you may be prouder than of the em- 
peror's. But how stands it with your heart? 
He has a beautiful daughter; perhaps she will 
supplant the father in your regards. I shall be 
surprised if you have not observed her." Hein- 
rich blushed. " I was absent, dear grandfather. 
The company was numerous, and I noticed only 
your friend." "It is very easy to see," replied 
Schwaning, " that you are from the north. We 
will soon find means to thaw you, here. You 
shall soon learn to look out for pretty eyes." 

The old Schwaning led Heinrich to Kling- 
sohr, and told him how Heinrich had observed 
hitn at once, and felt a very lively desire to be 
acquaii ted with him. Heinrich was difiident. 



Klingsohr spoke to him in a very friendly man- 
net of his country and his journey. There was 
something so confidential in his voice, that 
Heinrich soon took heart and conversed with 
him freely. After some time Schwaning re- 
turned, and brought witli him the beautiful 
Mathilde. " Have compassion on my shy grand- 
son, and pardon him for seeing your father be- 
fore he did you. Your gleaming eyes will 
awaken his slumbering youth. In his country 
the spring is late." 

Heinrich and Mathilde colored. They looked 
at each other with wondering eyes. She asked 
him with gentle, scarce audible words: "did 
he like to dance?" Just as he was affirming 
this question a merry dancing-music struck up. 
Silently he ofiered her his hand, she gave hers, 
and they mingled in the ranks of the waltzing 
pairs. Schwaning and Klingsohr looked on. 
The mother and the merchants rejoiced in Hein- 
rich's activity, and in his beautiful partner. 
* * * Heinrich wished the dance never to 
end. With intense satisfaction his eye rested 
on the roses of his partner. Her innocent eye 
shunned him not. She seemed the spirit of her 
father in the loveliest disguise. Out of her 
large, calm eyes, spoke eternal youth. On a 
light, heaven -blue ground reposed the mild 
glory of the dusky stars. Around them brow 
and nose sloped gracefully. A lily inclined 
toward the rising sun, was her face; and from 
the slender white neck, blue veins meandered 
in tempting curves around the delicate cheeks. 
Her voice was like a far-away echo, and the 
small brown curly head seemed to hover over 
the light form. 

THE FEAST. 

The music banished reserve and roused every 
inclination to cheerful sport. Baskets of flowers 
in full splendor breathed forth odors on the 
table, and the wine crept about among the 
dishes and the flowers, shook his golden wings, 
and wove curtains of bright tapestry between 
the guests and the world. Heinrich now, for 
the first time, understood what a feast was. A 
thousand gay spirits seemed to him to dance 
about the table, and in still sympathy with gay 
men, to live by their joys and to intoxicate them- 
selves with their delights. The joy of life stood 
like a sounding tree full of golden fruits before 
him. Evil did not show itself, and it seemed 
to him impossible that ever human inclination 
should have turned from this tree to the dan- 
gerous fruit of knowledge, to the tree of conflict. 
He now understood wine and food. He found 
their savor surpassingly delicious. They were 
seasoned for him by a heavenly oil, and sparkled 
from the cup the glory of earthly life. 

******** 

It was deep in the night when the company 
separated. The first and only feast of my life 
said Heinrich to himself when he was alone. 

He went to the window. The choir of the 
stars stood in the dark sky, and in the east a 



white sheen announced the coming day. With 
full transport Heinrich exclaimed: "You, ye 
everlasting stars, ye silent pilgrims, you I in- 
voke as witnesses of my sacred oath! For 
Mathilde I will live, and eternal truth shall 
bind my heart to hers. For me too the morn 
of an everlasting day is breaking. The night 
is past. I kindle myself, a never-dying sacri- 
fice to the rising sun ! 

THE DREAM. 

Heinrich was heated, and it was late, toward 
morning, when he fell asleep. The thoughts 
of his soul ran together into wondrous dreams. 
A deep blue river shimmered from the green 
plain. On the smooth surface swam a boat. 
Mathilde sat and rowed. She was decked with 
garlands, sang a simple song, and looked toward 
him with a sweet sorrow. His bosom was op- 
pressed, ]|e knew not why. The sky was 
bright, and peaceful the flood. Her heavenly 
countenance mirrored itself in the waves. Sud- 
denly the boat began to spin round. He called 
to her, alarmed. She smiled, and laid the oar 
in the boat, which continued incessantly to 
whirl. An overwhelming anxiety seized him. 
He plunged into the stream, but could make no 
progress, the water bore him. She beckoned, 
she appeared desirous to say something. Al- 
ready the boat shipped water, but she smiled 
with an inelTable inwardness, and looked cheer- 
fully into the whirlpool. All at once it drew 
her down. A gentle breath streaked across the 
■waves, which flowed on as calm and as shining 
as before. The terrific agony deprived him of 
consciousness. His heart beat no more. He 
did not come to himself until he found himself 
on dry ground. He might have swam far, it 
was a strange country. He knew not what had 
befallen him ; his mind was gone : — thoughtless 
he wandered farther into the land. He felt 
himself dreadfully exhausted. A little fountain 
trickled from a hill, it sounded like clear bells. 
With his hand he scooped a few drops, and 
wetted his parched lips. Like an anxious dream 
the terrible event lay behind him. He walked 
on and on ; flowers and trees spoke to him. 
He felt himself so well, so at home. Then he 
heard again that simple song. He pursued the 
soimd. Suddenly some one held him back by 
his garment. Dear Heinrich! called a well- 
known voice. He looked round, and Mathilde 
clasped him in her arms "Why didst thou run 
from me, dear heart V said she, drawing a long 
breath, " I could scarce overtake thee." Hein- 
rich wept. He pressed her to his bosom. — 
" Where is the river?" he exclaimed with tears. 
" Seest thou not its blue waves above us?" 
He looked up, and the blue river was flowing 
gently above their heads. "Where are we, 
dear Mathilde?" "With our parents." "Shall 
we remain together?" " Forever,'' she replied, 
while she pressed her lips to his, and so clasped 
him that she could not be separated from him 
Bgaiu. She whispered a strange mysterious 



word into his mouth, which vibrated through 
his whole being. He wished to repeat it, when 
his grandfather called and he awoke. He would 
have given his life to remember that word. 

THE TEGETABLE WORLD. 

Plants are, as it were, the most direct lan- 
guage_ of the earth. Every new leaf, every 
strange flower, is some secret that is pressing 
forth, and which, because it cannot move or 
speak for joy and love, becomes a mute, quiet 
plant. When we find such a flower in a soli- 
tary place, does it not seem as if everything 
around were transfigured, and as if the little 
feathered tones loved best to dwell in its vi- 
cinity? One could weep for joy, and, secluded 
from the world, thrust hands and feet into the 
ground and strike root, in order never to leave 
the happy neighborhood. Over the whole dry 
world is flung this green, mysterious carpet of 
love. With every spring it is made new, and 
its strange writing is legible only to the beloved, 
like the posies of the Orient. Forever will he 
read, and never read his fill; and daily become 
aware of new meanings, new, transporting reve- 
lations of loving Nature. 



"There is certainly something mysterious in 
the clouds," said Sylvester, "and certain kinds 
have often a quite wonderful influence over us. 
They march, and would take us up with their 
cool shadows and bear us away; and while 
their forms are lovely and variegated, like a 
breathed-out wish of our inner man, their bright- 
ness, and the splendid light that then reigns on 
the earth, are like a prophecy of an unknown, 
inefiable glory. But there are also dim, and 
grave, and terrible forms of clouds, in which all 
the terrors of the ancient night appear to threaten 
us. The heaven seems as if it would never be- 
come clear again, the cheerful blue is expunged, 
and a lurid, copper-red, on a black-grey ground, 
awakens awe and terror in every breast. When, 
then, the destructive beams dart down, and- 
with mocking laughter, the crashing thunder- 
blows follow in their rear, we are terrified to 
the very centre of our being; and if, then, there 
arises not in us the sublime feeling of our moral 
supremacy, we thitdc we are delivered up to 
the terrors of hell, to the power of evil spirits. 
These are echoes of the old, inhuman Nature ; 
but they are also rousing voices of the higher 
Nature — the heavenly conscience within us. 
Mortality groans in its ground-fastnesses; but 
the immortality begins to shine with increased 
brightness, and to know itself. 

CONSCIENCE. 

"When," asked Heinrich, "when will there 
no longer be any need of terrors, of pains, of 
distress, and of evil in the world?" 

When there is but one power, — the power 
of conscience ; when Nature has become chaste 
and moral. There is but one cause of evi' 



496 



NOVALIS. 



the universal weakness ; and this weakness is 
nothing but imperfect moral receptivity and in- 
sensibility to the charm of Freedom. 

Conscience is the inborn mediator in every 
man. It is God's viceaerent on the earth, and 
is therefore regarded by many as the highest 
and the last. * * * Conscience is man's 
most proper essence, completely transfigured ; — 
the celestial, aboriginal man. It is not this or 
that, it commands not in general propositions, 
it consists not of single virtues. There is but 
one virtue — the pure, earnest will which, in the 
moment of decision, resolves and chooses imme- 
diately. In living and peculiar indivisibility, it 
inhabits and animates the delicate symbol of 
the human body, and avails to call the spiritual 
members into truest activity. 

Nature subsists only through the spirit of 
virtue, and is destined to become ever more 
steadfast. 



FROM THE FRAGMENTS. 

\Vh£RE no gods are, spectres rule. 

The best thing that the French achieved by 
their Revolution, was a portion of Germanity. 

Germanity is genuine popularity, and there- 
fore an ideal. 

Where children are, there is the golden age. 

Spirit is now active here and there : when 
will Spirit be active in the whole ? When will 
mankind, in the mass, begin to consider ? 

Nature is pure Past, foregone freedom ; and 
therefore, throughout, the soil of history. 

The antithesis of body and spirit is one of 
the most remarkable and dangerous of all anti- 
theses. It has played an important part in 
history. 

Only by comparing ourselves, as men, with 
other ralional beings, could we know what we 
truly are, what position we occupy. 

The history of Christ is as surely poetry as it 
is history. And, in general, only that history is 
history which might also be fable. 

The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, 
the symbol of youth, and ends with the ever- 
lasting kingdom, with the holy city. The his- 
tory of every man should be a Bible. 

Prayer is to religion what thinking is to phi- 
losophy. To pray is to make religion. 

Iho more sinful man feels himself the more 
Christian he is. 



Christianity is opposed to science, to art, to 
enjoyment in the proper sense. 

It goes forth from the common man. It in- 
spires the great majority of the limited on earth. 

It is the germ of all democracy, the highest 
fact in the domain of the popular. 

Light is the symbol of genuine self-possession. 
Therefore light, according to analogy, is the ac- 
tion of the self-contact of matter. Accordingly, 
day is the consciousness of the planet, and 
while the sun, like a god, in eternal self-action, 
inspires the centre, one planet after another 
closes one eye for a longer or shorter time, and 
with cool sleep refreshes itself for new life and 
contemplation. Accordingly, here, too, there is 
religion. For is the life of the planets aught 
else but sun-worship ? 

The Holy Ghost is more than the Bible. This 
should be onr teacher of religion, not the dead, 
earthly, equivocal letter. 

All faith is miraculous, and worketh miracles, 

Sin is indeed the real evil in the world. All 
calamity proceeds from that. He who under- 
stands sin, understands virtue and Christianity, 
himself and the world. 

The greatest of miracles is a virtuous act. 

If a man could suddenly believe, in sincerity, 
that he was moral, he would be so. 

We need not fear to admit that man has a 
preponderating tendency to evil. So much the 
better is he by nature, for only the unlike attracts. 

Everything distinguished (peculiar) deserves 
ostracism. Well for it if it ostracises itself. 
Everything absolute must quit the world. 

A time will come, and that soon, when all 
men will be convinced, that there can be no 
king without a republic, and no republic with- 
out a king; that both are as inseparable as body 
and soul. The true king will be a republic, the 
true republic a king. 

In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows 
a disturbance of the equipoise. 

Most people know not how interesting they 
are, what interesting things they really utter. 
A true representation of themselves, a record 
and estimate of their sayings, would make them 
astonished at themselves, would help them to 
discover in themselves an entirely new world. 

Man is the Messiah of Nature. 

The soul is the most powerful of all poi- 
sons. It is the most penetrating and ditfusible 
stimulus. 



NOVALIS. 



497 



Every sickness is a musical problem; the cure 
is the musical solution. 

Inoculation with death, also, will not be want- 
ing in some future universal therapia. 

The idea of a perfect health is interesting 
only in a scientific point of view. Sickness is 
necessary to individualization. 

If God could be man, he can also be stone, 
plant, animal, element, and perhaps, in this way, 
there is a continuous redemption in Nature. 

Life is a disease of the spirit, a passionate 
activity. Rest is the pecidiar property of the 
spirit. From the spirit comes gravitation. 

As nothing can be free, so, too, nothing can 
be forced, but spirit. 

A space-filling individual is a body, a time- 
filling individual is a soul. 

It should be inquired, whether Nature has not 
essentially changed with the progress of culture. 

All activity ceases when knowledge comes. 
The state of knowing is eudcemonism, blest re- 
pose of contemplation, heavenly quietism. 

Miracles, as contradictions of Nature, are 
amalhematical. But there are no miracles in 
this sense. What we so term, is intelligible 
precisely bymeans of mathematics; ibr nothing 
is miraculous to mathematics. 

In music, mathematics appears formally, as 
revelation, as creative idealism. All enjoyment 
is musical, consequently mathematical. The 
highest life is mathematics. 



There may be mathematicians of the first 
magnitude who cannot cipher. One can be a 
great cipherer without a conception of mathe- 
matics. 

Instinct is genius in Paradise, before the pe- 
riod of self-abstraction (self-recognition). 

The fate which oppresses us is the sluggish- 
ness of our spirit. By enlargement and culti- 
vation of our activity, we change ourselves into 
fate. Everything appears to stream in upon 
us, because we do not stream out. We are ne- 
gative, because we choose to be so; the more 
positive we become, the more negative will the 
world around us be, until, at last, there is no 
more negative, and we are all in all. God 
wills gods. 



All power appears only in transition. 
manent power is stuff. 



Per 



Every act of introversion — every glance into 
our interior — is at the same time ascension, 
going up to heaven, a glance at the veritable 
outward. 

Only so far as a man is happily married to 
himself, is he fit for married life and family 
life, generally. 

One must never confess that one loves one's 
self. The secret of this confession is the 
life-principle of the only true and eternal 
love. 

We conceive God as personal, just as we con 
ceive ourselves personal. God is just as per- 
sonal and as individual as we are; for what 
we call / is not our true /, but only its off 
glance. 



LUDWIG TIECK.* 



LuDwiG TiECK, born at Berlin, on the 31st 
of May, 1773, is known to the world only as a 
Man of Letters, having never held any public 
station, or followed any profession, except that 
of authorship. Of his private history the critics 
and news-hunters of his own country complain 
that they have little information ; a deficiency 
which may arise in part from the circumstance, 
that till of late years, though from the first ad- 
mired by the Patricians of his native literature, 
he has stood in no high favor, and of course 
awakened no great curiosity, among the read- 
ing Plebs ; and may indicate, at the same time, 
that in liis walk and conversation, there is little 
wondeiful to be discovered. 

His literary life he began at Berlin, in his 
twenty-second year, by the publication of three 
novels, following each other in quick succes- 
sion : Abdullah, William Lovell, and Peter 
Leberrecht. These works found small patron- 
age at their first appearance, and are still re- 
garded as immature products of his genius; the 
opening of a cloudy, as well as fervid dawn ; 
betokening a day of strong heat, and perhaps 
at last, of serene brightness. A gloomy tragic 
spirit is said to reign throughout all of them ; 
the image of a high passionate mind, scorning 
the base and the false, rather than accomplish- 
ing the good and the true; in rapt earnestness 
" interrogating Fate," and receiving no answer 
but the echo of its own questions reverberated 
from the dead walls of its vast and lone impri- 
sonment. 

In this stage of spiritual progress, where so 
many not otherwise ungifted minds at length 
painfully content themselves to take up their 
permanent abode, where our own noble and 
hapless Byron perished from among us at the 
instant when his deliverance seemed at hand, 
it was not Tieck's ill fortune to continue too 
long. His Popular Talcs, published in 1797, 
as an appendage to his last novel, under the 
title of Peler Leberrechts Volksmdhrchen, al- 
ready indicate that he had worked his way 

* The following notice, as well as the translation from 
Tieck, is from Carlyle's "Gernnan Romance." 



through these baleful shades into a calmer and 
sunnier elevation ; from which, and happily 
without looking at the world through a painted 
glass of any sort, he had begun to see tliat there 
were things to be believed, as well as things 
to bo denied ; things to be loved and forwarded, 
as well as things to be hated and trodden under 
foot. The active and positive of Goodness was 
displacing the barren and tormenting negative ; 
and worthy feelings were now to be translated 
into their only proper language, worthy actions. 
In Tieck's mind, all Goodness, all that was 
noble or excellent in Nature, seems to have 
combined itself under the image of Poetic 
Beauty ; to the service and defence of which 
he has ever since unweariedly devoted his gifts 
and his days. 

These Volkmdhrchen are of the most varied 
nature : sombre, pathetic, fantastic, satirical ; 
but all pervaded by a warm, genial soul, which 
accommodates itself with equal aptitude to the 
gravest or the gayest form. A soft abundance, 
a simple and kindly but often solemn majesty 
is in them : wondrous shapes, full of meaning, 
move over the scene, true modern denizens of 
the old Fairyland ; low tones of plaintiveness 
or awe flit round us; or a starry splendor twin- 
kles down from the immeasurable depths of 
Night. 

It is by this work, as revised and perfected 
long afterwards, that we now purpose introduc- 
ing Tieck to the notice of the English reader: 
it was by this also that he was introduced to 
the notice of his countrymen. Peter Leber- 
rechts Volksmdhrchen was reviewed by August 
Wilhelm Schlegel, in the Jena Litteraturzei- 
tvng ; and its author, for the first time, brought 
under the eye of the world as a man of rich 
endowments, and in the fair way for turning 
them to proper account. To the body of the 
world, however, this piece of news was sur- 
prising rather than delightful ; for Tieck's 
merits were not of a kind to split the ears of 
the groundlings, and his manner of producing 
them was ill calculated to conciliate a kind 
hearing. Schiller and Goethe were at t^-ia 

f498) 



TIECK. 



499 



time silent, or occupied with History and Phi- 
losophy : Tieck belonged not to the existing po- 
etic guild ; and, far from soliciting admission, he 
had not scrupled, in the most pleasant fashion, 
to inform the craftsmen that their great Diana 
was a dumb idol, and their silver shrines an 
unprofitable thing. Among these Volksmdhr- 
chen, one of the most prominent is Der Gestie- 
felle Kater, a dramatised version of Puss in 
Boots ; under the grotesque mask of which, he 
had laughed with his whole heart, in a true 
Aristophanic vein, at tiie actual aspect of lite- 
rature; and without mingling his satire with 
personalities, or any other false ingredient, had 
rained it like a quiet shower of volcanic ashes 
on the cant of Illumination, the cant of Sensi- 
bility, the cant of Criticism, and the many other 
cants of that shallow time, till the gum-flower 
products of the poetic garden hung draggled 
and black under their unkindly coating. In 
another country, at another day, the drama of 
Puss in. Bonis may justly be supposed to ap- 
pear with enfeebled influences; yet even to a 
stranger there is not wanting a feast of broad 
joyous humor in this strange phantasmagoria, 
where pit and stage, and man and animal, and 
earth and air, are jumbled in confusion worse 
confounded, and the copious, kind, ruddy light 
of true mirth overshines and warms the whole. 
This What-d'ye-call it of Puss in Boots was, 
as it were, the key-note which for several years 
determined the tone of Tieck's literary enter- 
prises. The same spirit lives in his Verkehrte 
Welt (World Turned Topsy-turvy), a drama 
of similar structure, which accompanied the 
former; in his tale of Zerbino, or the Tour in 
search of Taste, which soon followed it; and 
in numerous parodies and lighter pieces which 
he gave to the world in his Poetic Journal,- 
the second and last volume of which periodical 
contains his Letters on Shakspeare, inculcating 
the same doctrines, in a graver shape. About 
this time, after a short residence in Hamburgh, 
where he had married, he removed his abode 
to Jena; a change which confirmed him in his 
literary tendencies, and facilitated the attain- 
ment of their objects. It was here that he be- 
came acquainted with the two Schlegels; and, 
at the same time, with their friend Novalis, a 
young man of a pure, warm, and benignant 
genius, whose fine spirit died in its first blos- 
soiriing, and whose posthumous works it was, 
ere long, the melancholy task of Tieck, and the 
younger Schlegel, to publish under their su- 



perintendence. With Wackeiiroder of Berlin, 
a person of kindred mind with Novalis, and 
kindred fortune also, having died very early, 
Tieck was already acquainted and united ; for 
he had co-operated in the Herzensergiessungen 
eines einsamen Klosterbruders, an elegant and 
impressive work on pictorial art, and Wacken- 
roder's chief performance. 

These young men sympathised completely 
in their critical ideas with Tieck ; and each 
was laboring in his own sphere to disseminate 
them, and reduce them to practice. Their en- 
deavors, it would seem, have prospered ; for, in 
colloquial literary history, this gifted cinquefoil, 
often it is only the trefoil of Tieck and the tw-o 
Schlegels, have the credit, which was long the 
blame, of founding a New School of Poetry, by 
which the Old School, first fired upon in the 
Gestiefelte Kater, and ever afterwards assailed, 
without intermission, by eloquence and ridi- 
cule, argument and entreaty, was at length 
displaced and hunted out of being; or, like 
Partridge the Astrologer, reduced to a life 
which could be proved to be no life. 

Of this New School, which has been thfi 
subject of much unwise talk, and of much not 
very wise writing, we cannot here attempt to 
offer any suitable description, far less any just 
estimate. One thing may be remarked, that 
the epithet School seems to describe the case 
with little propriety. That since the beginning 
of the present century, a great change has 
taken place in German literature, is plain 
enough, without commentators ; but that it was 
effected by three young men, living in the little 
town of Jena, is not by any moans so plain. 
The critical principles of Tieck and the Schle- 
gels had already been set forth, in the form 
both of precept and prohibition, and with all 
the aids of philosophic depth and epigrammatic 
emphasis, by the united minds of Goethe and 
Schiller, in the Horen and Xenien. The de- 
velopment and practical application of the doc- 
trine is all that pertains to these reputed foun- 
ders of the sect. But neither can the change 
be said to have originated with Schiller and 
Goethe ; for it is a change originating not in 
individuals, but in universal circumstances, and 
belongs not to Germany, but to Europe. Among 
ourselves, for instance, within the last thirty 
years, who has not lifled up his voice with 
double vigor in praise of Shakspeare and Na- 
ture, and vituperation of French taste and 
French philosophy 1 Who has not heard of the 



500 



TIECK. 



glories of old English literature ; the wealth 
of Queen Elizabeth's age; the penury of Queen 
Anne's; and the inquiry whether Pope was a 
poef! A similar temper is breaking out in 
France itself, hermetically sealed as that coun- 
try seemed to be against all foreign influences ; 
and doubts are beginning to be entertained, and 
even expressed, about Corneille and the Three 
Unities. It seems to be substantially the same 
thing which has occurred in Germany, and 
been attributed to Tieck and his associates : 
only, that the revolution, which is here pro- 
ceeding, and in France commencing, appears 
in Germany to be completed. Its results have 
there been embodied in elaborate laws, and 
profound systems have been promulgated and 
accepted : whereas with us, in past years, there 
has been as it were a Literary Anarchy ; for 
the Pandects of Blair and Bossu are obsolete 
or abrogated, but no new code supplies their 
place ; and, author and critic, each sings or 
says that which is right in his own eyes. For 
the principles of German Poetics, we can only 
refer the reader to the treatises of Kant, Schil- 
ler, Richter, the Schlegels, and their many 
copyists and expositors ; with the promise that 
his labor will be hard, but not unrewarded by 
a plenteous harvest of results, which, whether 
they be doubted, denied, or believed, he will 
find no trivial or unprofitable subject for his 
contemplation. 

These doctrines of taste, which Tieck em- 
braced every opportunity of enforcing as a 
critic, he did not fail diligently to exemplify in 
practice ; as a long and rapid series of poetical 
performances lies before the world to attest. 
Of these, his Genoveva, a play grounded on 
the legend of that Saint, appears to be regarded 
as his master-piece by the best judges; though 
Franz Sternebalds Wanderungen, the ficti- 
tious History of a Student of Painting, was 
more relished by others; and, as a critic tells 
us, "here and there a low voice might be even 
heard voting that this novel equalled Wilhelm 
Meisler ; the peaceful clearness of which it 
however nowise attained, but only, with visible 
effort, strove to imitate." In this last work he 
was assisted by Wackenroder. At an earlier 
period, he had come forth, as a translator, with 
a new version of Don Quixote : he now ap- 
peared also as a commentator, with a work 
entitled Minnelieder aus dem Sckwabischen 
Zeitallet (Minstrelsy of the Swabian Era), 



published at Berlin in 1803; with an able Pre- 
face, explaining the relation of these poets to 
Petrarca and the Troubadours. In 1804, he 
sent out his Kaiser Octaviantis, a story which, 
like the other works mentioned in this para- 
graph, I have never seen, but which I find 
praised by his countrymen in no very intelligi 
ble terms, as "a fair revival of the old Mdhr- 
chen (Traditionary Tale) ; in which, however, 
the poet moves freely, and has completed the 
cycle of the romance." Die Gemdlde (the 
Pictures), another of his fictions, has lately 
been translated into English. 

Tieck's frequent change of place bespeaks 
less settledness in his domestic, than happily 
existed in his intellectual circumstances. From 
Jena he seems to have again removed to Ber- 
lin ; then to a country residence near Frankfort 
on the Oder ; which, in its turn, he quitted for 
a journey into Italy. In this classic country 
he found new facilities for two of his favorite 
pursuits: he employed himself, it is said, to 
good purpose, in the study of ancient and mo- 
dern art; to which, while in Rome, he added 
the examining of many old German manuscripts 
preserved in the Vatican Library. From his 
labors in this latter department, and elsewhere, 
his countrymen have not long ago obtained, in 
addition to the Minstrelsy, an Alldeutsches 
Theater (Old-German Theatre), in two vo- 
lumes, with the hope of more. A collection of 
Old-German Poetry is still expected. 

In 1806, he returned to Germany; first to 
Munich, then to his former retreat near Frank- 
fort; but for the next seven years, he was little 
heard of as an active member of the literary 
world ; and the regret of his admirers was in- 
creased by intelligence that ill health was the 
cause of his inactivity. That this inactivity 
was more apparent than real, he has proved by 
his reappearance in new vigor, at a time when 
he finds a readier welcome and more willing 
audience. He has since published abundantly 
in various forms ; as a translator, an editor, and 
a writer both of poetry and prose. In 1812, 
appeared his early Volksmdhrchen, retouched, 
and improved, and combined into a whole, by 
conversations, critical, disquisitionary, and de- 
scriptive, in two volumes, entitled Phantasus; 
from which our present specimens of him are 
taken. His Alldeutsches Theater was followed 
by an Altenglisches, including the disputed 
plays of Shakspeare ; a work gladly received 



TIECK. 



501 



Dy his countrymen, no less devoted admirers 
of Shakspeare than ourselves. Since tiiat time, 
he has paid us a personal visit. In 1818, he 
was in London, and is said to have been well 
satisfied with his reception ; which we cannot 
but hope was as respectful and kind as a guest 
so accomplished, and so friendly to England, 
deserved at our hands. The fruit of his resi- 
dence among iis, it seems, has already appeared 
in his writings. He has very lately given to 
the world a novel on Shakspeare and his Times ; 
in which he has not trembled to introduce, as 



acting characters, the great dramatist himself, 
with Marlowe, and various other poets of that 
age. Such is the report, which adds, that his 
work is admired in Germany; but that any 
copy of it has crossed the Channel, I have not 
heard. 

Of Tieck's present residence, or special 
pursuits, or economical circumstances, I am 
sorry to confess my entire ignorance. One 
little fact may perhaps be worth adding ; that 
Sophia Bernhardi, an esteemed authoress, is 
his sister. 



THE ELVES. 

"Where is our little Mary?" said the father. 

"She is playing out upon the green there, with 
our neighbor's boy," replied the mother. 

"I wish they may not run away and lose 
themselves," said he; "they are so thought- 
less." 

The mother looked for the little ones, and 
brought them their evening luncheon. "It is 
warm," said the boy; "and Mary had a longing 
for the red cherries." 

'Have a care, children," said the mother, 
" and do not run too far from home, or into the 
wood ; father and I are going to the fields." 

Little Andres answered: "Never fear, the 
wood frightens us; we shall sit here by the 
house, where there are people near us." 

The mother went in, and soon came out again 
with her husband. They locked the door, and 
turned towards the fields to look after their 
laborers, and see their hay-harvest in the mea- 
dow. Their house lay upon a little green 
height, encircled by a pretty ring of paling, 
■which likewise enclosed their fruit and flower- 
garden. The hamlet stretched somewhat deeper 
down, and on the other side lay the castle of the 
Count. Martin rented tlie large farm from this 
nobleman j and was living in contentment with 
his wife and only child ; for he yearly saved 
some money, and had the prospect of becoming 
a man of substance by his industry, for the 
ground was productive, and the Count not 
illiberal. 

As he walked with his wife to the fields, he 
gazed cheerfully round, and said ■. " What a dif- 
ferent look this quarter has, Brigitta, from the 
place we lived in formerly! Here it is all so 
green; the whole village is bedecked with thick- 
spreading fruit-trees; the ground is full of beau- 
tiful herbs and flowers ; all the houses are cheer- 
ful and cleanly, the inhabitants are at their ease : 
nay, I could almost fancy that the woods are 
greener here than elsewhere, and the sky bluer; 
and, so far as the eye can reach, you have plea- 
sure and delight in beholding the bountiful 
Earth." 



"And whenever you cross the stream," said 
Brigitta, "you are, as it were, in anotlier world, 
all is so dreary and withered; but every tra- 
veller declares that our village is the fairest in 
the country, far and near." 

"All but that flr-ground," said her husband; 
"do but look back to it, how dark and 'dismal 
that solitary spot is lying in the gay scene: the 
dingy fir-trees, with the smoky huts behind 
them, the ruined stalls, the brook flowing past 
with a sluggish melancholy." 

" It is true," replied Brigitta ; " if you but aj^- 
proach that spot, you grow disconsolate and sad 
you know not why. What sort of people can 
they be that live there, and keep themselves so 
separate from the rest of us, as if they had an 
evil conscience V 

"A miserable crew," replied the young far- 
mer: "gipsies, seemingly, that steal and cheat 
in other quarters, and have their hoard and 
hiding-place here. I wonder only that his lord- 
ship suffers them." 

"Who knows," said the wife, with an accent 
of pity, "but perhaps they may be poor people, 
wishing, out of shame, to conceal their poverty ; 
for; after all, no one can say aught ill of them; 
the only thing is, that they do not go to church, 
and none knows how they live; for the little 
garden, which indeed seems altogether waste, 
cannot possibly support them ; and fields they 
have none." 

"God knows," said Martin, as they went 
along, " what trade they follow ; no mortal 
comes to them ; for the place they live in is as 
if bewitched and excommunicated, so that even 
our wildest fellows will not venture into it." 

Such conversation they pursued, while walk- 
ing to the fields. That gloomy spot they spoke 
of lay aside from the hamlet. In a dell, begirt 
with firs, you might behold a hut, and various 
ruined office-houses ; rarely was smoke seen to 
mount from it, still more rarely did men appear 
there; though at times curious people, venturing 
somewhat nearer, had perceived upon the benoh 
before the hut, some hideous women, in ragged 
clothes, dandling in their arms some children 
equally dirty and ill-favored ; black dogs were 



502 



TIECK. 



tunning up and down upon the boundary; and, 
pf an evening, a man of monstrous size was seen 
to cross the foot-bridge of the broolc, and disap- 
pear in the hut; and, in the darkness, various 
shapes were observed, moving like shadows 
round a fire in tlie open air. This piece of 
groinid, the firs, and the ruined liuts, formed in 
truth a strange contrast with the bright green 
landscape, tlie white houses of the hamlet, and 
the stately new-built castle. 

The two little ones had now eaten their fruit; 
it came into their heads to run races; and the 
little nimble Mary always got the start of the 
less active Andres. "It is not fair,' cried An- 
dres at last: "let us try it for some length, then 
we shall see who wins." 

"As thou wilt," said Mary; "only to the 
brook we must not run." 

"No," said Andres; "but there, on the hill, 
stands the large pear-tree, a quarter of a mile 
from this. I shall run by the left, round past 
the fir-ground ; thou canst try it by the right, 
over the fields; so we do not meet till we get 
up, and then we shall see which of us is the 
swifter." 

"Done," cried Mary, and began to run; "for 
we shall not mar one another by the way, and 
my father says it is as far to the hill by that 
side of the gipsies' house as by this." 

Andres had already started, and Mary, tui'n- 
ing to the right, could no longer see him. "It 
is very silly," said she to herself: "I have only 
to take heart, and run along the bridge, past the 
hut, and through the yard, and I shall certainly 
be first." She was already standing by the 
brook and the clump of firs. "Shall I? No; 
it is too frightful," said she. A little white dog 
was standing on the farther side, and barking 
with might and main. In her terror, Mary 
thought the dog some monster, and sprang back. 
"Fy! fy!" said she: "the dolt is gone halfway 
by this time, while I stand here considering." 
The little dog kept barking, and, as she looked 
at it more narrowly, it seemed no longer fright- 
ful, but, on the contrary, quite pretty : it had a 
red collar round its neck, with a glittering bell; 
and as it raised its head, and shook itself in 
barking, the little bell sounded with the finest 
tinkle. " Well, I must risk it!" cried she: "I 
will run for life ; quick, quick, I am through ; 
certainly to Heaven, they cannot eat me up 
alive in half a minute I" And with this, the 
gay, courageous, little Mary, sprang along the 
foot-bridge; passed the dog, which ceased its 
barking, and began to fawn on her; and in a 
moment she was standing on the other bank, 
and the black firs all round concea . from 
view her fathers house, and the rec^t of the 
landscape. 

But what was her astonishment when here! 
The loveliest, most variegatetl flower-garden 
lay round her; tulips, roses, and lilies, were 
glittering in the fairest colours ; blue and gold- 
red butterflies were wavering in the blossoms; 
w.ges of shining wire were hung on the espa- 



liers, with many-colored birds in them, singing 
beautiful songs; and children, in short ^vhite 
frocks, with flowing yellow hair and brilliant 
eyes, were frolicking about; some playing with 
lambkins, some feeding the birds, or gathering 
flowers, and giving them to one another; some, 
again, were eating cherries, grapes, and ruddy 
apricots. No hut was to be seen ; but instead 
of it, a large fair house, with a brazen door and 
lofty statues, stood glancing in the middle of the 
space. Mary was confounded with surprise, 
and knew not what to think ; but, not being 
bashful, she went right up to the first of the 
children, held out her hand, and wished the 
little creature good even. 

"Art thou come to visit us, then?" said the 
glittering child ; " I saw thee running, playing 
on the other side, but thou wert frightened for 
our little dog." 

" So you are not gipsies and rogues," said 
Mary, "as Andres always told me? He is a 
stupid thing, and talks of much he does not un- 
derstand." 

"Stay with us," said the strange little girlj 
" thou wilt like it well." 

" But we are running a race." 

"Thou wilt find thy comrade soon enough. 
There, take and eat." 

Mary ate, and found the fruit more sweet 
than any she had ever tasted in her life before; 
and Andres, and the race, and the prohibition 
of her parents, were entirely forgotten. 

A stately woman, in a shining robe, came to- 
wards them, and asked about the stranger child. 
"Fairest lady," said Mary, "I came running 
hither by chance, and now they wish to keep 
me." 

"Thou art aware, Zerina," said the lady, 
"that she can be here but for a little while; 
besides, thou should'st have asked my leave." 

"I thought," said Zerina, "when I saw her 
admitted across the bridge, that I might do it; 
we have often seen her running in the fields, 
and thou thyself hast taken pleasure in her 
lively temper. She will have to leave us soon 
enough." 

"No, I will stay here," said the little stran- 
ger; "for here it is so beautiful, and here I 
shall find the prettiest playthings, and store of 
berries and cherries to boot. On the other side 
it is not half so grand." 

The gold-robed lady went away with a smile ; 
and many of the children now came bounding 
round the happy Mary in their mirth, and 
twitched her, and incited her to dance ; others 
brought her lambs, or curious playthings; others 
made music on instruments, and sang to it. 

She kept, however, by the playmate who had 
first met her; for Zerina was the kindest and 
loveliest of them all. Little Mary cried and 
cried again: "I will stay with you forever; I 
will stay with you, and you shall be my sisters;" 
at which the children all laughed, and embraced 
her. "Now, we shall have a royal sport,'" said 
Zerina. She ran into the palace, and returned 



TIECK. 



503 



with a little golden box, in which lay a quantity 
of seeds, like glittering dust. She lifted of it 
with her little hand, and scattered some grains 
on the green earth. Instantly the grass began to 
move, as in waves ; and, after a few moments, 
bright rose-bushes started from the ground, shot 
rapidly up, and budded all at once, while the 
sweetest perfume filled the place. Mary also 
took a little of the dust, and, having scattered 
it, she saw white lilies, and the most variegated 
pinks, pushing up. At a signal from Zerina, 
the flowers disappeared, and others rose in 
their room. " Now," said Zerina, " look for 
something greater.'' She laid two pine-seeds 
in the ground, and stamped them in sharply 
with her foot. Two green bushes stood before 
tliem. "Grasp me fast," said she; and Mary 
threw her arms about the slender form. She 
felt herself borne upwards; for the trees were 
springing under them with the greatest speed; 
the tall pines waved to and fro, and the two 
cliildren held each other fast embraced, swing- 
ing tins way and that in the red clouds of the 
twilight, and kissed each other ; while the rest 
were climbing up and down the trunks with 
quick dexterity, pushing and teasing one another 
with loud laughter when they met; if any one 
fell down in the press, it flew through the air, 
and sank slowly and surely to the ground. At 
length Mary was beginning to be frightened ; 
and the other little child sang a few loud tones, 
and the trees again sank down, and set them 
on the ground as gradually as they had lifted 
them belbre to the clouds. 

They next went through the brazen door of 
the palace. Here many fair women, elderly 
and young, were sitting in the round hall, par- 
taking of the fairest fruits, and listening to glo- 
rious invisible music. In the vaulting of the 
ceiling, palms, flowers, and groves stood painted, 
among which little figures of children were 
sporting and winding in every graceful posture; 
and with the tones of the music, the images 
altered and glowed with the most burning co- 
lours ; now the blue and green were sparkling 
like radiant light, now these tints faded back in 
paleness, the purple flamed up, and the gold 
took Are ; and then the naked children seemed 
to be alive among the flower-garlands, and to 
draw breath, and emit it through their ruby- 
colored lips; so that by fits you could see tlie 
glance of their little white teeth, and the light- 
ing np of their azure eyes. 

From tlie hall, a stair of brass led down to a 
subterranean chamber. Here lay much gold 
and silver, and precious stones of every hue 
shone out between them. Strange vessels stood 
along the walls, and all seemed filled with 
costly things. The gold was worked into many 
forms, and glittered with the friendliest red. 
Many little dwarfs were busied in sorting the 
pieces from the heap, and putting them in the 
vessels; others, hunch-backed and bandy-legged, 
with long red noses, were tottering slowly 
along, hall-bent to the ground, under full sacks, 



which they bore as millers do their grain ; and, 
with much panting, shaking out the gold-dust 
on the grovmd. Then they darted awkwardly 
to the right and left, and caught the rolling ball 
that were likely to run away; and it happened 
now and then that one in his eagerness overset 
the other, so that both fell heavily and clumsily 
to the ground. They made angry faces, and 
looked askance, as Mary laughed at their ges- 
tures and their ugliness. Behind them sat an 
old crumpled little man, whom Zerina reve- 
rently greeted ; he thanked her with a grave 
inclination of his head. He held a sceptre in 
his hand, and wore a crown upon his brow, 
and all the other dwarfs appeared to regard 
him as their master, and obey his nod. 

"What more wanted?" asked he, with a 
surly voice, as the children came a little nearer. 
Mary was afraid, and did not speak; but, her 
companion answered, they were otily come to 
look about them in the chamber. " Still your 
old child's tricks!" replied the dwarf: "'Will 
there never be an end to idleness?" With this, 
he turned again to his employment, kept his 
people weighing and sorting the ingots; some 
he sent away on errands, some he chid with 
angry tones. 

" Who is the gentleman ?" said Mary. 

"Our Metal-Prince," replied Zerina, as they 
walked along. 

They seemed once more to reach the open 
air, for they were standing by a lake, yet no 
sun appeared, and they saw no sky above their 
heads. A little boat received them, and Zerina 
steered it diligently forwards. It shot rapidly 
along. On gaining the middle of the lake, the 
stranger saw that multitudes of pipes, channels, 
and brooks, were spreading from the little sea in 
every direction. " These waters to the right," 
said Zerina, " flow beneath yon garden, and 
this is why it blooms so freshly ; by the other 
side we get down into the great stream." On 
a sudden, out of all the channels, and from every 
quarter of the lake, came a crowd of little chil- 
dren swimming up ; some wore garlands of 
sedge and water-lily; some had red steins of 
coral, others were blowing on crooked shells; a 
tumultuous noise echoed merrily from the dark 
shores; among the children might be seen the 
fairest women sporting in the waters, and often 
several of the children sprang about some one 
of them, and with kisses hung upon lier neck 
and shoulders. All saluted the strangers; and 
these steered onwards through the revelry out 
of the lake, into a little river, which grew nar- 
rower and narrower. At last the boat came 
aground. The strangers took their leave, and 
Zerina knocked against the clilT. This opened 
like a door, and a female form, all red, assisted 
them to mount. "Are you all brisk here?" in- 
quired Zerina. "They are just at work," re- 
plied the other, "and happy as they could 
wish; indeed, the heat is very pleasant.'' 

They went up a winding stair, and on a snd- 
I den Mary found herself in a most resplendent 



504 



TIECK. 



hall, so that as she entered, her eyes were daz- 
zled by tlje radiance. Flame-colored tapestry 
covered the walls with a purple glow ; and 
when her eye had grown a little used to it, the 
stranger saw, to her astonishment, that, in the 
tapestry, there were figures moving up and 
down in dancing joyfulness ; in form so beauti- 
ful, and of so fair proportions, that nothing 
could be seen more graceful; their bodies were 
as of red crystal, so that it appeared as if the 
blood were visible within them, flowing and 
playing in its courses. They smiled on the 
stranger, and saluted her with various bows ; 
but as Mary was about approaching nearer 
them, Zerina plucked her sharply back, crying: 
"Thou wilt burn thyself, my little Mary, for the 
whole of it is fire." 

Mary felt the heat. "Why do the pretty 
creatures not come out," said she, "and play 
with us?" 

" As thou livest in the Air," replied the other, 
"so are they obliged to stay continually in Fire, 
and would faint and languish if they left it. 
Look now, how glad they are, how they laugh 
and shout; those down below spread out the 
fire-floods everywhere beneath the earth, and 
thereby the flowers, and fruits, and wine, are 
made to flourish; these red streams again, are 
to run beside the brooks of water ; and thus the 
fiery creatures are kept ever busy and glad. 
But for thee it is too hot here ; let us return to 
the garden." 

In the garden, the scene had changed since 
they left it. The moonshine was lying on every 
flower; the birds were silent, and the children 
were asleep in complicated groups, among the 
green groves. Mary and her friend, however, 
did not feel fatigue, but walked about in the 
warm summer night, in abundant talk, till 
morning. 

When the day dawned, they refreshed them- 
selves on fruit and milk, and Mary said : "Sup- 
pose we go, by way of change, to the firs, and 
see how things look there?" 

"With all my heart," replied Zerina; "thou 
wilt see our watchmen, too. and they will surely 
please thee ; they are standing up among the 
trees on the mound." The two proceeded 
through the flower-garden by pleasant groves, 
full of nightingales ; then they ascended a vine- 
hill ; and at last, after lorjg following the wind- 
ings of a clear brook, arrived at the firs, and the 
height which bounded the domain. " How does 
it come," said Mary, "that we have to walk so 
far here, when without, the circuit is so narrow ?" 

" I know not," said her friend ; " but so it is." 

They mounted to the dark firs, and a chill 
wind blew from without in their faces; a haze 
seemed lying far and wide over the landscape. 
On the top were many strange forms standing; 
with mealy, dusty faces; their mis-shapen heads 
not unlike those of white owls; they were clad 
m folded cloaks of shaggy wool ; they held um- 
brellas of curious skins stretched out above 
them ; and they waved and fanned themselves 



incessantly with large bat's wings, which flared 
out curiously beside the woollen roquelaures. 
"I could laugh, yet I am frightened," cried 
Mary. 

" These are our good trusty watchmen," said 
her playmate; "they stand here and wave their 
fans, that cold anxiety and inexplicable fear 
may fall on every one that attempts to approach 
us. They are covered so, because without it is 
now cold and rainy, which they cannot bear. 
But snow, or wind, or cold air, never reaches 
down to us; here is an everlasting spring and 
summer: yet if these poor people on the top 
were not frequently relieved, they would cer- 
tainly perish." 

" But who are you, then V said Mary, while 
again descending to the flowery fragrance; "or 
have you no name at all?" 

"We are called the Elves," replied the 
friendly child; "people talk about us in the 
Earth, as 1 have heard." 

They now perceived a mighty bustle on the 
green. "The fair Bird is come!" cried the 
children to them: all hastened to the hall. 
Here, as they approached, young and old were 
crowding over the threshold, all shouting for 
joy; and from within resounded a triumphant 
peal of music. Having entered, they perceived 
the vast circuit filled with the most varied forms, 
and all were looking upwards to a large Bird 
with glancing pluinage, that was sweeping 
slowly round in the dome, and in its stately 
flight describing many a circle. The music 
sounded more gaily than before; the colors and 
lights alternated more rapidly. At last the 
music ceased; and the Bird, with a rustling 
noise, floated down upon a glittering crown that 
hung hovering in air under the high window, 
by which the hall was lighted from above. His 
plumage was purple and green, and shining 
golden streaks played through it ; on his head 
there waved a diadem of feathers, so resplendent 
that tbey glanced like jewels. His bill was 
red, and his legs of a glancing blue. As he 
moved, the tints gleamed through each other, 
and the eye was charmed with their radiance. 
His size was as that of an eagle. But now he 
opened his glittering beak ; and sweetest melo- 
dies came pouring from his moved breast, in 
finer tones than the lovesick nightingale gives 
forth ; still stronger rose the song, and streamed 
like floods of Light, so that all, the very children 
themselves, were moved by it to tears of joy 
and rapture. When he ceased, all bowed be- 
fore him; he again flew round the dome in cir- 
cles, then darted through the door, and soared 
into the light heaven, where he shone far up 
like a red point, and then soon vanished from 
their eyes. 

"Why are ye all so glad?" inquired Mary 
bending to her fair playmate, who seemed 
smaller than yesterday. 

"The King is coming!" said the little one; 
" many of us have never seen him, and whither- 
soever he turns his face, there is happiness and 



TIECK. 



505 



mirth ; we have long looked for him, more anx- 
iously tlian you look for spring when winter 
lingers with you; and now he has announced, 
by his fair herald, that he is at hand. This 
wise and glorious Bird, that has been sent to us 
by the King, is called Phcenix ; he dwells far 
off in Arabia, on a tree, which there is no other 
that resembles on Earth, as in like manner there 
is no second Phosnix. When he feels himself 
grown old, he builds a pile of balm and incense, 
kindles it, and dies singing ; and then from the 
fragrant ashes, soars up the renewed PhcEnix 
with unlessened beauty. It is seldom he so 
wings his course that men behold him ; and 
when once in centuries this does occur, they 
note it in their annals, and expect remarkable 
events. But now, my friend, thou and I must 
part; for the sight of the King is not permitted 
thee." 

Then the lady with the golden robe came 
through the throng, and beckoning Mary to her, 
led her into a sequestered walk. " Thou must 
leave us, my dear child," said she; "the King 
is to hold his court here for twenty years, per- 
haps longer; and fruitfulness and blessings will 
spread far over the land, but chiefly here beside 
us; all the brooks and rivulets will become 
more bountiful, all the fields and gardens richer, 
the wine more generous, the meadows more 
fertile, and the woods more fresh and green ; a 
milder air will blow, no hail shall hurt, no flood 
shall threaten. Take this ring, and think of us : 
but beware of telling any one of our existence; 
or we must fly this land, and thou and all around 
will lose the happiness and blessing of our 
neighborhood. Once more, kiss thy playmate, 
and farewell." They issued from the walk; 
Zerina wept, Mary stooped to embrace her, and 
they parted. Already she was on the narrow 
bridge ; the cold air was blowing on her back 
from the firs; the little dog barked with all its 
might, and rang its little bell ; she looked round, 
then hastened over, for the darkness of the firs, 
the bleakness of the ruined huts, the shadows 
of the twilight, were filling her with terror. 

"What a night my parents must have had on 
my account!" said she within herself, as she 
stept on the green; "and I dare not tell them 
where I have been, or what wonders I have 
witnessed, nor indeed would they believe me." 
Two men passing by saluted her, and as they 
went along, she heard vhem say: "What a 
pretty girl ! Where can she come from ?" With 
quickened steps she approached the house: but 
the trees which were hanging last night loaded 
with fruit, were now standing dry and leafless; 
the house was differently painted, and a new 
barn had been built beside it. Mary was 
amazed, and thought she must be dreaming. 
In this perplexity she opened the door; and 
behind the table sat her father, between an un- 
known woman and a stranger youth. "Good 
God ! Father," cried she, " where is my mother V 

" Thy mother !" said the woman, with a fore- 
casting tone, and sprang towards her : " Ha, 
3o 



thou surely canst not — Yes, indeed, indeed thou 
art my lost, long-lost dear, only Mary!" She 
had recognised her by a little brown mole be- 
neath the chin, as well as by her eyes and 
shape. All embraced her, all were moved 
with joy, and the parents wept. Mary was 
astonished that she almost reached to her father's 
stature ; and she could not understand how her 
mother had become so changed and faded ; she 
asked the name of the stranger youth. " It is 
our neighbour's Andres," said Martin. " How 
comestthou to us again, so unexpectedly, after 
seven long years 1 Where hast thou been ? 
Why didst thou never send us tidings of thee?" 

" Seven years !" said Mary, and could not 
order her ideas and recollections. "Seven 
whole years'?" 

"Yes, yes," said Andres, laughing, and shak- 
ing her trustfully by the hand; "I have won 
the race, good Mary; I was at the pear-tree and 
back again seven years ago, and thou, sluggish 
creature, art but just returned !" 

They again asked, they pressed her; but re- 
membering her instruction, she could answer 
nothing. It was they themselves chiefly that, 
by degrees, shaped a story for her : How, hav- 
ing lost her way, she had been taken up by a 
coach, and carried to a strange remote part, 
where she could not give the people any notion 
of her parents' residence ; how she was con- 
ducted to a distant town, where certain worthy 
persons brought her up, and loved her; how 
they had lately died, and at length she had re- 
collected her birth-place, and so returned. " No 
matter how it is!" exclaimed her mother; 
" enough that we have thee again, my little 
daughter, my own, my all !" 

Andres waited supper, and Mary could not 
be at home in anything she saw. The house 
seemed small and dark; she felt astonished at 
her dress, which was clean and simple, but 
appeared quite foreign; she looked at the ring 
on her finger, and the gold of it glittered strange- 
ly, inclosing a stone of burning red. To her 
father's question, she replied that the ring also 
was a present from her benefactors. 

She was glad when the hour of sleep arrived, 
and she hastened to her bed. Next morning 
she felt much more collected ; she had now 
arranged her thoughts a little, and could better 
stand the questions of the people in the village, 
all of whom came in to bid her welcojne. An- 
dres was there too with the earliest, active, 
glad, and serviceable beyond all others. The 
blooming maiden of fifteen had made a deep 
impression on him; he had passed a sleepless 
night. The people of the castle likewise sent 
for Mary, and she had once more to tell her 
story to them, which was now grown quite fa- 
miliar to her. The old Count and his Lady 
were surprised at her good breeding; she was 
modest, but not embarrassed ; she made answer 
courteously in good phrases to all their ques- 
tions ; all fear of noble persons and their equip 
age had passed away from her ; for when she 
43 



S06 



TIECK. 



measured tliese halls and forms by the wonders 
and the high beauty she had seen with the 
Elves in their hidden abode, this earthly splen- 
dor seemed but dim to her, the presence of 
rrjen was almost mean. The young lords were 
charmed with her beauty. 

It was now February. The trees were bud- 
ding earlier than usual; the nightingale had 
never come so soon ; the spring rose fairer in 
the land than the oldest men could recollect it. 
In every quarter, little brooks gushed out to irri- 
gate the pastures and meadows ; the hills seemed 
heaving, the vines rose higher and higher, the 
fruit-trees blossomed as they had never done ; 
and a swelling fragrant blessedness hung sus- 
pended heavily in rosy clouds over the scene. 
All prospered beyond expectation : no rude day, 
no tempest injured the fruits; the wine flowed 
blushing in immense grapes; and the inhabit- 
ants of the place felt astonished, and were cap- 
tivated as in a sweet dream. The next year 
was like its forerunner; but men had now be- 
come accustomed to the marvellous. In autumn, 
Mary yielded to the pressing entreaties of An- 
dres and her parents; she was betrothed to 
him, and in winter they were married. 

She often thought with inward longing of her 
residence behind the fir-trees; she continued 
serious and still. Beautiful as all that lay around 
her was, she knew of something yet more beau- 
tiful ; and from the remembrance of this, a faint 
regret attuned her nature to soft melancholy, 
it smote her painfully when lier father and 
mother talked about tlie gipsies and vagabonds, 
that dwelt in the dark spot of ground. Often 
she was on the point of speaking out in defence 
of those good beings, whom she knew to be the 
benefactors of the land ; especially to Andres, 
who appeared to take delight in zealously abus- 
ing them : yet still she repressed the word that 
was struggling to escape her bosom. So passed 
this year; in the next, she was solaced by a 
little daughter, whom she named Elfrida, think- 
ing of the designation of her friendly Elves. 

The young people lived with Martin and 
Brigitta, the house being large enough for all; 
and helped their parents in conducting their 
now extended husbandry. The little Elfrida 
soon displayed peculiar faculties and gifts; for 
she could walk at a very early age, and could 
speak perfectly before she was a twelvemonth 
old ; and after some few years, she had become 
so wise and clever, and of such wondrous 
beauty, that all people regarded her with asto- 
nishment; and her mother could not keep away 
the thought triat her child resembled one of 
those sliiiiing little ones in the space behind the 
Firs. Elfrida cared not to be with other child- 
ren ; but seemed to avoid, with a sort of horror, 
their tumultuous amusements; and liked best 
to be alone. She would tizen retire into a corner 
of the garden, and read, or work diligently with 
her needle; often also you might see her sitting, 
as if deep sunk in thought; or violently walking 
up and down the alleys, speaking to herself. 



Her parents readily allowed her to have her 
will in these things, for she was healthy, and 
waxed apace; only her strange sagacious an- 
swers and observations often made them anx- 
ious. " Such wise children do not grow to age,' 
her grandmother, Brigitta, many times observed ; 
" they are too good for this world ; the child, 
besides, is beautiful beyond nature, and will 
never find its proper place on Earth." 

The little girl had this peculiarity, that she 
was very loath to let herself be served by any 
one, but endeavored to do everything herself. 
She was almost the earliest riser in the house ; 
she washed herself carefully, and dressed with- 
out assistance : at night she was equally careful ; 
she took special heed to pack up her clothes and 
washes with her own hands, allowing no one, 
not even her mother, to meddle with her arti- 
cles. The mother humored her m this caprice, 
not thinking it of any consequence. But what 
was her astonishment, when, happening one 
holiday to insist, regardless of Elfrida's tears 
and screams, on dressing her out for a visit to 
the castle, she found upon her breast, suspended 
by a string-, a piece of gold of a strange form, 
which she directly recognised as one of that sort 
she had seen in such abundance in the subter- 
ranean vault! The little thing was greatly 
frightened ; and at last confessed that she had 
found it in the garden, and as she liked it much, 
had kept it carefully: she at the same time 
prayed so earnestly and pressingly to have it 
back, that Mary fastened it again on its former 
place, and, full of thoughts, went out with her 
in silence to the castle. 

Sidewards from the farm-house lay some of- 
fices for the storing of produce and implements ; 
and behind these there was a little green, with 
an old grove, now visited by no one, as, from 
the new arrangement of the buildings, it lay too 
far from the garden. In this solitude, Elfrida 
delighted most; and it occurred to nobody to 
interrupt her here, so that frequently her parents 
did not see her for half a day. One afternoon 
her mother chanced to be in these buildings, 
seeking for some lost article among the lumber ; 
and she noticed that a beam of light was com- 
ing in, through a chink in the wall. She took 
a thought of looking through this aperture, and 
seeing what her child was busied with ; and it 
happened that a stone was lying loose, and 
could be pushed aside, so that she obtained a 
view right into the grove. Elfrida was sitting 
there on a little bench, and beside her the well- 
known Zerina; and the children were playing, 
and amusing one another, in the kindliest unity. 
The Elf embraced her beautiful companion, and 
said mournfully: "Ah! dear little creature, as 
I sport with thee, so have I sported with tliy 
mother, when she was a child ; but you mor- 
tals so soon grow tall and thoughtful! It is 
very hard : wert thou but to be a child as long 
as I!" 

"Willingly would I do it," said Elfrida; "but 
they all say, I shall come to sense, and give over 



TIECK. 



507 



playing altogether ; for I have great gifts, as 
tliey think, for growing wise. Ah ! and then I 
shall see thee no more, thou dear Zerina! Yet 
it is with us as with the fruit-tree flowers : how 
glorious the blossoming apple-tree, with its red 
bursting biuls! It looks so stately and broad ; 
and every one, that passes under it, thinks 
surely something great will come of it; then the 
sun grows hot, and the buds come joyfully forth ; 
but the wicked kernel is already there, which 
pushes off and casts away the fair flower's 
dress; and now, in pain and waxing, it can do 
nothing more, but must grow to fruit in harvest. 
An apple, to be sure, is pretty and refreshing; 
yet nothing to the blossom of spring. So is it 
also with us mortals: I am not glad in the least 
at growing to be a tall girl. Ah! could I but 
once visit you !" 

"Since the King is with us," said Zerina, "it 
is quite impossible; but I will corne to thee, 
my darling, often, often, and none shall see me 
either here or there. I will pass invisible 
through the air, or fly over to thee like a bird ; 
Oh! we will be much, niucli together, while 
thou art so little. What can I do to please 
thee V 

"Thou must like me very dearly," said El- 
frida, "as I like thee in my heart: but come, 
let us make another rose." 

Zerina took a well-known box from her bo- 
som, threw two grains from it on the ground ; 
and instantly a green bush stood before them, 
with two deep-red roses, bending their heads, 
as if to kiss each other. The children plucked 
them smiling, and the bush disappeared. "0 
that it would not die so soon!" said Elfrida; 
" this red child, this wonder of the Earth !" 

"Give it me here," said the little Elf; then 
breathed thrice upon the budding rose, and 
kissed it thrice. "Now," said she, giving back 
the rose, " it will continue fresh and blooming 
till winter." 

"I will keep it," said Elfrida, "as an image 
of thee ; I will guard it in my little room, and 
kiss it night and morning, as if it were thyself" 

"The sun is setting," said the other, "I must 
liome." They embraced again, and Zerina 
vanished. 

In the evening, Mary clasped her child to her 
breast, with a feeling of alarm and veneration. 
She hencelbrth allowed the good little girl more 
liberty than formerly; and often calmed her 
husband, when lie came to search for the child; 
which for some lime he was wont to do, as her 
retiredness did not please him, and he feared 
that, in the end, it might make her silly, or even 
pervert her understanding. The mother often 
glided to the chink: and almost always foinid 
the bright Elf beside her child, employed in 
sport, or in earnest conversation. 

"Wouldst thou like to fly?" inquired Zerina 
once. 

" Oh, well ! How well !" replied Elfrida ; and 
the fairy clasped her mortal playmate in lier 
arms, and mounted with her from the {(round, 



till they hovered above the grove. The mother, 
in alarm, forgot herself, and pushed out her 
head in terror to look after them : when Zerina, 
from the air, held up her finger, and threatened 
yet smiled ; then descended with the child, 
embraced her, and disappeared. After this, it 
happened more than once that Mary was ob- 
served by her; and every time, the shining 
little creature shook her head, or threatened, yet 
with friendly looks. 

Often, in disputing with her husband, Mary 
had said in her zeal : " Thou dost injustice to 
the poor people in the hut!" But when Andres 
pressed her to explain why she differed in opi- 
nion from the whole village, nay, from his Lord- 
ship himself; and how she could understand it 
better than the whole of them, she still broke 
off embarrassed, and became silent. One day, 
after dinner, Andres grew more violent than 
ever ; and maintained that, by one means or 
another, the crew must be packe<l away, as a 
nuisance to the country; when his wife, in 
anger, said to him: "Hush! for they are bene- 
factors to thee and to every one of us." 

"Benefactors!" cried the other, in astonish- 
ment : " These rogues and vagabonds V 

In her indignation, she was now at last 
tempted to relate to him, under promise of the 
strictest secrecy, the history of her youth: and 
as Andres at every word grew more incredu- 
lous, and shook his head in mockery, she took 
him by the hand, and led him to the chink; 
where, to his amazement, he beheld the glitter- 
ing Elf sporting with his child, and caressing 
her in the grove. He knew not what to say ; 
an exclamation of astonishment escaped him, 
and Zerina raised her eyes. On the instant she 
grew pale, and trembled violently; not with 
friendly, but with indignant looks, she made the 
sign of threatening, and then said to Elfrida : 
"Thou canst not help it, dearest heart; but they 
will never learn sense, wise as they believe 
themselves." She embraced the little one with 
stormy haste ; and then, in the shape of a raven, 
flew with hoarse cries over the garden, towards 
the Firs. 

In the evening, the little one was very still, 
she kissed her rose with tears; Mary felt de- 
pressed and frightened, Andres scarcely spoke. 
It grew darlc. Suddenly there went a rustling 
through the trees; birds flew to and fro with 
wild screaming, thunder was heard to roll, the 
Earth shook, and tones of lamentation moaned 
in the air. Andres and his wife had not cou- 
rage to rise ; they shrouded themselves within 
the curtains, and v\ith fear and trembling await- 
ed the day. Towards morning it grew calmer- 
and all was silent wlien the Sun, with his cheer- 
ful light, rose over the wood. 

Andres dressed himself, and Mary now ob- 
served that the stone of the ring upon her fingei 
had become quite pale. On opening the door, 
the sun shone clear oti their iaces, but the scene 
around then'- they could scarcely recognise. The 
freshness of the wood was gone ; the hills were 



t)08 



TIECK. 



shrunk, the brooks were flowing languidly with 
scanty streams, the sky seemed grey ; and when 
you turned to the Firs, they were standing there 
no darker or more dreary than the other trees. 
The huts behind were no longer frightful; and 
several inhabitants of the village came and told 
about the fearful night, an<l how they had been 
across the spot where the gipsies had lived; 
how these people must have left the place at 
last, for their huts were standing empty, and 
within had quite a common look, just like the 
dwellings of other poor people: some of their 
household gear was left behind. 

Elfrida in secret said to her mother : " I could 
not sleep last night ; and in my fright at the 
noise, I was praying from the bottom of my 
heart, when the door suddenly opened, and my 
playmate entered to take leave of me. She had 
a travelling-pouch slung round her, a hat on her 
head, and a large staff in her hand. She was 
very angry at thee ; since on thy account she 
had now to suffer the severest and most painful 
punishments, as she had always been so fond 
of thee; for all of them, she said, were very 
loath to leave this quarter." 

Mary forbade her to speak of this ; and now 
the ferryman came across the river, and told 
them new wonders. As it was growing dark, 
a stranger man of large size had come to him, 
and hired his boat till sunrise; and with this 
condition, that the boatman should remain quiet 
in his house, at least should not cross the thres- 
hold of his door. " I was frightened," continued 
the old man, " and the strange bargain would 
not let me sleep. I slipped softly to the win- 
dow, and looked towards the river. Great 
clouds were driving restlessly through the sky, 
and the distant woods were rustling fearfully ; 
it was as if my cottage shook, and moans and 
lamentations glided round it. On a sudden, I 
perceived a white streaming light, that grew 
broader and broader, like many thousands of 
falling stars ; sparkling and waving, it proceeded 
forward from the dark Fir-ground, moved over 
the fields, and spread itself along towards the 
river. Then I heard a trampling, a jingling, a 
bustling, and rushing, nearer and nearer; it 
went forwards to my boat, and all stept into it, 
men and women, as it seemed, and children; 
»nd the tall stranger ferried them over. In the 



river were by the boat swimming many thou 
sands of glittering forms ; in the air white clouds 
and lights were wavering; and all lamented 
and bewailed that they must travel forth so far, 
far away, and leave their beloved dwelling. 
The noise of the rudder and the water creaked 
and gurgled between whiles, and then suddenly 
there would.be silence. Many a time the boat 
landed, and went back, and was again laden ; 
many heavy casks, too, they took along with 
them, which multitudes of horrid-looking little 
fellows carried and rolled ; whether they were 
devils or goblins. Heaven only knows. Then 
came, in waving brightness, a stately freight ; 
it seemed an old man, mounted on a small white 
horse, and all were crowding round him. I 
saw nothing of the horse but its head ; for the 
rest of it was covered with costly glittering 
cloths and trappings : on his brow the old man 
had a crown, so bright, that as he came across, 
I thought the sun was rising there, and the red- 
ness of the dawn glimmering in my eyes. Thus 
it went on all night; I at last fell asleep in the 
tumult, half in joy, half in terror. In the morn- 
ing all was still ; but the river is, as it were, 
run ofif, and I know not how I am to steer my 
boat in it now." 

The same year there came a blight; the 
woods died away, the springs ran dry ; and the 
scene, which had once been the joy of every 
traveller, was in autumn standing waste, naked, 
and bald; scarcely showing here and there, in 
the sea of sand, a spot or two where grass, with 
a dingy greenness, still grew up. The fruit- 
trees all withered, the vines faded away, and 
the aspect of the place became so melancholy, 
that the Count, with his people, next year left 
the castle, which in time decayed and fell to 
ruins. 

Elfrida gazed on her rose day and night with 
deep longing, and thought of her kind playmate ; 
and as it drooped and withered, so did she also 
hang her head ; and before the spring, the little 
maiden had herself faded away. Mary often 
stood upon the spot before the hut, and wept 
for the happiness that had departed. She 
wasted herself away like her child, and in a 
few years she too was gone. Old Martin, with 
his son-in-law, returned to the quarter where 
he had lived before. 



FREDERIC WILLIAM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING. 



ScHELLiNG, the third and the only surviving 
one of the great quaternion of German philoso- 
phers, was born at Leonberg, in Wiirtemberg, 
January 27th, 1775. He studied philosophy 
and theology at Tubingen, Leipzig and Jena. 
At the latter university he was a pupil of Fichte, 
and afterward (1798) succeeded him as pro- 
fessor of philosophy. In 1803, he went to 
Wiirzburg, as professor ordinarius of philoso- 
phy ; in 1807, to Munich, where he was made 
general secretary of the Academy of the Plastic 
Arts, and where he was ennobled by the King 
of Bavaria. In 1820, he left that place in dis- 
gust, in consequence of a literary controversy 
with the president of the Academy of Sciences, 
and lectured on philosophy in Erlangen ; but 
accepted an invitation to return, seven years 
after, as professor ordinarius of philosophy, with 
the title of Privy Aulic Counsellor. He re- 
mained in Munich until the beginning of the 
present decade, when he was invited to Berlin 
by the reigning monarch of Prussia, to lecture 
at the university in the capacity of member of 
the Berlin Academy; a situation which he 
holds, it is believed, to this day, having entered 
upon it in November, 1841. 

If Fichte's is the most interesting character 
among the transcendental philosophers of Ger- 
many, Schelling's is the richest genius and the 
widest influence. Incalculable has been the 
influence of his profound intuitions on Philoso- 
phy, Letters, Science, Art; on all departments 
of human Thought. His word was the breath 
of spring to the intellectual world of his time. 
It brought verdure and a sudden efflorescence 
to every branch of knowledge. Probably no 
man of his age, certainly no one in the prov- 
ince of abstract speculation, has put forth so 
many new and life-giving thoughts. His phi- 
losophy is creative, as that of Kant is destruc- 
tive. He combines — what is so rare in philo- 
sophy — intuitive perception and poetic imagi- 
nation, with dialectic subtlety and philosophical 
unalysis. He is the poel of the transcendental 
movement, as Fichte is its preacher. 

Schelling has given to the world no com- 



plete system of philosophy. There is no one 
work, as in the case of Kant and Fichte, which 
can be referred to as containing a full and sys- 
tematic exposition of his distinctive views. 
They are scattered through a long series of 
works, each one of which presents some par- 
ticular result of his speculations, or some par- 
ticular aspect of his philosophy. Moreover, his 
view varies in different statements. His phi- 
losophy has received new modifications at dif- 
ferent periods of his long life. But these modi- 
fications have not changed its identity ; and the 
general direction of his opinions remains the 
same. The following are the titles of some of 
his works: "On the Possibility of a Form of 
Philosophy ;" " Idea of a Philosophy of Na- 
ture ;" " Introduction to a System of Natural 
Philosophy;" "Concerning the /,•" "The Soul 
of the World ;" " On the Relation between the 
Ideal and the Real in Nature ;" " Philosophy 
and Religion," &c. &c. 

Schelling differs from Fichte in the objective 
or realistic direction of his thought. Both en- 
deavored to construct a philosophy of the Abso- 
lute. Both set out with the principle that there 
is but one being, one substance. Fichte sought 
it in the conscious self; Schelling finds it in 
Nature. Fichte regarded Nature, or the world 
of appearances, as a modification of Thought; 
Schelling regards Thought as a function oi 
blossom of Nature. Accordingly, he gave to 
his philosophy the title, "Natural Philosophy," 
or "Philosophy of Nature." It is also called 
the " Philosophy of Identity," because he holds 
that matter and spirit, the ideal and the real, 
subject and object, are identical. The Abso- 
lute, according to him, is neither real nor ideal, 
(neither matter nor spirit,) but the identity of 
both. There is but one Being; that Being 
may be considered at once or alternately, as 
either wholly ideal or wholly real. God is the 
absolute identity of Nature and Thought, of 
matter and spirit. And this absolute identity 
is not the cause of the imiverse, but the un' 
verse itself— a God-universe. 

From this account, it will be seen that the 
43 * (SO'J) 



510 



SCHELLING. 



philosophy of Schelling bears a close resem- 
blance to that of Spinoza. What Spinoza dis- 
sected in dry mathematical formulas, Schelling 
gave forth a livingr soul. But, though they 
agree in substance, they differ in spirit. With 
Schelling, the spirit predominates; with Spi- 
noza, the substance. Spinoza saw God imma- 
nent in Nature; Schelling sees Nature dis- 
solved in God. 

"By far the most important result of Schell- 
ing's philosophy," says Menzel, "seems to be 
the impartial epical view of the world which 
it imparts. In the system of Schelling, every 
party finds its place opposite another ; the sep- 
aration is shown to be a natural one ; their 
contradictions are referred to an original and 
necessary opposition. This system throughout 
tolerates nothing exclusive, no unconditional 
persecution of another. It endeavors to secure 



to every spiritual existence, be it an opinion, a 
character or an event, the same right in a na- 
tural philosophy of mind and history which 
every material existence has in common 
science. It considers the historical periods as 
seasons of the year, nationalities as zones, tem- 
peraments as the elements, characters as crea- 
tures, and their manifestations in thought and 
action as necessarily founded in Nature, and as 
diverse as the instincts. According to this 
system, there is a growth and a progress, a 
multiplicity and an order, in the intellectual 
world, as in the natural. In it alone the end- 
less war of opinion is hushed, and every con- 
tradiction finds its simplest and most natural 
solution."* 



* Menzel's "German Literature." Translated by C. C. 
Felton. 



ON THE RELATION OF THE PLASTIC 
ARTS TO NATURE. 

A. SPEECH ON THE CELEBRATION OF THE 13TH OCTOBER. 18 7, AS 
THE NAME-DAY OF HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF BAVARIA. 

Delivered before the Public Assembly of the Royal Acadeniy of 
Sciences at Munich, by F. W. J. Schelling.* 

• * * Plastic Art, according to the most 
ancient expression, is silent Poetry. The in- 
ventor of this definition no doubt meant thereby 
that the former, like the latter, is to express spi- 
ritual thoughts — conceptions whose source is the 
soul ; only not by speech, but like silent Nature 
by shape, by form, by corporeal, independent 
works. 

Plastic Art, therefore, evidently stands as a 
uniting link between the soul and Nature, 
and can be apprehended only in the living 
centre of both. Indeed, since Plastic Art has 
its relation to the soul in common with every 
other art, and particularly with Poetry, that by 
which it is connected with Nature, and, like 
Nature, a productive force, remains as its sole 
peculiarity. So that to this alone can a theory 
relate which shall be satisfactory to the under- 
standing, and helpful and profitable to Art 
itself. 

We hope, therefore, in considering Plastic Art 
in relation to its true prototype and original 
source. Nature, to be able to contribute some- 
thing new to its theory — to give some additional 
exactness or clearness to the conceptions of it; 
but, above all, to set forth the coherence of the 
whole structure of Art in the light of a higher 
necessity. 

But has not Science always recognised this 
elation ? Has not indeed every theory of mod- 

. * Translated by J. Elliot Cabot, Esq. 



em times taken its departure from this very 
position, that Art should be the imitator of Na- 
ture? Such has indeed been the case. But 
what should this broad general proposition profit 
the artist, when the notion of Nature is of so 
various interpretation, and when there are al- 
most as many differing views of it, as various 
modes of life ? Thus, to one. Nature is nothing 
more than the lifeless aggregate of an indeter- 
minable crowd of objects, or the space in which, 
as in a vessel, he imagines things placed ; — to 
another, only the soil from which he draws his 
nourishment and support; — to the inspired 
seeker alone, the holy, ever-creative original 
energy of the world, which generates and busily 
evolves all things out of itself 

The proposition would indeed have a liigh 
significance, if it taught Art to emulate this 
creative force ; but the sense in which it was 
meant can scarcely be doubtful to one acquaint- 
ed with the universal condition of Science at 
the time when it was first brought forward. 
Singular enough that the very persons who de- 
nied all life to Nature, should set it up for imita- 
tion in Art! To them might be applied the 
words of a profound writer:* "Your lying phi- 
losophy has put Nature out of the way ; and 
why do you call upon us to imitate her? Is it 
that you may renew the pleasure by perpetrat- 
ing the same violence on the disciples of 
Nature?" 

Nature was to them not merely a dumb, but an 
altogether lifeless image, in whose inmost being 
even no living word dwelt; a holloM> scaf- 
folding of forms, of which as hollow an imaga 
was to be transferred to the canvass, or hewn 
out in stone. 

* J. G. Hamann. 



SCHELLING. 



511 



This was the proper doctrine of tliose more 
ancient and savage nations, who, as they saw 
in Nature notliing divine, fetctied idols out of 
lier ; whilst, to the susceptive Greeks, who 
everywhere felt the presence of a vitally effi- 
cient principle, genuine gods arose out of Nature. 

But is, then, the disciple of Nature to copy 
everything in Nature without distinction? and of 
everything, every part? Only beautiful objects 
should be represented; and, even in these, only 
the Beautiful and Perfect. 

Thus is the proposition farther determined; 
but, at the same time, this asserted, that, in Na- 
ture, the perfect is mingled with the imperfect 
— the beautiful with the unbeautiful. Now, how 
should he who stands in no other relation to 
Nature than that of servile imitation, distinguish 
the one from the other? It is the way of imi- 
tators to appropriate the faults of their model 
sooner and easier than its excellences, since the 
former ofler handles and tokens more easily 
grasped; and thus we see that imitators of Na- 
ture in this sense have imitated oftener, and 
even more affectionately, the ugly than the 
beautiful. 

If we regard in things, not their principle, but 
the empty abstract form, neither will they say 
anything to our soul; our own heart, our own 
spirit we must put to it, that they answer us. 

But what is the perfection of a thing? No- 
thing else than the creative life in it, its power 
to exist. Never, therefore, will he, who fancies 
that Nature is altogether dead, be successful in 
that profound process (analogous to the chemi- 
cal) whence proceeds, purified as by fire, the 
pure gold of Beauty and Truth. 

Nor was there any change in the main view 
of the relation of Art to Nature, even when the 
unsatisfactoriuess of the principle began to be 
more generally felt ; no change, even by the 
new views and new knowledge so nobly estab- 
lished by John Winkelmann. He indeed re- 
stored to the soul its fiill efficiency in Art, and 
raised it from its unworthy dependence into the 
realm of spiritual freedom. Powerfully moved 
by the beauty of form in the works of antiquity, 
he tauglit that tlie production of ideal Nature, 
of Nature elevated above the Actual, together 
with the expression of spiritual conceptions, is 
the highest aim of Art. 

But if we examine in what sense this sur- 
passing of the Actual by Art has been under- 
stood by the most, it turns out that, with this 
view also, the notion of Nature as mere product; 
of things as a lifeless result, still continued ; and 
the idea of a living creative Nature was in no 
wise awakened by it. So that these ideal forms 
also could be animated by no positive insight 
into their nature ; and if the forms of the 
Actual were dead for the dead beholder, these 
were not less so. Was no independent produc- 
tion of the Actual possible, neither was it of 
the Ideal. The object of the imitation was 
changed, the imitation remained. In the place 
of Nature were substituted the sublime works 



of Antiquity, whose outward forms the pupils 
busied themselves in taking down, but without 
the spirit that fills them. These, however, are 
as unapproachable, nay, more so, than the works 
of Nature ; and leave us yet colder, if we 
bring not to them the spiritual eye to penetrate 
through the veil, and feel the stirring energy 
within. 

On the other hand, artists, since that time, 
have indeed received a certain ideal bias, and 
notions of a beauty superior to matter ; but these 
notions were like fair words, to which the deeds 
do not correspond. While the previous method 
in Art produced bodies without soul, this vv'W 
taught only the secret of the soul, but not ihat 
of the body. The theory had, as usual, passed 
with one hasty stride to the opposite extreme; 
but the vital mean it had not yet found. 

Who can say that Winkelmann had not an 
insight into the highest beauty? But with him 
it appeared in its dissevered elements: on one 
side as beauty in idea, and flowing out from the 
soul ; on the other, as beauty of forms. 

But what is the efficient link that connects 
the two? or by what power is the soul cre- 
ated together with the body, at once and as 
if with one breath? If this lies not within the 
power of Art, as of Nature, then it can create 
nothing whatever. This vital connecting link, 
Winkelmann did not determine; he did not 
teach how, from the idea, forms can be pro- 
duced. Thus Art went over to that method 
which we would call the retrograde, since it 
strives from the form to come at the essence. 
But not thus is the Unlimited reached ; it is not 
attainable by mere enhancement of the Limited. 
Hence, such works as have had their beginning 
in form, with all elaborateness on that side, 
show, in token of their origin, an incurable want 
at the very point where we expect the consum- 
mate, the essential, the final. The miracle by 
which the Limited should be raised to the Un- 
limited, the human become divine, is wanting: 
the magic circle is drawn, but the spirit that 
it should enclose, appears not, disobedient to 
the call of him who thought a creation possible 
through mere form. * * * » 

******* 

Nature meets us everywhere, at first with 
reserve, and in form moie or less severe. She 
is like that quiet and serious beauty, that excites 
not attention by noisy advertisement, nor attracts 
the vulgar gaze. 

How can we, as it were, spiritually melt this 
apparently rigid form, so that the pure energy 
of things may flow together with the force of 
our spirit, and pour forth in one united gush? 
We must transcend Form, in order to gain it 
again as intelligible, living, and truly felt. Con- 
sider the most beautiful forms: what remains 
behind after you have abstracted from them the 
efficient principle within? Notliing but mere 
unessential qualities, such as extension and the 
relations of space. Does the fact that one por- 
tion of matter exists near another, and distinct 



512 



SCHELLING. 



from it, contribute anything to its inner essence? 
or does it not rather contribute nothing? Evi- 
dently the latter. It is not mere contiguous 
existence, but the manner of it, tliat makes 
form ; and this can be determined only by a 
positive force, which is even opposed to sepa- 
rateness, and subordinates the manifoldness of 
the parts to the unity of one idea — from the 
force that works in the crystal, to that which, as 
a gentle magnetic current, gives to the particles 
of matter in the human form a position and 
arrangement among themselves, through which 
the idea, the essential unity and beauty, can 
become visible. 

Not only, however, as active principle, but as 
spirit and effective science, must tlie essence 
appear to ns in the form, in order that we may 
truly apprehend it. For all unity must be spi- 
ritual in nature and origin : and what is the aim 
of all investigation of Nature, but to find science 
therein? For that wlierein there were no Un- 
derstanding, could not be the object of Under- 
standing: the Unknowing could not be known. 
The science by which Nature works is not, in- 
deed, like human science, connected with reflec- 
tion upon itself: in it, the conception is not 
separate from the act, nor the design from the 
execution. Thus, rude matter strives, as it 
were, blindly, after regular shape, and unknow- 
ingly assumes pure stereometric forms, which 
belong, nevertheless, to the realm of ideas, and 
are someiliing spiritual in the material. 

The sublimest arithmetic and geometry are 
innate in the stars, and unconsciously displayed 
by them in their motions. More distinctly, but 
still beyond their grasp, the living cognition ap- 
pears in animals; and thus we see them, though 
wandering about without reflection, bring about 
innumerable results far more excellent than 
themselves; — the bird that, intoxicated with 
music, transcends itself in soul-like tones; the 
little artistic creature, that, without practice or 
instruction, accomplishes light works of archi- 
tecture ; — but all directed by an overpowering 
spirit, that lightens in them already with single 
flashes of knowledge, but as yet appears no- 
where as the full sun, as in Man. 

This formative science in Nature and Art 
is the link that connects idea and form, body 
and soul. Before everything stands an eter- 
nal idea, formed in the Infinite Understanding; 
but by what means does this idea pass into 
actuality and embodiment? Only through the 
creative science that is as necessarily connected 
with the Infinite Understanding, as in the artist 
the principle that seizes the idea of unsensuous 
Beauty, with that which sets it forth to the 
senses. 

Is the artist to be called happy and praise- 
worthy before all, to whom the gods have grant- 
ed this spirit ; so the work of art will appear in 
that measure excellent in which it shows to us, 
as in outline, this unadulterated energy of crea- 
tion and activity in Nature. 

It was long ago perceived that, in Art, not 



everything is performed with consciousness ; 
that, with the conscious activity, an unconscious 
action must combine ; and that it is of the per- 
fect unity and mutual interpenetration of the 
two that the highest in Art is born. 

Works that want this seal of unconscious 
science, are recognised by the evident absence 
of life self-supported and independent of the 
producer: as, on the contrary, where this acts, 
Art imparts to its work, together with the ut- 
most clearness to the understanding, that unfa- 
thomable reality wherein it resembles a work 
of Nature. 

It has often been attempted to make clear the 
position of the artist in regard to Nature, by 
saying that Art, in order to be such, must first 
withdraw itself from Nature, and return to it 
only in the last completeness. The true sense 
of this saying, it seems to us, can be no other 
than this: That in all things in Nature, the liv- 
ing idea shows itself only blindly active: were 
it so also in the artist, he would be in nothing 
distinct from Nature. But, should he attempt 
consciously to subordinate himself altogether to 
the Actual, and give back with servile fidelity 
the already existing, he would produce larva, 
but no works of Art. He must therefore with- 
draw himself from the product, from the crea- 
ture; but only in order to raise himself to the 
creative energy, and spiritually to seize this. 
Thus he ascends into the realm of pure ideas; 
he forsakes the creature, to regain it with thou 
sand-fold interest, and in this sense certainly to 
return to Nature. This spirit of Nature working 
at the core of things, and speaking tlirough form 
and shape as by symbols only, the artist must 
certainly follow with emulation; and only so 
far as he seizes this with genial imitation, has 
he himself produced anything genuine. For 
works produced by aggregation, even of forms 
beautiful in themselves, would still be destitute 
of all beauty, since that, through which the 
work on the whole is truly beautiful, cannot be 
form. It is above form — it is Essence; the 
Universal; the look and expression of the in- 
dwelling spirit of Nature. 

Now it can scarcely be doubtful what is to 
be thought of the so-called idealising of Nature 
in Art, so universally demanded. This demand 
seems to arise from a way of thinking, accord- 
ing to which not Truth, Beauty, Goodness, but 
the contrary of all these is the Actual. Were 
the Actual indeed opposed to Truth and Beauty, 
it would be necessary for the artist, not to ele- 
vate or idealise it, but to get rid of and destroy 
it, in order to create anything true and beauti- 
ful. But how should it be possible for anything 
to be actual except the True ; and what is Beauty, 
if not full complete Being? 

What higher aim, therefore, could Art have, 
than to represent that which in Nature truly is? 
Or how should it undertake to excel so-called 
actual Nature, since it must always fall short 
of it? 

For does Art impart to its works actual sen- 



SCHELLING. 



513 



guous life? This statue breathes not, is stirred 
by no pulsation, warmed by no blood. 

But both the pretended excelling and the ap- 
parent falling short show themselves as the 
consequences of one and the same principle, so 
soon as we place the aim of Art in the exhibil- 
ing of that which truly is. 

Only on the surface have its works the ap- 
pearance of life ; in Nature, life seems to reach 
deeper, and to be wedded entirely with the 
material. But does not the continual mutation 
of matter and the universal lot of final dissolu- 
tion teach us the unessential character of this 
union, and that it is no intimate combination ? 
Art, accordingly, in the merely superficial anima- 
tion of its works, represents tlie unessential as 
not existing. 

How comes it that to every tolerably culti- 
vated taste, imitations of the so-called Actual, 
even though carried to deception, appear in the 
last degree untrue ; nay, produce the impression 
of spectres ; whilst a work in which the idea is 
predominant strikes us with the full force of 
truth, and alone places us in the genuine actual 
world? Whence comes it, if not from the more 
or less obscure feeling which tells us that the 
idea alone is the living principle in things, but 
all else unessential and vain shadow? 

On the same ground may be explained all 
the opposite cases, which are brought up as in- 
stances of the surpassing of Nature by Art. In 
arresting the rapid course of human years; in 
uniting the energy of developed manhood with 
the soft charm of early youth; or exhibiting a 
mother of grown-up sons and daughters in the 
full possession of vigorous beauty, what does 
Art, except to strike out what is unessential, 
Time ? 

If, according to the remark of a discerning 
critic, every growth in Nature has but an in- 
stant of truly complete beauty, we may also say 
that it has too only an instant of full existence. 
In this instant it is what it is in all eternity: 
beside this, it has only a coming into and a 
passing out of existence. Art, in representing 
the thing at that instant, removes it out of Time, 
and sets it forth in its pure Being, in the eternity 
of its life. 

After everything positive and essential had 
once been abstracted from Form, it necessarily 
appeared limiting, and, as it were, hostile, to 
the Essence ; and the same theory that had 
called up the false and powerless Ideal, neces- 
sarily tended to the formless in Art. Form 
would indeed be a limitation to the Essence if 
it existed independent of it. But if it exists 
with and by means of the Essence, how could 
this feel itself limited by that which it has 
itself created? Violence would indeed be done 
it by a form forced upon it, but never by one 
proceeding from itself. In this, on the contrary, 
it must rest contented, and feel its own exist- 
ence to be self-sustained and complete in it- 
self. 

Determinateness of form is in Nature never a 
3p 



negation, but ever an affirmation. Commonly, 
indeed, the shape of a body seems a confine- 
ment; but could we behold the creative energy, 
it would reveal itself as the measure that this 
energy imposes upon itself, and in which it 
shows itself a truly intelligent force; for in 
everything is the power of self-rule allowed to 
be an excellence, and one of the highest. 

In like manner most persons consider the 
particular in a negative manner: viz. as that 
which is not the whole or all. But no particular 
exists by means of its limitation, but through 
the indwelling force with which it maintains 
itself as a particular Whole, in distinction from 
the Universe. 

This force of particularity, and thus also of 
individuality, showing itself as vital character, 
the negative conception of it is necessarily fol- 
lowed by an unsatisfying and false view of the 
characteristic in Art. Lifeless and of intolera- 
ble hardness would be the Art that should aim 
to exhibit the empty shell or limitation of the 
Individual. Certainly we desire to see not 
merely the individual, but more than this, its 
vital Idea. But if the artist have seized the 
inward creative spirit and essence of the Idea, 
and sets this forth, he makes the individual a 
world ill itself, a class, an eternal prototype: 
and he who has grasped the essential character 
needs not to fear hardness and severity, for 
these are the conditions of life. Nature, who 
in her completeness appears as the utmost be- 
nignity, we see in each particular aiming even 
primarily and principally at severity, seclusion 
and reserve. As the whole creation is the work 
of the utmost externisation and renunciation 
[Ent'dussermig], so the artist must first deny 
himself and descend into the Particular, with- 
out shunning isolation, nor the pain, the an- 
guish of Form. 

Nature, from her first works, is throughout 
characteristic; the energy of fire, the splendor 
of light she shuts up in hard stone : the tender 
soul of melody in severe metal: — even on the 
thresholdof Life, and already meditating organic 
shape, she sinks back overpowered by the might 
of Form, into petrifaction. 

The life of the plant consists in still recep- 
tivity, but in what exact and severe outline is 
this passive life enclosed ! In the animal king- 
dom the strife between Life and Form seems 
first properly to begin: her first works Nature 
hides in hard shells, and where these are laid 
aside, the animated world attaches itself again 
through its constructive impulse to the realm 
of crystallization. Finally she comes forward 
more boldly and freely, and vital, important 
characteristics show themselves, and are the 
same through whole classes. Art, indeed, can- 
not begin so far down as Nature. Though 
Beauty is spread everywhere, yet there aro 
various grades in the appearance and unfolding 
of the Essence, and thus of Beauty. But Art 
demands a certain fulness, and desires not tii 
strike a single note or tone, nor even a detach- 



&14 



SCHELLING. 



ed accord, but at once the full symphony of 
Beauty. 

Art, therefore, prefers to grasp immediately 
at the highest and most developed, the human 
form. For since it is not given it to embrace 
the immeasurable whole, and as in all other 
creatures only single fulgurations, in Man alone 
full entire Being appear without abatement, 
Art is not only permitted but required to 
see the sum of Nature in Man alone. But 
precisely on this account, — that she here as- 
sembles all in one point, Nature repeats her 
whole multiformity, and pursues again in a 
narrower compass the same course that she 
had gone through in her wide circuit. 

Here, therefore, arises the demand upon the 
artist first to be true and faithful in detail, in 
order to come forth complete and beautiful in 
tlie whole. Here he must wrestle with the 
creative spirit of Nature ; — [which in the moral 
world also deals out character and stamp in 
endless variety,] — not in weak and effeminate, 
but stout and courageous conflict. 

Persevering exercise in the study of that 
by virtue of which the characteristic in things 
is a j)Ositive principle, must preserve him from 
emptiness, weakness, inward inanity, belbre he 
can venture to aim by ever higher combination 
and final melting together of manifold forms, 
to reach the extremest beauty in works unit- 
ing tlie highest simplicity with infinite mean- 
ing. 

Only through the perfection of form can 
Form be made to disappear; and this is cer- 
tainly the final aim of Art in the Characteristic. 
But as the apparent harmony that is even more 
easily reached by the empty and frivolous than 
by others, is yet inwardly vain; so in Art the 
quickly attained harmony of the exterior with- 
out inward fulness. And if it is the part of 
theory and instruction to oppose the spiritless 
copying of beautiful forms, es[)ecially must they 
oppose the tendency toward an effeminate 
characterless Art, which gives itself indeed 
liigher names, but therewith only seeks to hide 
its incapacity to fulfil the fundamental condi- 
tions. 

That lofty Beauty in which the fulness of 
form causes Form its«lf to disappear, was 
adopted by the modern theory of Art after 
Winkelmann, not only as the highest, but as the 
only standard. But as the deep foundation upon 
which it rests was overlooked, it resulted that 
a negative conception was formed of that which 
is the sum of all affirmation. 

Winkelmann compares Beauty with water 
drawn from the bosom of the spring, which the 
.ess taste it lias, the wholesomer it is esteemed. 
It is true that the liighest Beauty is character- 
less, but it is so as we say of the Universe that 
it has no determinate dimension, neither length, 
breadth nor depth, since it has all in equal in- 
finity: 01 that the Art of creative Nature is 
formless, because she herself is subjected to no 
'brm. 



In this and in no other sense can we say that 
Grecian art in its highest cultivation rises into 
the characterless. But it did not aim imme- 
diately at this. It was from the bonds of Na- 
ture that it struggled upwards to divine free- 
dom. From no lightly scattered seed, but only 
from a deeply enfolded kernel, could this heroic 
growth spring up. Only mighty emotions, only 
a deep stirring of the fancy through the impres- 
sion of all-enlivening, all-commanding energies 
of Nature, could stamp upon Art that invincible 
vigor with which from the rigid, secluded ear- 
nestness of earlier productions up to the period 
of works overflowing with sensuous grace, it 
ever remained faithful to truth, and produced 
the highest spiritual Reality which it is given to 
mortals to behold. 

In like manner as their Tragedy commences 
with the grandest characteristicness in morals, 
so the beginning of their Plastic Art was the 
earnestness of Nature, and the stern goddess 
of Athens its first and only Muse. 

This epoch is marked by that style which 
Winkelmann describes as the still harsh and 
severe, from which the next or lofty style was 
able to develop itself by the mere enhance- 
ment of the Characteristic into the Sublime and 
the Simple. 

For in the statues of the most perfect or 
divine natures, not only all the complexity of 
form of which human nature is capable had to 
be united, but moreover the union must be such 
as may be conceived to exist in the system of 
the Universe itself: viz. the lower forms, or 
those relating to inferior attributes, being com- 
prehended under higher, and all at last under 
one supreme form, in which they indeed extin- 
guish each other as separately existing, but still 
continue in Essence and efliciency. 

Thus, though we cannot call this high and 
self-sufficing Beauty characteristic, so far as 
herewith is connected the notion of limitation 
or conditionality in the manifestation, yet still 
the characteristic continues efficient, though indis- 
tinguishable, within: as in the crystal, although 
transparent, the texture nevertheless remains. 

Each characteristic element has its weight, 
however slight, and helps to bring about the 
sublime equipoise of Beauty. 

The outer side or basis of all Beauty is beauty 
of form. But as Form cannot exist without 
Essence, wherever Form is, there also is Cha- 
racter; whether in visible presence or only 
perceptible in its effects. Characteristic Beauty, 
therefore, is Beauty in the root, IVom which 
alone Beauty can arise as the fruit. Essence 
may, indeed, outgrow Form, but even then 
the Characteristic remains as the still efficient 
ground-work of the Beautiful. 

A most excellent critic,* to whom the Gods 
have given sway over Nature as well as Art, 
compares the Characteristic in its relation to 



♦Goethe. fTer/tc (1840) xxx. 352. Mr. Ward's tran.^lation 
of Goethe's " Essays on Art," p. 76. 



SCHELLING. 



515 



Beauty, with the skeleton in its relation to the 
living form. Were we to interpret this striking 
simile in our sense, we should say that the 
skeleton, in Nature, is not as in onr thought 
detached from the living whole : that the firm 
and the yielding, the determining and the de- 
termined, mutually presuppose each other, and 
can exist only together : thus that the vitally 
Characteristic is already the whole form, the 
result of the action and reaction of bone and 
flesh, of Active and Passive. And although 
Art, like Nature, in its higher developments, 
thrusts inward the previously visible skeleton, 
yet this latter can never be opposed to Shape 
and Beauty, since it lias always a determining 
share in the production of the one as well as 
of the other. 

But whether thathigh and independent Beauty 
should be the only standard in Art, as it is the 
highest, seems to depend on the degree of ful- 
ness and extent that belongs to the particular 
Art. 

Nature, in her wide circumference, ever ex- 
hibits the higher with the lower: creating in 
Man the godlike, she elaborates in all her other 
productions only its material and foundation, 
which must exist in order that in contrast with 
it the Essence as such may appear. And even 
in the higher world of Man the great mass 
serves again as the basis upon which the god- 
like that is preserved pure in the few, mani- 
fests itself in legislation, government, and the 
establishment of Religion. So that wherever 
Art works with more of the complexity of Na- 
ture, it may and must display together with the 
highest measure of Beauty, also its ground- 
work and raw material as it were, in distinct 
appropriate forms. 

Here first prominently unfolds itself the dif- 
ference in Nature of the forms of Art. 

Plastic Art, in the more exact sense of the 
term, disdains to give Space outwardly to the 
object, but bears it within itself. This, however, 
narrows its field ; it is compelled, indeed, to 
display the beauty of the Universe almost in a 
single point. It must therefore aim imme- 
diately at the hiahest, and can attain complexity 
only separately and in the strictest exclusion of 
all conflicting elements. By isolating the purely 
animal in human nature it succeeds in forming 
inferior creations too, harmonious and even 
beautiful, as we are taught by the beauty of 
numerous Fauns preserved from Antiquity: it 
can, indeed, parodying itself like the merry 
spirit of Nature, reverse its own Ideal, and for 
instance, in the extravagance of the Silenic 
figures, by light and sportive treatment, appear 
freed again from the pressure of mqtter. 

But in all cases it is compelled strictly to iso- 
late the work, in order to make it self-consistent 
and a world in itself; since for this form of Art 
there is no higher unity, in which the dissonance 
of particulars should be melted into harmony. 

Paintitig, on the contrary, in the very extent 
of its sphere, can better measure itself with the 



Universe, and create with epic profusion. In 
an Iliad there is room even for a Thersites, and 
what does not find a place in the great epic of 
Nature and History! 

Here the Particular scarcely counts anything 
by itself; the Universe takes its place, and that, 
which by itself would not be beautiful, becomes 
so in the harmony of the whole. If in an ex- 
tensive painting, uniting forms by the allotted 
space, by light, by shade, by reflection, the 
highest measure of Beauty were everywhere 
employed, the result would be the most unna- 
tural monotony; for, as Winkelmann says, the 
highest idea of Beauty is everywhere one and 
the same, and scarce admits of variation. The 
detail would be preferred to the whole, where, 
as in every case in which the whole is formed 
by multiplicity, the detail must be subordinate 
to it. 

In such a work, therefore, a gradation of 
Beauty must be observed, by which alone the 
full Beauty concentrated in the focus becomes 
visible; and from an exaggeration of particu- 
lars proceeds an equipoise of the whole. Here, 
then, the limited and characteristic finds its 
place ; and theory at least should direct the 
painter, not so much to the narrow space in 
which the entire Beauty is concentrically col- 
lected, as to the characteristic complexity of 
Nature, through which alone he can impart to 
an extensive work the full measure of living 
significance. 

Thus thought, among the founders of modern 
art, the noble Leonardo ; thus Rapliael, the 
master of high Beauty, who shunned not to ex- 
hibit it in smaller measure, rather than to appear 
monotonous, lifeless, and unreal — though he 
understood not only how to produce it, but also 
how to break up uniformity by variety of ex- 
pression. 

For, although Character can show itself also 
in rest and equilibiium of form, yet it is only 
in action that it becomes truly alive. 

By Character we understand a unity of several 
forces, operating constantly to produce among 
them a certain equipoise and determinate pro- 
portion, to which, if undisturbed, a like equi- 
poise in the symmetry of the forms corresponds. 
But if this vital Unity is to display itself in act 
and operation, this can only be when the forces, 
excited by some cause to rebellion, forsake their 
equilibrium. Every one sees that this is the 
case in the Passions. 

But here we are met by the well-known 
maxim of the theorists, which demands that 
Passion should be moderated as far as possible, 
in its actual outburst, that beauty of Form may 
not be injured. But we think this maxim should 
rather be reversed, and read thus : — that Pas- 
sion should be moderated by Beauty itself For 
it is much to be feared that this desired mode- 
ration too may be taken in a negative sense — 
whereas, what is really requisite is, to oppose 
to Passion a positive force. For as Virtue con- 
sists, not in the absence of passions, but in the 



516 



SCHELLING. 



mastery of the spirit over them, so Beauty is 
preserved, not by their removal or abatement, 
but by the mastery of Beauty over them. 

The forces of Passion must actually show 
themselves — it must be seen that they are pre- 
pared to rise in mutiny, but are kept down by 
the power of Character, and break against the 
forms of firmly-founded Beauty, as the waves 
of a stream that just fills, but cannot overflow 
its banks. Otherwise, this striving after mode- 
ration would resemble only those shallow mo- 
ralists, v/ho, the more readily to dispose of Man, 
prefer to mutilate his nature; and who have so 
entirely removed every positive element from 
actions, that the people gloat over the spectacle 
of great crimes, in order to refresh themselves 
at last with the view of something positive. 

In Nature and Art the Essence strives first 
after actualization, or exhibition of itself in the 
Particular. Thus in each the utmost severity 
is manifested at the commencement; for without 
bound, the boundless could not appear; without 
severity, gentleness could not exist: and if unity 
is to be perceptible, it can only be through par- 
ticularity, detachment, and opposition. In the 
beginning, therefore, the creative spirit shows 
itself entirely lost in its form, inaccessibly shut 
up, and even in its grandeur still harsh. But 
the more it succeeds in uniting its entire fullness 
in one product, the more it gradually relaxes 
from its severity; and where it has fully deve- 
loped the form, so as to rest contented and self- 
collected in it, it seems to become cheerful, and 
begins to move in gentle lines. This is the 
period of its fairest maturity and blossom, in 
which the pure vessel has arrived at perfection; 
the spirit of Nature becomes free from its bonds, 
and feels its relationship to the soul. As by a 
gentle morning blush stealing over the whole 
form, the coming soul announces itself: it is not 
yet present, but everything prepares for its recep- 
tion, by the delicate play of gentle movements; 
the rigid outlines melt and temper themselves 
into flexibility ; a lovely essence, neither sen- 
suous nor spiritual, but which cannot be grasped, 
difl'uses itself over the form, and entwines it- 
self with every outline, every vibration of the 
frame. 

This essence, not to be seized, as we have 
already remarked, but yet perceptible to all, is 
what the language of the Greeks designated by 
the name Charis, ours as Grace. 

Wherever, in a fully developed form, Grace 
appears, the work is complete on the side of 
Nature; nothing more is wanting; all demands 
are satisfied. Here, already, soul and body are 
in complete harmony; Body is Form, Grace is 
Soul, although not Soul in itself, but the Soul of 
Form, or the Soul of Nature. 

Art may linger, and remain stationary at this 
point ; for, already, on one side at least its whole 
task is finished. The pure image of Beauty 
arrested at this point is the Goddess of Love. 

But the beauty of the Soul in itself, joined to 



sensuous Grace, is the highest apotheosis of 
Nature. 

The spirit of Nature is only in appearance 
opposed to the Soul; essentially, it is the instru 
ment of its revelation; it brings about indeed 
the antagonism that exists in all things, but only 
that the one essence may come forth, as the 
utmost benignity, and the reconciliation of all 
the forces. 

All other creatures are driven by the mere 
force of Nature, and through it maintain their 
individuality; in Man alone, as the central point, 
arises the soul, without which the world would 
be like the natural universe without the sun. 

The Soul in Man, therefore, is not the prin- 
ciple of individuality, but that whereby he 
raises himself above all egoism, whereby he 
becomes capable of self-sacrifice, anil of disin- 
terested love, and (which is the highest,) of the 
contemplation and kiiowledge of the Essence 
of things; and thus of Art. 

In him it is no longer employed about Matter, 
nor has to do with it immediately, but only 
with the spirit, (as the life) of things. Even 
while appearing in the body, it is yet free from 
the body, the consciousness of which hovers in 
the soul in the most beauteous shapes only as a 
light, undisturbing dream. It is no quality, no 
faculty, nor anything special of the sort; it knows 
not, but is Science ; it is not good, but Goodness; 
it is not beautiful, as body even may be, but 
Beauty itself. 

Most readily, or most immediately, indeed, in 
a work of art, the soul of the artist is seen as 
invention, in the detail, and in the total result, 
as the unity that hovers over it in serene still- 
ness. But the Soul must be visible in objec- 
tive representation, as the primceval energy of 
thought, in portraitures of human beings, alto- 
gether filled by an idea, by a noble contempla- 
tion; or as indwelling essential Goodness. 

Each of these finds its distinct expression 
even in the completest repose, but a more living 
one where the Soul can reveal itself in activity 
and antagonism ; and since it is by the passions 
mainly that the force of life is interrupted, it is 
the generally received opinion, that the beauty 
of the Soul shows itself especially in its quiet 
supremacy amid the storm of the passions. 

But here an important distinction is to be 
made. For the Soul must not be called upon 
to moderate those passions which are only an 
outbreak of the lower spirits of Nature, nor can 
it be displayed in antithesis with these; for 
where calm considerateness is still in contention 
with them, the Soul has not yet appeared : they 
must be moderated by unassisted Nature in 
Man, by the might of the Spirit. But there are 
cases of a higher sort, in which, not a single 
force alone, but the intelligent Spirit itself 
breaks down all barriers: cases, indeed, where 
the Soul is subjected by the bond that connects 
it with sensuous existence, to pain, which should 
be foreign to its divine nature: where Man feels 



SCHELLING. 



517 



himself invaded and attacked in the root of his 
existence, not by mere powers of Nature, but 
by moral forces : wliere innocent error liurries 
liim into crime, and thus into misery, wliere 
deep-felt iujustice excites to rebellion the holiest 
feelings of humanity. 

Tliis is the case in all situations, truly, and in 
a high sense, tragical, such as the Tragedy of 
the ancients brings before our eyes. Where 
blindly passionate forces are aroused, the col- 
lected Spirit is present as the guardian of Beauty ; 
but if the Spirit itself be hurried away, as by 
an irresistible might, what power shall watch 
over and protect sacred Beauty? Or, if the 
soul participate in the struggle, how shall it 
save itself from pain and from desecration? 

Arbitrarily to limit tlie power of pain, of ex- 
cited feeling, would be to sin against the very 
meaning and aim of Art, and would betray a 
want of feeling and soul in the artist himself 

Already therein, that Beauty, based on grand 
and firmly-established forms has become Cha- 
racter, Art has provided the means of display- 
ing without injury to symmetry the whole in- 
tensity of Feeling. For where Beauty rests on 
mighty forms, as upon immoveable pillars, a 
slight change in its relations, scarcely touching 
the form, causes us to infer the great force that 
was necessary in order to eflecl it. Still more 
does Grace sanctify pain. It is the essential 
nature of Grace that it does not know itself; 
but not being wilfully acquired, it also can- 
not be wilfully lost. When intolerable an- 
guish, when even madness, sent by avenging 
Gods, takes away consciousness and reflection, 
Grace stands as a protecting dcemon by the suf- 
fering Ibrm, and prevents it from manifesting 
anything unseemly, anything discordant to Hu- 
manity ; but if it fall, 10 fall at least a pure and 
unspotted victim. 

Not yet the Soul itself, but the prophecy of it; 
Grace accomplishes by natural means, what the 
Soul does by a divine power, in transforming 
pain, torpor, even death itself, into Beauty. 

Yet Grace thus preserved amid the extremes! 
discordance would be dead, without a transfigu- 
ration by the soul. But what expression can 
belong to the soul in this situation ? It delivers 
itself from pain, and comes forth conquering, 
not conquered, by relinquishing its connection 
with sensuous existence. 

It is for the natural Spirit to exert its energies 
for the preservation of sensuous existence, the 
Soul enters not into this contest; but its presence 
moderates even the storms of painfully-strug- 
gling lil'e. Outward force can take away only 
outward goods, but not reach the Soul: it can 
tear asunder a temporal bond, not dissolve the 
eternal one of a truly divine love. Not hard 
and unfeeling, nor wanting in love itself, the 
Soul on the contrary displays in pain this alone, 
as the sentiment that ouilasts serisuous existence, 
ami thus raises itself above the ruins of outward 
'ile or fortune in divine glory. 

It is tliia expression of the Soul that the creator 



of the Niobe has shown us in this statue. All 
the means by which Art tempers even the Ter- 
rible, are here made use of. Mightiness of 
form, sensuous Grace, nay, even the nature of 
the subject-matter itself softens the expression, 
since pain, transcending all expression, annihi- 
lates itself, and Beauty, which it seemed im- 
possible to preserve from destruction, is pro- 
tected from injury by the commencing torpor. 

But what woidd it all be without the Soul, 
and liow shall this manifest itself? 

We see on the countenance of the motlier, 
not grief alone for the already prostrated flower 
of her children; not alone deadly anxiety for 
the preservation of those yet remaining, and of 
the youngest daughter, who has fled for safety 
to her bosom ; nor resentment against the cruel 
deities; least of all, as is pretended, cool defi- 
ance: all these we see, indeed, but not these 
alone ; for, through grief, anxiety, and resent- 
ment streams, like a divine light, eternal love, 
as that which alone remains : and in this is 
preserved the mother, as one who was not, but 
now is a mother, and who remains united with 
the beloved ones by an eternal bond. 

Every one acknowledges that greatness, pu- 
rity, and goodness of soul have also their sen- 
suous expressions. But how is this conceivable, 
unless the principle that acts in Matter be itself 
cognate and similar to Soul ? 

For the representation of the Soul there are 
again gradations in Art, according as it is joined 
with the merely Characteristic, or in visible 
union with the Charming and Graceful. 

Who perceives not, in the tragedies of ^schy- 
lus, that lofty morality already predominant, 
which is at home in the works of Sophocles? 
But in the former it is enveloped in a bitter rind, 
and passes less into the whole work, since the 
bond of sensuous Grace is yet wanting. But 
out of this severity, and the still terrible charms 
of earlier Art, could yet proceed the grace of 
Sophocles, and with it the complete fusion of 
the two elements, which leaves us doubtful 
whether it is more moral or sensuous Grace 
that enchants us in the works of this poet. 

The same is true of the plastic productions 
of the early and severe style, in comparison 
with the gentleness of the later. 

If Grace, besides being the transfiguration of 
the spirit of Nature, is also the medium of con- 
nection between moral Goodness and sensuous 
Appearance, it is evident how Art must lend 
from all points towards it as its centre. This 
Beauty, which results from the perfect inter- 
penetration of moral Goodness anil sensuous 
Grace, seizes and enchants us when we meet 
it, with the force of a miracle. For, whilst the 
spirit of Nature shows itself everywhere else 
independent of the Soul, and, indeed, in a mea- 
sure opposed to it, here, it seems, as if by volun- 
tary accord, and the inward fire of divine love, 
to melt into union with it: the remembrance of 
the fundamental unity of the essence of Nature 
and the essence of the Soul, comes over tlie 
44 



518 



SCHELLING. 



beholder with sudden clearness: the conviction 
that all antagonism is only apparent; that Love 
is the bond of all things, and pure Goodness the 
foundation and substance of the whole Creation. 

Here Art as it were transcends itself, and 
becomes means only. On this summit sensuous 
Grace becomes in turn only the husk and body 
of a higher life : what was before a whole is 
treated as a part, and the highest relation of Art 
and Nature is reached in this, that it makes 
Nature the medium of manifesting the soul 
which it contains. 

But though in this blossoming of Art, as in 
the blossoming of the vegetable kingdom, all 
the previous stages are repeated, yet on the 
other hand we may see in what various direc- 
tions Art can proceed from this centre. Espe- 
cially the difference in nature of the two forms 
of plastic Art here shows itself most strongly. 
For Sculpture, representing its ideas by corpo- 
real things, seem to reach its highest point in 
the complete equilibrium of Soul and Matter — 
if it give a preponderance to the latter, it sinks 
below its own idea — but it seems altogether 
impossible for it to elevate the soul at the ex- 
pense of Matter, since it must thereby transcend 
itself. The perfect sculptor indeed, as Winkel- 
mann remarks on occasion of the Belvidere 
Apollo, will use no more material than is need- 
ful to accomplish his spiritual purpose: but also 
on the other hand he will put into the soul no 
more energy than is at the same time expressed 
in the material : for precisely upon this, fully 
to embody the spiritual, depends his art. Sculp- 
ture, therefore, can reach its true summit only 
in the representation of those natures in whose 
constitution it is implied that they actually em- 
body all that is contained in their Idea or soul; 
thus only in divine natures. So that Sculpture, 
even if no Mythology had preceded it, would 
of itself have come upon Gods, and have in- 
vented such if it found none. 

Moreover as the Spirit, on this lower platform, 
has again the same relation to Matter that we 
have ascribed to the Soul, (being the principle 
of activity and motion, as Matter is that of rest 
and inaction,) the law that regulates Expression 
and Passion, must be a fundamental principle 
of its nature. 

But this law must be applicable not only to 
the lower passions, but also equally to those 
higher and godlike passions, if it is permitted 
so to call them, by which the Soul is afl'ected 
in rapture, in devotion, in adoration. Hence, 
since (rotn these passions the Gods alone are 
exempt. Sculpture is inclined from this side also 
to the imaging of divine natures. 

The nature of Painting however seems to 
differ entirely from that of Sculpture. For the 
former represents objects not like the latter, by 
corporeal things, but by light and color; through 
a medium therefore itself incorporeal, and in a 
measure spiritual. And Painting moreover 
gives out its productions nowise as the things 
themselves, but expressly as pictures. From 



its very nature therefore it does not lay as much 
stress on the material as Sculpture, and seems 
indeed from this reason, when it exalts the ma- 
terial above the spirit, to degrade itself more 
than Sculpture in a like case: and on the other 
hand to be yet more justified in giving a clear 
preponderance to the soul. 

Where it aims at the highest it will indeed 
ennoble the passions by Character, or moderate 
them by Grace, or manifest in them the power 
of the Soul : but on the other hand it is precisely 
those higher passions, depending on the rela- 
tionship of the soul with a Supreme Being, that 
are entirely suited to the nature of Pamting. 
Indeed while Sculpture maintains an exact ba- 
lance between the force whereby a thing exists 
outwardly and acts in Nature, and that by virtue 
of which it lives inwardly and as soul, and ex- 
cludes mere passivity even from Matter ; Paint- 
ing on the contrary may soften in favor of the 
soul the characteristicness of the force and acti- 
vity in Matter, and transform it into resignation 
and endurance, by which Man seems to become 
more generally susceptible to the inspirations 
of the soul, and to higher influences. 

This diametrical difference explains of itself 
not only the necessary predominance of Sculp- 
ture in the ancient, and of Painting in the mo- 
dern world, (since in the former the tone of 
mind was thoroughly plastic, whereas the latter 
makes even the soul the passive instrument of 
higher revelations): but this also is evident; that 
it is not enough to strive after the Plastic in 
form and manner of representation, but that it 
is requisite before all to think and to feel plas- 
tically, that is, antiquely. 

And as the deviation of Sculpture into the 
picturesque is destructive to Art, so the narrow- 
ing down of Painting to the conditions and 
forms belonging to Sculpture, is an arbitrarily 
imposed limitation. For while Sculpture, like 
Gravitation, acts towards one point, it is per- 
mitted to Painting, as to Light, to till all space 
with its creative energy. 

This unlimited universality of Painting is 
demonstrated by History itself, and by the ex- 
amples of the greatest masters, who, without 
injury to the essential character of their ait, 
have developed to perfection each particular 
stage by itself: so that we can find also in tlie 
history of Art the same sequence that may he 
pointed out in its nature. Not indeed in exact 
order of time, but yet substantially. For thus 
is represented in Michael Angelo the oldest and 
mightiest epoch of liberated Art; that in which 
it displays its yet uncontrolled strength in gi- 
gantic progeny: as in the fables of the symbolic 
Fore-world, the Earth, after die embrace of 
Uranus, brought forth at first Titans and hea- 
ven-storming giants, before the mild reign of 
the serene Gods began. 

Thus the painting of the Last Judgment, with 
which, as the sum of his art, that giant spirit 
filled the Sistine Chapel, seems to remind us 
more of the first ages of the Earth and its pro- 



SCHELLING. 



519 



ducts, than of its last. Attracted towards the 
most hidden abysses of organic, particularly of 
the human form, he shuns not the Terrible; 
nay, he seeks it purposely, and startles it from its 
repose in the dark workshops of Nature. Want 
of delicacy, grace, pleasingness, he balances by 
the extremest energy; and if he excites horror 
by his representations, it is the terror that, ac- 
cording to fable, the ancient god Pan spreads 
around him when he suddenly appears in the 
assemblies of men. 

It is the method of Nature to produce the ex- 
traordinary by isolation and the exclusion of op- 
posed qualities. Thus, it was necessary that, 
in Michael Angelo, earnestness and the deep 
significant energy of Nature should prevail, 
rather than a sense for the grace and sensibility 
that belong to the Soul, in order to display the 
extreme of pure plastic force in the painting of 
modern times. 

After the earlier violence and the vehement 
impulse of birth is assuaged, the spirit of Nature 
is transfigured into Soul, and Grace is born. 
This point Art reached, after Leonardo da Vinci, 
in Correggio, in whose works the sensuous Soul 
is the active principle of Beauty. 

9 ***** * 

As the modern fable of Psyche closes the 
circle of the old mythology; so Painting, by 
giving a preponderance to the Soul, attained a 
new, though not a higher step of Art. 

This Guido Reni strove after, and became the 
proper painter of the soul. Such seems to us 
to be the necessary interpretation of his whole 
endeavor, often uncertain, and, in many of his 
works, losing itself in tlie vague. 

This is shown, as, perhaps, in few of his 
oilier pictures, in the masterpiece that is offered 
to the admiration of all in the great collection 
of our ki[ig. 

In the figure of the heavenwards ascending 
\hnin, all harshness and sternness is effaced 
even to the last trace: and, indeed, does not 
Painting itself seem in it to soar upwards, trans- 
figured on its own pinions, as the liberated 
Psyche delivered from the severity of Form? 

Here nothing outward remains, with separate 
natural force ; everything expresses receptivity 
and still endurance, even the perishable fiesh, 
the character of which the Italian language de- 
signates by the term inorbidezza, altogether un- 
like that with which Raphael invests the de- 
scending Queen of Heaven, as she appears to 
the adoring pope and a saint. 

Thongli the remark be well-founded, that the 
original of Guido's female heads is the Niobe 
Df antiquity, yet the ground of this similarity is 
surely no mere intentional imitation ; perhaps a 
like aim led to like means. 

As the Florentine Niobe is an extreme in 
Sculpture, and the representation in it of the 
ooul; so this well-known picture is an extreme 
in Painting, which here ventures to lay aside 
even the requisite of shade and the obscure, and 
to work almost with pure Liglit. 



Even though it might be permitted to Paint- 
ing, from its peculiar nature, to give a distinct 
preponderance to the Soul, yet theory and in- 
struction will do best constantly to aim at that 
original Centre, whence alone Art may be pro- 
duced ever anew; whereas, at the stage last 
mentioned, it must necessarily stand still, or 
degenerate into cramped mannerism. For even 
that higher passivity is opposed to the idea of 
fully energetic Being, whose image and reflex 
Art is called upon to display. 

A right perception will ever enjoy seeing a 
thing worthily, and, as far as possible, independ- 
ently developed, even on this side of its indi- 
viduality: yea, the Deity would look down with 
pleasure on a creature that, gifted with a pure 
soul, should stoutly assert the dignity of its na- 
ture outwardly also, and by its energetic sensuous 
existence. 

We have seen how the work of Art, springing 
up out of the depths of Nature, begins with de- 
terminateness and limitation, unfolds its inward 
plenitune and infinity, is fina'ly transfigured in 
Grace, and at last attains to Soul. But we can 
conceive only in detail what, in the creative act 
of mature Art, is but one operation. No theory 
and no rules can give this spiritual creative 
power. It is the pure gift of Nature, which 
here, for the second time, makes a close ; for, 
having fully actualized herself, she invests the 
creature with her creative energy. But as, in 
the grand progress of Art, these different stages 
appeared successively, until, at the highest, all 
joined in one ; so also, in particulars, sound cul- 
ture can spring up only where it has unfolded 
itself regularly from the germ and root to the 
blossom. 

The requirement that Art, like everything 
living, should commence from the first rudi- 
ments, and, to renew its youth, constantly return 
to them, may seem a hard doctrine to an age 
that has so often been assured that it has only 
to take from works of Art already in existence 
the most consummate Beauty, and thus as at a 
step to reach the final goal. Have we not al- 
ready the Excellent, the Perfect? How then 
should we return to the rudimentary and un- 
formed ? 

Had the great founders of modern Art thought 
thus, we should never have seen their miracles. 
Before them also stood the creations of the an- 
cients, round statues and works in relief, which 
they might lia-ve transferred immediately to their 
canvas. But such an appropriation of a Beauty 
not self-won, and therefore unintelligible, would 
not satisfy an artistic instinct that aimed through- 
out at the fundamental, and from which llie 
Beautiful was again to create itself with free 
original energy. They were not afraid, there- 
fore, to appear simple, artless, dry, beside those 
exalted ancients; nor to cherish Art for a long 
time in the undistinguished bud, until the period 
of Grace had arrived. 

Whence comes it that we still look upon these 
works of the older masters, from Gi.:ttc> to thr 



520 



SCHELLING. 



teacher of Raphael, with a sort of reverence, 
indeed with a certain predilection, if not that 
the faithfulness of their endeavor, and the grand 
earnestness of their serene voluntary limitation, 
compels our respect and admiration. 

The same relation that they held to the an- 
cients, the present generation holds to them. 
Their time and ours are joined by no livint; 
transmission, no link of continuous organic 
growth ; we must reproduce Art in the way 
they did, but with energy of our own, in order 
to be like them. 

Even that Indian-summer of Art, at the end 
of the sixteenth and the befjinning of the seven- 
teenth centuries, could call forth only a few new 
blossoms on the old stem, but no productive 
germs, still less plant a new tree of Art. But to 
set aside the works of perfected Art, and to seek 
out its scanty and simple beginnings, as some 
have desired, would be a new and perhaps 
greater mistake ; it would be no real return to 
the fundamental : simplicity would be affecta- 
tion, and grow into hypocritical show. 

But what prospect does the present time offer 
for an Art springing from a vigorous germ, and 
growing up from the roof? For it is in a great 
measure dependant on the character of its time ; 
and who would promise the approbation of the 
present time to such earnest beginnings, when 
Art, on the one hand, scarcely obtains equal 
consideration with other instruments of prodigal 
luxury ; and, on the odier, artists and amateurs, 
with entire want of ability to grasp Nature, 
praise and demand the Ideal? 

Art springs only from that powerful striving 
of tlie inmost powers of the heart and the spirit, 
which we call Inspiration. Everything that 
from difficult or small beginnings has grown up 
to great power and height, owes its growth to 
Inspiration Thus empires and states, thus arts 
and sciences. But it is not the power of the 
individual that accomplishes this, but the Spirit 
alone, that diffuses itself over all. For Art 
especially is dependant on the tone of the public 
mind, as the more delicate plants on atmosphere 
and weather : it needs a general enthusiasm for 
Sublimity and Beauty, like that which, in the 
time of the Medici, as a warm breath of spring, 
called forth at once and together all those great 
spirits. ******* 

It is only when the public life is actuated by 
the same forces through whose energy Art is 
elevated, that the latter can derive any advan- 
tage from it ; for Art cannot, without giving up 



the nobility of its nature, aim at anything out- 
ward. 

Art and Science can move only on their own 
axes; the artist, like every spiritual laborer, can 
follow only the law that God and Nature have 
written in his heart. None can help him — he 
must help himself; nor can he be outwardly re- 
warded, since anything that he should produce 
for the sake of aught out of itself, would thereby 
become a nullity. Hence, too, no one can direct 
him, nor prescribe the path he is to tread. Is 
he to be pitied if he have to contend against his 
time, he is deserving of contempt if he truckle 
to it. But how should it be even possible for 
him to do this? Without great general enthu- 
siasm there are only sects, no public opinion: 
not an established taste, not the great ideas of a 
whole people, but the voices of a few arbitrarily 
appointed judges, determine as to merit; and 
Art, which in its elevation is self-sufficing, courts 
favor, and serves where it should rule. 

To different ages are given different inspira- 
tions. Can we expect none for this age, since 
the new world now forming itself, as it exists 
in part already outwardly, in part inwardly and 
in the hearts of men, can no longer be measured 
by any standard of previous opinion; and since 
everything, on the contrary, loudly demands 
higher standards and an entire renovation? 

Should not the sense to which Nature and 
History have more livingly unfolded themselves, 
restore to Art also its great arguments? The 
atteinpt to draw sparks from the ashes of the 
Past, and fan them again into a miiversal flame, 
is a vain endeavor. Only a revolution in the 
ideas themselves is able to raise Art from its 
exhaustion: only new Knowledge, new Faith 
can inspire it for the work, by which it can dis- 
play, in a renewed life, a splendor like the past. 

An Art in all respects the same as that of 
foregoing centuries, will never return; for Na- 
ture never repeats herself. Such a Raphael 
will never be again, but another, who shall have 
reached in an equally original manner the sum- 
mit of Art. Oidy let the fundamental condi- 
tions be fulfilled, and renewed Art will show, 
like that which preceded it, in its first works, 
its aim and intent. In the production of the 
distinctly characteristic, if it proceed from a 
fresh original energy, Grace is already present, 
even though hidden, and in both the advent of 
the soul already determined. Works produced 
in this manner, even in their rudimentary im- 
perfection, are necessary and eternal. * * • 



ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN. 



Bom 1776. Died 1822. 



Hoffman is celebrated chiefly for his suc- 
cessful use of the magic and demonic element 
in fiction. In this particular he stands first 
among the story-tellers of his time, and has had 
many imitators both in Germany and in France. 
But Hoffman does not revel in horrors for their 
own sake ; he is not to be confounded with such 
writers as Maturin, and Lewis, and Mrs. Rad- 
cliffe, among English novelists. He does not 
seek to make the flesh creep and the hair bris- 
tle, but aims rather at the diaphragm. He 
views all these infernalia on the humorous 
side, and if any one trait is particularly promi- 
nent in his writings it is irony. In him Ho- 
garth and Hell-Breughel unite. Then, he was 
a great musician, and had speculated, perhaps 
as profoundly as any man, on the philosophy of 
music, with which speculations his compositions 
are often occupied and everywhere tinged. 

Hoffman was a native of Konigsberg, where 
he received his education, and devoted himself 
to the study of the Law. After completing his 
course, he received an appointment to an office 
connected with his vocation, at Grosslogau, and 
afterwards at Berlin. In 1800, he was made 
assessor in the government of Posen ; in 1802, 
he removed to Plozk, where he held the office 
of counsellor ; and in 1803, to Warsaw. At 
the invasion of this city by the French, in 1806, 
he was forced to lay down his office, and to 
have recourse to music for a support. In 1808, 
he was appointed director of music at the new 
theatre in Bamberg, and thence went to Leip- 
zig, and afterward to Dresden, in the same 
capacity. In 1816, he was reinstated as coun- 
sellor in the court of judicature, at Berlin, 
where he died, July 24th, 1822. 

Hoffman had much that was noble in his 
character, but likewise much that was morbid 
and vicious. With a recklessness not unfre- 
]uently found in connection with fine artistic, 
and especially musical talent, he gave himself 
up to sensual excess, and wasted body and soul 
with riotous living. 

His principal works are Fanlasiestucke in 
Callot's manier, and the Serapiansbruder. 
3ci 



Besides these he published several volumes of 
tales and works of fiction, some of which, as 
the Meister Floh and the Lebensansichlen des 
Kater Murr, are satirical. 

The following is Menzel's judgment con- 
cerning him : 

"With Hoffman the sentimentality of Kleist 
and the humor of Chamisso* appear to be fused 
together. He became the head of the new de- 
monic school, and the poetic Pluto who ruled 
the dark realm in its widest extent. Or rather, 
was he not himself ruled by if? It is the poetry 
of fear that gives all his works such a peculiar 
stamp. Hence the sense of hearing, which is 
so closely connected with the feeling of terror 
was with him so highly developed. Therefore 
his ear detected everywhere the mysterious 
tones of nature as well as of art. * * * 
And yet we can accuse him of no exaggerated 
softness or effeminate unmanliness; for his 
principal works employ themselves with a pain, 
with a despair, with a daring and an agony of 
the thoughts, of which only man is capable, no< 
woman. It is disease, extravagance, delirium, 
but still always manly. 

" From the devil down to a wry-faced child's- 
doll, from the dissonance of life which rends the 
soul, down to a dissonance in music which only 
rends the ear, the immeasurable kingdom of the 
ugly, the repulsive, the annoying, was gathered 
around him, and his descriptions paint alter- 
nately these tormenting objects and the tor- 
ments which they prepare for a beautiful soul, 
with inimitable vividness and truth. He him- 
self is that mad musician Kreisler, who, with 
his delicate sense for the purest and holiest 
tones, is driven to despair by the dissonances 
which everywhere assail him maliciously, as 
from hell. But he retained this delicate sense 
not in music alone. In all the spheres of life 
he finds, corresponding with musical disso- 
nances, those ugly, hostile grimaces and demo- 
nic Powers by which precisely the noblest 
souls are most painfully stretched upon the 
rack. #*##**♦ 

* Author of IVler ticlcinilil. 

4-1 • (521) 



" Hoffman's innermost being was music, and 
the prayer of St. Anthony is never wanting to 
his hellish caricatures, nor the Christmas bell 
to the witches' Sabbath, nor to the concert of 
devils the pure and piercing tone with which 
the virgin soul takes leave of a shattered and 
priceless instrument. It is true he paints to us 
the soul only in its shattered state; but the 
soul was ever noble, and carried heaven with 
its harmony. 

" Hoffman shares with Jean Paul his delicate 
sensibility to painful impressions. * * * 
Posterity will say that the dissonance which 



pervades our time was seized by no poet so 
poetically as by Hoffman ; and perhaps the 
poetic spell consists precisely in this, that he 
did not, like so many other poets, seek a politi- 
cal solution of the dissonance, and appeal to the 
future, but held fast the illusion of a black, 
overshadowed fantasy, of a dream without 
waking." 

It is scarcely necessary to say, that the tale 
from which the following extracts are given, 
is intended to allegorize the conflict between 
the poetic and the prosaic in human life. 



THE GOLDEN POT. 

FIRST VIGIL. 

The Mishaps of the Student Anselmus. Conrector Paulmann's 
Tobacco-box, and the Gold-green Snakes. 

On Ascension-day, about three o'clock in the 
afternoon, there came a young man running 
tbrouyh the Schwarzthor, or Black Gate, out of 
Dresden, and right into a basket of apples and 
cakes, which an old and very ugly woman was 
there exposing to sale. The crash was prodi- 
gious; all that escaped being squelched to 
pieces, was scattered away, and the street-ur- 
chins joyfully divided the booty which this 
quick gentleman had thrown them. At the 
murder-shriek which the crone set up, her gos- 
sips, leaving their cake and brandy-tables, en- 
circled the young man, and with plebeian vio- 
lence stormfully scolded him : so that, for shame 
and vexation, he uttered no word, but merely 
held out his small, and by no means particularly 
well -filled purse, which the croue eagerly 
clutched, and stuck into her pocket. The firm 
ring now opened ; but as the young man started 
off, the crone called after him: "Ay, run, run 
thy ways, thou Devil's bird ! To the Crystal 
run ! to the Crystal!" The squealing, creaking 
voice of the woman had something unearthly 
in if. so that the promenaders paused in amaze- 
ment, and the laugh, which at first had been 
universal, instantly died away. The Student 
Anselmus, for the young man was no other, felt 
himself, though he did not in the least under- 
stand these singular phrases, nevertheless seized 
with a certain involuntary horror ; and he quick- 
ened his steps still more, to escape the curious 
looks of the multitude, which were all turned 
towards him. As he worked his way through 
the crowd of well-dressed people, he heard them 
murmuring on all sides: "Poor young fellow! 
Ha! what a curbed beldam it is!" The mys- 
terious words of the crone had oddly enough 
given this ludicrous adventure a sort of tragic 
turn ; and the youth, before unobserved, was 
now looked after with a certain sympathy. The 
ladies, for his fine shape and handsome face, 



which the glow of inward anger was rendering 
still more expressive, forgave him this awkward 
step, as well as the dress he wore, though it 
was utterly at variance with all mode. His 
pike-gray frock was shaped as if the tailor had 
known the modern form only by hearsay ; and 
his well-kept black satin lower habiliments gave 
the whole a certain pedagogic air, to which the 
gait and gesture of the wearer did not at all 
correspond. 

The Student had almost reached the end of 
the alley which leads out to the Linke Bath ; 
but his breath could stand such a rate no longer. 
From running, he took to walking; but scarcely 
did he yet dare to lift an eye from the ground ; 
for he still saw apples and cakes dancing round 
him ; and every kind look from this or that fair 
damsel was to him but the reflex of the mock- 
ing laughter at the Schwarzthor. In this mood, 
he had got to the entrance of the Bath : one 
group of holiday people after the other were 
moving in. Music of wind-instruments re- 
sounded from the place, and the din of merry 
guests was growing louder and louder. The 
poor Student Anselmus was almost on the point 
of weeping; for he too had expected, Ascen- 
sion-day having always been a family-festival 
with him, to participate in the felicities of the 
Linkean paradise; nay, he had purposed even 
to go the length of a half portion of coffee with 
rum, and a whole bottle of double beer; and 
that he might carouse at his ease, had put more 
money in his purse than was entirely conve- 
nient or advisable. And now, by this fatal step 
into the apple-basket, all that he had about hiin 
had been swept away. Of cotTee, of double or 
single beer, of music, of looking at the bright 
damsels; in a word, of all his fancied enjoy 
ments, there was now nothing more to be said. 
He glided slowly past; and at last turned down 
the Elbe road, which at that time happened to 
be quite solitary. 

Beneath an elder-tree, which had grown out 
through the wall, he found a kind green resting- 
place : here he sat down, and filled a pipe from 
i the Sanitatsknaster, or Health-tobacco-box, of 



HOFFMANN. 



523 



which his friend the Conrector Paulraann had 
lately made him a present. Close before him, 
rolled and chafed the gold-dyed waves of the 
fair Elbe-stream : behind him rose lordly Dres- 
den, stretching, bold and proud, its light towers 
into the airy sky; which again, farther off, bent 
itself down towards flowery meads and fresh 
springing woods; and in the dim distance, a 
range of azure peaks gave notice of remote Bo- 
hemia. But, heedless of this, the Student An- 
selmus, looking gloomily before him, blew forth 
his smoky clouds into the air. His chagrin at 
length became audible, and he said: "Of a 
truth, I am born to losses and crosses for my 
life long! That in boyhood, at Odds or Evens, 
1 could never once guess the right way; that 
my bread and butter always fell on the but- 
tered side ; of all these sorrows I will not speak : 
but is it not a frightful destiny, that now, when, 
in spite of Satan, I have become a student, I 
must still be a jolthead as before? Do I ever 
put a new coat on, without the first day smear- 
ing it with tallow, or on some ill-fastened nail 
or other, tearing a cursed hole in it? Do I ever 
bow to any Councillor or any lady, without 
pitching the hat out of my hands, or even slid- 
ing away on the smooth pavement, and shame- 
fully oversetting? Had I not, every market- 
day, while in Halle, a regular sum of from three 
to lour groschen to pay for broken pottery, the 
Devil putting it into my head to walk straight 
forward, like a leming-rat? Have 1 ever once 
got to my college, or any place I was appointed 
to. at the right time? What availed it that I 
set out half an hour before, and planted myself 
at the door, with the knocker in my hand ? 
Just as the clock is going to strike, souse! some 
Devil pours a wash-basin down on me, or I 
bolt against some fellow coming out, and get 
n)yself engaged in endless quarrels till the time 
is clean gone. 

"Ah! well-a-day! whither are ye fled, ye 
blissful dreams of coming fortune, when I proud- 
ly thought that here I might even reach the 
height of Privy Secretary? And has not my 
evil star estranged from me my best patrons? 
I learn, for instance, that the Councillor, to whom 
I have a letter, cannot sufler cropt hair; v/ith 
immensity of trouble, the barber fastens me a 
little cue to my hindhead ; but at the first bow, 
his unblessed knot gives wpy, and a little shock, 
running snuffing about me, frisks otf to the Privy 
Councillor with the cue in his month. I spring 
alter it in terror; and stumble against the table, 
where he has been working while at breakfast; 
and Clips, plates, ink-glass, sand-box, rush jing- 
ling to the floor, and a flood of cliocolate and ink 
overflows the Relation he has just been writing. 
'Is the Devil in the man?' bellows the furious 
Privy Councillor, and shoves me out of the room. 

"What avails it that Conrector Paulmann 
gave me hopes of a writership : will my malig- 
nant fate allow it, which everywhere pursues 
me? To-day even! Do but think of it ! I was 
purposing to hold my good old Ascension-day 



with right cheerfulness of soul : I wouM st'-e'cV 
a point for once ; I might have gone, as well a' 
any other guest, into Linke's Bath, and called 
out proudly: 'Marqueur! a bottle of double 
beer; best sort, if you please!' I might havff 
sat till far in the evening; and, moreover, close 
by this or that fine party of well-dressed ladies. 
I know it, I feel it! heart would have come inta 
me, I should have been quite another man ; nay. 
I might have carried it so far, that when one o! 
other of them asked: 'What o'clock may it be?' 
or ' What is it they are playing?' I should havr 
started up with light grace, and without over- 
turning my glass, or stumbling over the bench 
but in a curved posture, moving one step and i 
half forward, I should have answered: ' Givfl 
me leave, mademoiselle! it is the overture of 
the Bonanweibche/i ;' or, ' It is just going to strik* 
six.' Could any mortal in the world have taken 
it ill of me? No! I say; the girls would have 
looked over, smiling so roguishly; as they al 
ways do when I pluck up heart to show them 
that I too understand the light tone of society, 
and know how ladies should be spoken to. And 
now the Devil himself leads me into that cursed 
apple-basket, and now must I sit moping in 

solitude, with nothing but a poor pipe of " 

Here the Student Anselmus was interrupted in 
his soliloquy by a strange rustling and whisking, 
which rose close by him in the grass, but soon 
glided up into the twigs and leaves of the elder- 
tree that stretched out over his head. It was 
as if the evening wind were shaking the leaves ; 
as if little birds were twittering among the 
branches, moving their little wings in capricious 
flutter to and fro. Then he heard a whispering 
and lisping; and it seemed as if the blossoms 
were sounding like little crystal bells. Ansel 
nius listened and listened. Ere long, the whis 
pering, and lisping-, and tinkling, he himself 
knew not how, grew to faint and half-scattered 
words: 

" 'Twixt this way, 'twixt that; 'twixt branches 
'twixt blossoms, come shoot, come twist and 
twirl we! Sisterkin, sisterkin! up to the shine, 
up, down, through and tlirough, quick! Sun 
rays yellow; evening-wind whispering; dew 
drops pattering; blossoms all singing: sing we 
with branches and blossoms! Stars soon glitter; 
must down: twixt this way, 'twixt that, come 
shoot, come twist, come twirl we, sisterkin !' 

And so it went along, in confused and con- 
fusing speech. The btudent Anselmus thought: 
" Well, it is but the evening-wind, which to-night 
truly is whispering distinctly enough." But at 
that moment tliere souniled over his head, as it 
were, a triple harmony of clear cryjtal bells: 
he looked up, and perceived three little Snakes, 
glittering with green and gold, twisted round 
the branches, and stretching out their heads to 
the evening sun. Then, again, began a whis- 
pering and twittering in the same words as be- 
fore, and the little Snakes went glitling and 
caressing up and down through the twigs; and 
while they moved so rapidly, it was as if tlie 



524 



HOFFMANN. 



elder-bush were scattering a thousand glittering 
emeralds through the dark leaves. 

"It is the evening sun which sports so in the 
elder-bush," thought the Student Anselmus; but 
the bells sounded again; and Anselmus ob- 
served that one Snake held out its little head to 
him. Through all his limbs there went a shock 
like electricity; he quivered in his inmost heart; 
he kept gazing up, and a pair of glorious dark- 
blue eyes were looking at him with unspeakable 
longing; and an unknown feeling of highest 
blessedness and deepest sorrow was like to rend 
liis heart asunder. And as he looked, and still 
looked, full of warm desire, into these kind eyes, 
the crystal bells sounded louder in harmonious 
accord, and the glittering emeralds fell down 
and encircled him, flickering round him in thou- 
sand sparkles, and sporting in resplendent 
threads of gold. The Elder-bush moved and 
spoke : " Thou layest in my shadow ; my per- 
fume flowed round thee, but thou understoodst 
it not. The perfume is my speech, when Love 
kindles it.' The Evening-Wind came gliding 
past, and said : " I played round thy temples, 
but thou understoodst me not. That breath is 
my speech, when Love kindles it." The Sun- 
beam broke through the clouds, and the sheen 
of it burnt, as in words: "I overflowed thee 
with glowing gold, but thou understoodst me 
not: That glow is my speech, when Love kin- 
dles it." 

And, still deeper and deeper sunk in the 
view of these glorious eyes, his longing grew 
keener, his desire more warm. And all rose 
and moved around him, as if awakening to glad 
life. Flowers and blossoms shed their odors 
round him ; and their odor was like the lordly 
singing of a thousand softest voices; and what 
they sung was borne, like an echo, on the golden 
evening clouds, as they flitted away, intolar-otf" 
lands. Bui as the last sun-beam abruptly sank 
behind the hills, and the twilight threw its veil 
over the scene, there came a hoarse deep voice, 
as from a great distance : 

"Hey! hey! what chattering and jingling is 
that up there ? Hey ! hay ! who catches me 
the ray behind the hills'? Sunned enough, sung 
enough. Hey! hey! through bush and grass, 
through grass and stream. Hey! hey! Come 
dow-w-n, dow-w-w-n !" 

So faded the voice away, as in murmurs of a 
distant thunder; but the crystal bells broke otf 
in sharp discords. All became mute; and the 
Student Anselmus observed how the three 
Snakes, glittering and sparkling, glided through 
the grass towards the river; rustling and hus- 
tling, they rushed into the Elbe ; and over the 
waves where they vanished, there crackled up 
a green flame, which, gleaming forward ob- 
liquely, vanished in the direction of the city. 

SECUNS VIOIL. 

How the Student Anselmus was looked upon as drunk and mad. 
The crossing of the Elbe. Bandmaster Graun's Bravura. Con- 
radi's SLoinachic liqueur, and the bronzed Apple-woman. 

" The gentleman is ailing some way !" said a 



decent burgher's wife, who, returning from a 
walk with her family, had paused here, and, 
with crossed arms, was looking at the mad 
pranks of the Student Anselmus. Anselmus 
had clasped the trunk of the elder-tree, and 
was calling incessantly up to the branches and 
leaves : " O glitter and shine once more, ye dear 
gold Snakes; let me hear your little bell-voices 
once more! Look on me once more, ye kind 
eyes; once, or I must die in pain and warm 
longing!" And with this, he was sighing and 
sobbing from the bottom of his heart most piti- 
fully ; and in his eagerness and impatience, 
shaking the elder-tree to and fro; which, how- 
ever, instead of any reply, rustled quite stupidly 
and unintelligibly with its leaves; and so rather 
seemed, as it were, to make sport of the Stu- 
dent Anselmus and his sorrows. 

"The gentleman is ailing some way!" said 
the burgher's wife; and Anselmus felt as if you 
had shaken him out of a deep dream, or poured 
ice-cold water on him, that he might awaken 
without loss of time. He now first saw clearly 
where he was; and recollected what a strange 
apparition had assaulted him, nay, so beguiled 
his senses, as to make him break forth into loud 
talk with himself In astonishment, he gazed 
at the woman; and at last snatching up his hat, 
which had fallen to the ground in his transport, 
was for making off in all speed. The burgher 
himself had come forward in the meanwhile; 
and, setting down the child from his arm on the 
grass, had been leaning on his staff, and with 
amazement listening and looking at the Stu- 
dent. He now picked up the pipe and tobacco- 
box which the Student had let fall, and, hold- 
ing them out to him, said: " Don t take on so 
dreadfully, my worthy sir, or alarm people in 
the dark, when nothing is the matter, after all, 
but a drop or two of christian liquor: go home, 
like a pretty man, and take a nap of sleep on it." 

The Student Anselmus felt exceedingly 
ashamed; he uttered nothing but a most la- 
mentable Ah ! 

" Pooh ! Pooh !" said the burgher, " never 
mind it a jot; such a thing will happen to the 
best; on good old Ascension-day a man may 
readily enough forget himself in his joy, and 
gulp down a thought too much. A clergyman 
himself is no worse for it: I presume, my 
worthy sir, you are a Candidatus. — But, with 
your leave, sir, I shall fill my pipe with your 
tobacco; mine went done a little while a^n. ' 

This last sentence the burgher uttered while 
the Student Anselmus was about putting up his 
pipe and box; and now the burgher slowly and 
deliberately cleaned his pipe, and began as 
slowly to fill it. Several burgher girls had 
come up : these were speaking secretly with 
the woman and each other, and tittering as tliey 
looked at Anselmus. The Student felt as if he 
were standing on prickly thorns, and burning 
needles. No sooner had he got back his pipe 
and tobacco-box, than he darted off at the height 
of his speed. 



HOFFMANN. 



525 



All the strange things he had seen were clean 
gone from his memory: he simply recollected 
having babbled all manner of foolish stuff be- 
neath the elder-tree. This was the more fright- 
ful to him, as he entertained from of old an in- 
ward horror against all soliloquists. It is Satan 
that chatters out of them, said his Rector ; and 
Anselmus had honestly believed him. But to 
be regarded as a Candidatus Theologue, over- 
taken with drink on Ascension-day! The thought 
was intolerable. 

Running on with these mad vexations, he 
was just about turning up the Poplar Alley, by 
the Kosel garden, when a voice behind him 
called out: " Herr Anselmus ! Herr Anselmus ! 
for the love of Heaven, whither are you run- 
ning in such haste?" The Student paused, as 
if rooted to the ground ; for he was convinced 
that now some new mischance would bel'all 
him. The voice rose again : "Herr Anselmus, 
come back, then : we are waiting for you here 
at the water!" And now the Student perceived 
that it was his friend Conrector Paulmann's 
voice : he went back to the Elbe ; and found 
the Conrector, with his two daughters, as well 
as Registrator Heerbrand, all on the point of 
stepping into their gondola. Conrector Paul- 
mann invited the Student to go with them 
across the Elbe, and then to pass the evening 
at his house in the Pirna suburb. The Student 
Anselmus very gladly accepted this proposal ; 
thinking thereby to escape the malignant des- 
tiny, which had ruled over him all day. 

Now, as they were crossing the river, it 
chanced that, on the farther bank, in the Anton 
garden, a tirework was just going otT. Sputter- 
ing and hissing, the rockets went aloft, and their 
blazing stars flew to pieces in the air, scattering 
a thousand vague shoots and flashes round 
them. The Student Anselmus was sitting by 
the steersman, sunk in deep thought ; but when 
he noticed in the water the reflection of these 
darting and wavering sparks and flames, he 
felt as if it was the little golden Snakes that 
were sporting in the flood. All the wonders 
that he had seen at the elder-tree again started 
forth into his heart and thoughts ; and again 
that unspeakable longing, that glowing desire, 
laid hold of him here, which had before agi- 
tated his bosom in painful spasms of rapture. 

" Ah ! is it you again, my little golden 
Snakes? Sing now, Osing! In your song let 
the kind, dear, dark-blue eyes, again appear to 
me Ah? are ye under the waves, then?" 

So cried the Student Anselmus, and at the 
same time made a violent movement, as if he 
were for plunging from the gondola into the 
river. 

"Is the Devil in you, sir?" exclaimed the 
steersman, and clutched him by the coat-breast. 
The girls, who were sitting by him, shrieked in 
terror, and fled to the other side of the gondola. 
Registrator Heerbrand whispered something in 
Conrector Paulmann's ear, to which the latter 
answered at considerable length, but in so low 



a tone, that Anselmus could distinguish nothing 
but the words: "Such attacks more than once? 
— Never heard of it." Directly after this, Con- 
rector Paulmann also rose; and then sat down, 
with a certain earnest, grave, official mien, 
beside the Student Anselmus, taking his hand, 
and saying: "How are you, Herr Anselmus?" 
The Student Anselmus was like to lose his wits, 
for in his mind there was a mad contradiction, 
which he strove in vain to reconcile. He now 
saw plainly that what he had taken for the 
gleaming of the golden Snakes was nothing but 
the image of the fireworks in Anton's garden: 
but a feeling unexperienced till now, he him- 
self knew not whether it was rapture or pain, 
cramped his breast together ; and when the 
steersman struck through the water with his 
helm, so that the waves, curling as in anger, 
gurgled and chafed, he heard in their din a soft 
whispering: "Anselmus! Anselmus! seest thou' 
not how we still skim along before thee? Sis- 
terkin looks at thee again : believe, believe, 
believe in us!" And he thought he saw in the 
reflected light three green-glowing streaks : but 
then, when he gazed, full of fond sadness, into 
the water, to see whether these gentle eyes 
would not again look up to him, he perceived 
too well that the shine proceeded only from the 
windows in the neighbouring houses. He was 
sitting mute in his place, and inwardly battling 
with himself, when Conrector Paulmann re 
peated, with still greater emphasis: "How are 
you, Herr Anselmus ?" 

With the most rueful tone, Anselmus replied: 
"Ah! Herr Conrector, if you knew what strange 
things I have been dreaming, quite awake, with 
open eyes, just now, under an elder-tree at the 
wall of Linkes garden, you would not take it 
amiss of me that I am a little absent, or so." 

"Ey, ey, Herr Anselmus!" interrupted Con- 
rector Paulmann, "I have always taken you for 
a solid young man : but to dream, to dream 
with your eyes wide open, and then, all at 
once, to start up for leaping into the water ! 
This, begging your pardon, is what only fools 
or madmen could do." 

The Student Anselmus was deeply affected 
at his friend's hard saying ; then Veronica, 
Paulmann's eldest daughter, a most pretty 
blooming girl of sixteen, addressed her father. 
"But, dear father, something singular must have 
befallen Herr Anselmus; and perhaps he only 
thinks he was awake, while he may have really 
been asleep: and so all manner of wild stutf 
has come into his head, and is still lying in Ui-i 
thoughts." 

"And, dearest Mademoiselle! Worthy Con- 
rector !" cried Registrator Heerbrand, "may one 
not, even when awake, sometimes sink into a 
sort of dreaming state? I myself have had 
such fits. One afternoon, for instance, during' 
coffee, in a sort of brown study like this, in tlie 
special season of corporeal and spiritual diges- 
tion, the place where a lost Act was lying oc- 
curred to me, as if by inspiration; and last 



S26 



HOFFMANN. 



night, no farther gone, there came a glorious 
large Latin paper tripping out before my open 
eyes, in the very same way." 

" Ah ! most honoured Registrator," answered 
Conrector Paulmann ; "you have always had a 
tendency to the Poelica ; and thus one falls into 
fantasies and romantic humors." 

The Student Anselmus, however, was par- 
ticularly gratified that in this most troublous 
situation, while in danger of being considered 
drunk or crazy, any one should take his part; 
and though it was already pretty dark, he 
thought he noticed, for the first time, that Ve- 
ronica had really very fine dark-blue eyes, and 
this too ■without remembering the strange pair 
which he had looked at in the elder-bush. On 
the whole, the adventure under the elder-bush 
had once more entirely vanished from the 
thoughts of the Student Anselmus ; he felt him- 
self at ease and light of heart; nay, in the 
capriciousness of joy, he carried it so far, that 
he offered a helping hand to his fair advocate, 
Veronica, as she was stepping from the gon- 
dola; and without more ado, as she put her 
arm in his, escorted her home with so much 
dexterity and good luck, that he only missed his 
footing once, and this being the only wet spot 
in the whole road, only spattered Veronica's 
white gown a very little by the incident. 

Conrector Paulmann failed not to observe this 
happy change in the Student Anselmus; he re- 
sumed his liking for him, and begged forgive- 
ness for the hard words which he had let fall 
before. " Yes," added he, " we have many ex- 
amples to show that certain phantasms may rise 
before a man, and pester and plague him not a 
little ; but this is bodily disease, and leeches are 
good for it, if applied to the right part, as a coi 
tain learned physician, now deceased, has di- 
rected." The Student Anselmus knew not 
jvhether he had been drunk, crazy, or sick; but 
at all events the leeches seemed entirely super- 
fluous, as these supposed phantasms had utterly 
vanished, and the Student himself was growing 
happier and happier, the more he prospered in 
serving the pretty Veronica with all sorts of 
dainty attentions. 

As usual, after the frugal meal, came music; 
the Student Anselmus had to take his seat be- 
fore the harpsichord, and Veronica accompanied 
his playing with her pure clear voice: "Dear 
Mademoiselle," said Registrator Heerbrand, 
" you have a voice like a crystal bell !" 

"That she has not!" ejaculated the Student 
Anselmus, he scarcely knew how. "Crystal 
bells in elder-trees sound strangely! strangely!" 
continued the Student Anselmus, murmuring 
half aloud. 

Veronica laid her hand on his shoulder, and 
asked: "What are you saying now, Herr An- 
selmus?" 

Instantly Anselmus recovered his cheerful- 
ness, and began playing. Conrector Paulmann 
gave a grim look at him ; but Registrator Heer- 
brand laid a music-leaf on the frame, and sang 



with ravishing grace one of Bandmaster Graun's 
bravura airs. The Student Anselmus accompa- 
nied this, and much more; and a fantasy duet, 
which Veronica and he now fingered, and Con- 
rector Paulmann had himself composed, again 
brought all into the gayest humor. 

It was now pretty late, and Registrator Heer- 
brand was taking up his hat and stick, when 
Conrector Paulmann went up to him with a 
mysterious air, and said : " Hem ! — Would not 
you, honored Registrator, mention to the good 
Herr Anselmus himself — Hem! what we were 
speaking of before V 

" With all the pleasure in nature," said Re- 
gistrator Heerbrand, and having placed himself 
in the circle, began, without farther preamble, 
as follows : 

" In this city is a strange remarkable man, 
people say he follows all manner of secret sci- 
ences ; but as there are no such sciences, I rather 
take him for an antiquary, and along with this, 
for an experimental chemist. I mean no other 
than our Privy Archivarius Lindhorst. He lives, 
as you know, by himself, in his old sequestered 
house ; and when disengaged from his office, 
he is to be found in his library, or in his chemi- 
cal laboratory, to which, however, he admits no 
stranger. Besides many curious books, he pos- 
sesses a number of manuscripts, partly Arabic, 
Coptic, and some of them in strange characters, 
which belong not to any known tongue. These 
he wishes to have copied properly; and for this 
purpose he requires a man who can draw with 
the pen, and so transfer these marks to parch- 
ment, in Indian ink, with the highest strictness 
and fidelity. The work is carried on in a sepa- 
rate chamber of his house, under his own over- 
»'^)l^t; and besides free board during the time 
of business, he pays his man a speziesthaler, or 
specie-dollar, daily, and promises a handsome 
present when the copying is rightly finished. 
The hours of work are from twelve to six. 
From three to four, you take rest and dinner. 

"Herr Archivarius Lindhorst having in vain 
tried one or two young people for copying these 
manuscripts, has at last applied to me to find 
him an expert drawer ; and so I have been 
thinking of you, dear Herr Anselmus, for I know 
that you both write very neatly, and likewise 
draw with the pen to great perfection. Now, 
if in these bad times, and till your future esta- 
blishment, you could like to earn a speziesthaler 
in the day, and this present over and above, 
you can go to-morrow precisely at noon, and 
call upon the Archivarius, whose house no doubt 
you know. But be on your guard against any 
blot! If such a thing falls on your copy, you 
must begin it again; if it falls on the original, 
the Archivarius will think nothing to throw you 
over the window, for he is a hot-tempered gen- 
tleman." 

The student Anselmus was filled with joy at 
Registrator Heerbrand's proposal ; for not only 
could the Student write well and draw well 
with the pen, but this copying with laborious 



HOFFMANN. 



527 



salligraphie pains was a thing he delighted in 
beyond aught else. So he thanked his patron 
in the most grateful terms, and promised not to 
fail at noon to-morrow. 

All night the Student Anselmus saw nothing 
but clear speziesthalers, and heard nothing bul 
their lovely clink. Who could blame the poor 
youth, cheated of so many hopes by capricious 
destiny, obliged to take counsel about every 
farthing, and to forego so many joys which a 
young heart requires! Early in the morning 
he brought out his black-lead pencils, his crow- 
quills, his Indian ink ; for better materials, 
thought he, the Archivarius can find nowhere. 
Above all, he mustered and arranged his calli- 
graphic masterpieces and his drawings, to show 
tlieni to the Archivarius, in proof of his ability 
to do what he wished. All prospered with the 
Student; a peculiar happy star seemed to be 
presiding over him ; his neckcloth sat right at 
the very first trial; no tack burst; no loop gave 
way in his black silk stockings; his hat did not 
once fall to the dust after he had trimmed it. 
In a word, precisely at half-past eleven, the 
Student Anselmus, in his pike-grey frock, and 
black satin lower habiliments, with a roll of 
calligraphics and pen-drawings in his pocket, 
was standing in the Schlossgasse, or Castle- 
gate, in Conradi's shop, and drinking one — two 
glasses of the best stomachic liqueur ; for here, 
thought he, slapping on the still empty pocket, 
for here speziesthalers will be chinking soon. 

Notwithstanding the distance of the solitary 
street where the Archivarius Lindhorst's an- 
tique residence lay, the Student Anselmus was 
at the front-door before the stroke of twelve. 
He stood here, and was looking at the large fine 
bronze knocker ; but now when, as the last 
stroke tingled through the air with loud clang 
from the steeple-clock of the Kreuzkirche, or 
Cross-church, he lifted his hand to grasp this 
same knocker, the metal visage twisted itself, 
with horrid rolling of its blue-gleaming eyes, 
into a grinning smile. Alas, it was the Apple- 
woman of the Schwarzthor ! The pointed teeth 
gnashed together in the loose jaws, and in their 
chattering through the skinny lips, there was a 
growl of: "Thou fool, fool, fool! — Wait, wait! 
— Why didst run! — Fool!" Horror-struck, the 
Student Anselmus flew back; he clutched at 
the door-post, but liis hand caught the bell-rope, 
and pulled it, and in piercing discords it rung 
stronger and stronger, and through the whole 
empty house the echo repeated, as in mockery: 
"To the crystal, fall!'' An unearthly terror 
seized the Student Anselmus, and quivered 
through all his limbs. The bell-rope lengthened 
downwards, and became a white transparent 
gigantic serpent, which encircled and crushed 
him, and girded him straiter and straiter in its 
coils, till his brittle paralysed limbs went crash- 
ing in pieces, and the blood spouted from his 
veins, penetrating into the transparent body of 
the serpent, and dyeing it red. "Kill me! Kill 
me!" he would have cried, in his horrible 



agony; but the cry was only a stifled gurgle in 
his throat. The serpent lifted its head, and laid 
its long peaked tongue of glowing brass on the 
breast of Anselmus ; then a fierce pang suddenly 
cut asunder the artery of life, and thought fled 
away from him. On returning to his senses, 
he was lying on his own poor truckle-bed ; Con- 
rector Paulmann was standing before him, and 
saying: "For Heaven's sake, what mad stufi" is 
this, dear Herr Anselmus 1" 

SIXTH VIOIt. 

Arcliivarius Lindhorst's Garden, with some Mock-birds. The 
Golden Pot. English current-hand. Pot-hooks. The Prince 
of the Spirits. 

" It may be, after all," said the Student An- 
selmus to himself, "that the superfine strong 
stomachic liqueur, which I took somewhat freely 
in Monsieur Conradi's, might really be the cause 
of all these shocking phantasms, which so tor- 
tured me at Archivarius Lindhorst's door. 
Therefore, I will go quite sober to-day; and so 
bid defiance to whatever farther mischief may 
assail me." On this occasion, as before when 
equipping himself for his first call on Archiva- 
rius Lindhorst, the Student Anselmus put his 
pen-drawings, and calligraphic masterpieces, 
his bars of Indian ink, and his well-pointed 
crow-pens, into his pockets; and was just turn- 
ing to go out, when his eye lighted on the vial 
with the yellow liquor, which he had received 
from Archivarius Lindhorst. All the strange 
adventures he had met with again rose on his 
mind in glowing colours: and a nameless emo- 
tion of rapture and pain thrilled through his 
breast. Involuntarily he exclaimed, with a 
most piteous voice: "Ah, am not I going to the 
Archivarius solely for a sight of thee, thou gentle 
lovely Serpentina!" At that moment, he felt 
as if Serpentina's love might be the prize of 
some laborious perilous task which he had to 
undertake; and as if this task were no other 
than the copying of the Lindhorst manuscripts. 
That at his very entrance into the house, or 
more properly, before his entrance, all manner 
of mysterious things might happen, as of late, 
was no more than he anticipated. He thought 
no more of Conradi's strong water; but hastily 
put the vial of liquor in his waistcoat-pocket 
that he might act strictly by the Archivarius' 
directions, should the bronzed Apple-woman 
again take it upon her to make faces at him. 

And did not the hawk-nose actually peak it 
self, did not the cat-eyes actually glare from the 
knoclcer, as he raised his hand to it, at the stroke 
of twelve? But now, without farther ceremony, 
he dribbled his liquor into the pestilent visage ; 
and it folded and moulded itself, that instant, 
down to a glittering bowl-round knocker. The 
door went up: the bells sounded beautifully 
over all the house: " Klingling, youngling, in, 
in, spring, spring, klingling." In good heart he 
mounted the fine broad stair ; and feasted on 
the odors of some strange perfumery, that was 
floating through the house. In doubt, he paused 



528 



HOFFMANN. 



on the lobby ; for he knew not at which of tViese 
many fine doors he was to knock. But Arohi- 
varius Lindhorst, in a white damask night-gown, 
slept forth to liim, and said : " Well, it is a real 
pleasure to me, Herr Anselmus, that you have 
kept your word at last. Come this way, if you 
please; I must take you straight into the Labo- 
ratory."' And with this he stept rapidly through 
the lobby, and opened a little side-door, which 
led into a long passage. Anselmus walked on 
in liigh spirits, behind the Archivarius ; they 
pa.— ed from this corridor into a hall, or rather 
into a lordly green-house: for on both sides, up 
to the ceiling, stood all manner of rare won- 
drous flowers, nay, great trees with strangely- 
formed leaves and blossoms. A magic dazzling 
light shone over the whole, though you could 
not discover whence it came, for no window 
whatever was to be seen. As the Student An- 
selmus looked in through the bushes and trees, 
long avenues appeared to open in remote dis- 
tance. Ill the deep shade of thick cypress 
groves, lay glittering marble fountains, out of 
which rose wondrous figures, spouting crystal 
jets that fell with pattering spray into the gleam- 
ing lily-cups; strange voices cooed and rustled 
through the wood of curious trees ; and sweetest 
perfumes streamed up and down. 

The Archivarius had vanished : and Ansel- 
mus saw nothing but a huge bush of glowing 
fire -lilies before him. Intoxicated with the 
sight and the fine odors of this fairy-garden, 
Anselmus stood fixed to the spot. Then began 
on all sides of him a giggliiig and laughing; and 
light little voices railed and mocked him : "Herr 
Studiosus! Herr Studiosus ! how came you 
hither? Why have you dressed so bravely, 
Herr Anselmus? Will you chat with us for a 
minute, how grandmammy sat squelching down 
upon the egg, and young master got a stain on 
his Sunday waistcoat? — Can you play the new 
tune, now, which you learned from Daddy 
Cockadoodle, Herr Anselmus? — You look very 
fine in your glass periwig, and post-paper boots." 
So cried and chattered and sniggered the little 
voices, out of every corner, nay, close by the 
Student himself, who now observed that all 
sorts of party-colored birds were fluttering 
above him, and jeering him in hearty laughter. 
At that moment, the bush of fire-lilies advanced 
towards him ; and he perceived that it was 
Arcliivarius Linilhorst, whose flowered night- 
gown, glittering in red and yellow, had so far 
deceived his eyes. 

" I beg your pardon, worthy Herr Anselmus," 
said the Archivarius, "for leaving you alone: I 
wished, in passing, to take a peep at my fine 
cactus, which is to blossom to-night. But how 
like you my little house-garden?" 

"Ah, Heaven! Immeasurably pretty it is, 
most valued Herr Archivarius," replied the Stu- 
dent; "but tljose party-colored birds have been 
bantering me a little." 

"What chattering is this?" cried the Archi- 
varius angrily into the bushes. Then a huge 



grey Parrot came fluttering out, and perched 
itself beside the Archivarius on a myrtle-bough ; 
and looking at him with an uncommon earnest- 
ness and gravity through a pair of spectacles 
that stuck on his hooked bill, it creaked out : 
" Don't take it amiss, Herr Archivarius ; my 
wild boys have been a little free or so ; but the 
Herr Studiosus has himself to blame in the 
matter, for " 

"Hush! hush!" interrupted Archivarius Lind- 
horst; "I know the varlets; but thou must keep 
them in better discipline, my friend ! — Now, 
come along, Herr Anselmus." 

And the Archivarius again stept forth, through 
many a strangely-decorated chamber ; so that 
the Student Anselmus, in following him, could 
scarcely give a glance at all the glittering won- 
drous furniture, and other unknown things, with 
which the whole of them were filled. At last 
they entered a large apartment ; v/here the Ar- 
chivarius, casting his eyes aloft, stood still ; and 
Anselmus got time to feast himself on the glo- 
rious sight, which the simple decoration of this 
hall aflbrded. Jutting from the azure-colored 
walls, rose gold-bronze trunks of high palm- 
trees, which wove their colossal leaves, glitter- 
ing like bright emeralds, into a ceiling far up: 
in the middle of the chamber, and resting on 
three Egyptian lions, cast out of dark bronze, 
lay a porphyry plate ; and on this stood a simple 
Golden Pot, from which, so soon as he beheld 
it, Anselmus could not turn away an eye. It 
was as if, in a thousand gleaming reflexes, all 
sorts of shapes were sporting on the bright po- 
lished gold : often he perceived his own form, 
with arms stretched out in longing — ah ! be- 
neath the elder-bush, — and Serpentina was 
winding and shooting up and down, and again 
looking at him with her kind eyes. Anselmus 
was beside himself with frantic rapture. 

"Serpentina! Serpentina!" cried he aloud; 
and Archivarius Lindhorst whirled round ab- 
ruptly, and said : " How now, worthy Herr 
Anselmus ? If I mistake not, you were pleased 
to call for my daughter; she is quite in the 
other side of the house at present, and indeed 
just taking her lesson on the harpsichord. Let 
us go along." 

Anselmus, scarcely knowing what he did, 
followed his conductor; he saw or heard no- 
thing more, till Archivarius Lindhorst suddenly 
grasped his hand, and said : " Here is the 
place!" Anselmus awoke as from a dream, 
and now perceived that he was in a high room, 
all lined on every side with book-shelves, and 
nowise difl'ering from a common library and 
study. In the middle stood a large writing- 
table, with a stuffed arm-chair before it. " This, ' 
said Archivarius Lindhorst, "is your work-room 
for the present : whether you may work, some 
other time, in the blue library, where you so 
suddenly called out my daughter's name, I yet 
know not. But now I could wish to convince 
myself of your ability to execute this task ap- 
pointed you, in the way I wish it and need it." 



HOFFxMANN. 



5^9 



The Student here gathered full courage ; and 
not without internal self-complacence in the 
certainty of highly gratifying Archivarius Lind- 
horst, pulled out his drawings and specimens 
of penmanship from his pocket. But no sooner 
had the Archivarius cast his eye on the first 
leaf, a piece of writing in the finest English 
style, than he smiled very oddly, and shook his 
head. These motions he repeated at every fol- 
lowing leaf, so that the Student Anselmus felt 
the blood mounting to his face; and at last, 
when the smile became quite sarcastic and 
contemptuous, he broke out in downright vexa- 
tion : "The Herr Archivarius does not seem 
contented with my poor talents." 

"Dear Herr Anselmus," said Archivarius 
Lindhorst, "you have indeed fine capacities for 
the art of calligraphy ; but, in the meanwhile, 
it is clear enough, I must reckon more on your 
diligence and good-will, than on your attain- 
ments in the business." 

The Student Anselmus spoke largely of his 
often-acknowledged perfection in this art, of his 
fine Chinese ink, and most select crow-quills. 
But Archivarius Lindhorst handed him the 
English sheet, and said: "Be judge yourself!" 
Anselmus felt as if struck by a thunderbolt, to 
see his hand-writing look so: it was miserable, 
beyond measure. There was no rounding in 
the turns, no hair-stroke where it should be; no 
proportion between the capital and single let- 
ters; nay, villainous school-boy pot-hooks often 
spoiled the best lines. "And then," continued 
Archivarius Lindhorst, "your ink will not 
stand." He dipt his finger in a glass of water, 
and as he just skimmeJ it over the lines, they 
vanished without vestige. The Student Ansel- 
mus felt as if some monster were throttling him : 
he could not utter a word. There stood he, 
with the unlucky sheet in his hand; but Archi- 
varius Lindhorst laughed aloud, and said: 
'•Never mind it, dearest Herr Anselmus; what 
you could not perfect before, will perhaps do 
better here. At any rate, you shall have better 
materials than yon have been accustomed to. 
Begin, in Heaven's name!" 

From a locked press, Archivarius Lindhorst 
now brought out a black fluid substance, which 
diffused a most peculiar odor ; also pens, sharply 
pointed and of strange color, together with a 
sheet of especial whiteness and smoothness; 
then at last an Arabic manuscript: and as An- 
selmus sat down to work, the Archivarius left 
the room. The Student Anselmus had often 
copied Arabic manuscripts already; the first 
problem, therefore, seemed to him not so very 
ditljcult to solve. "How these pot-hooks came 
into my fine English current-hand. Heaven, and 
Archivarius Lindhorst, know best," said he; 
"but that they are not from my hand, I will 
testify to the death !" At every new word that 
stood fair and perfect on the parchment, his 
courage increased, and with it his adroitness. 
In truth, these pens wrote exquisitely well ; and 
the mysterious ink flowed pliantly, and black 
3r 



as jet, on the bright white parchment. And as 
he worked along so diligently, and with such 
strained attention, he began to feel more and 
more at home in the solitary room ; and already 
he had quite fitted himself into his task, which 
he now hoped to finish well, when at the stroke 
of three the Archivarius called him into the 
side -room to a savory dinner. At table, Ar- 
chivarius Lindhorst was in special gaiety of 
heart: he inquired about the Student Anselmus' 
friends, Conrector Paulmann, and Registrator 
Heerbrand, and of the latter especially he had 
store of merry anecdotes to tell. The good old 
Rhenish was particularly grateful to the Student 
Anselmus, and made him more talkative than 
he was wont to be. At the stroke of lour, he 
rose to resume his labor ; and this punctuality 
appeared to please the Archivarius. 

If the copying of these Arabic manuscripts 
had prospered in his hands, before dinner, the 
task now went forward much better ; nay, he 
could not himself comprehend the rapidity and 
ease, with which he succeeded in transcribing 
the twisted strokes of this foreign character. 
But it was as if, in his inmost soul, a voice were 
whispering in audible words: "Ah! couldst 
thou accomplish it, wert thou not thinking of 
her, didst thou not believe in her and in her 
love?" Then there floated whispers, as in low, 
low, waving crystal tones, through the room: 
"I am near, near, near! I help thee: be bold, 
be steadfast, dear Anselmus! I toil with thee, 
that thou mayest be mine!" And as, in the 
fulness of secret rapture, he caught these sounds, 
the unknown characters grew clearer and clearer 
to him ; he scarcely required to look on the ori- 
ginal at all ; nay, it was as if the letters were 
already standing in pale ink on the parchment, 
and he had nothing more to do but mark them 
black. So did he labor on, encompassed with 
dear inspiring tones as with soft sweet breath, 
till the clock struck six, and Archivarius Lind- 
horst entered the apartment. He came forward 
to the table, with a singular smile; Anselmus 
rose in silence: the Archivarius still looked at 
him, with that mocking smile: but no sooner 
had he glanced over the copy, than the smile 
passed into deep solemn earnestness, which 
every feature of his face adapted itself to ex- 
press. He seemed no longer the same. His 
eyes, which usually gleamed with sparkling 
fire, now looked with unutterable mildness at 
Anselmus; a soft red tinted the pale cheeks; 
and instead of the irony which at other times 
compressed the mouth, the softly-curved grace- 
ful lips now seemed to be opening for wise and 
soul-persuading speech. The whole form was 
higher, statelier; the wide night-gown spiead 
itself like a royal mantle in broad folds over his 
breast and shoulders; and through the white 
locks, which lay on his high open brow, there 
winded a thin band of gold. 

"Young man," began the Archivarius in so- 
lemn tone, "before tlioii tlioughtest of it, I knew 
thee, and all the secret relations which bind 
45 



530 



HOFFMANN. 



thee to the dearest and holiest of my interests! 
Serpentina loves th^e; a singular destiny, whose 
fateful threads were spun by enemies, is ful- 
filled, should she be thine, and thou obtain, as 
an essential dowry, the Golden Pot, which of 
right belongs to her. But only from eifort and 
contest can thy happiness in the higher life 
arise; hostile Principles assail thee; and only 
the interior force with which thou shall with- 
stand these contradictions can save thee from 
disgrace and ruin. Wliilst laboring here, thou 
art passing the season of instruction : Belief and 
full knowledge will lead thee to the near goal, 
if thou but hold fast, wliat thou hast well begun. 
Bear her always and truly in thy thoughts, her 
who loves thee; then shalt thou see the mar- 
vels of the Golden Pot, and be happy for ever 
more. Fare thee well ! Archivarius Lindhorst 
expects thee to-morrow at noon in thy cabinet. 
Fare thee well !" With these words Archiva- 
rius Lindhorst softly pushed the Student Ansel- 
mus out of the door, which he then locked ; and 
Anselmus found himself in the chamber where 
he had dined, the single door of which led out 
to the lobby. 

Altogether stupified with these strange phe- 
nomena, the Student Anselmus stood lingering 
at the street-door ; he heard a window open 
above him, and looked up: it was Archivarius 
Lindhorst, quite the old man again, in his light- 
grey gown, as he usually appeared. The Ar- 
chivarius called to him: "Hey, worthy Herr 
Anselmus, what are you studying over there? 
Tush, the Arabic is still in your head. My 
compliments to Herr Conrector Paulmann, if you 
see him ; and come to-morrow precisely at noon. 
The fee for this day is lying in your right waist- 
coat-pocket." The Student Anselmus actually 
found the clear speziesthaler in the pocket indi- 
cated ; but he took no joy in it. " What is to 
come of all this," said he to himself, "I know 
not: "but if it be some mad delusion and con- 
juring work that has laid hold of me, the dear 
Serpentina still lives and moves in my inward 
heart: and before I leave her, I will die alto- 
gether; for I know that the thought in me is 
eternal, and no hostile Principle can take it from 
me: and what else is this thought but Serpen- 
tina's love?" 

EIOHTH VIGIL. 

The Library of the Palm-trees. Fortunes of an unhappy Sala- 
mander. How the Black Quill caressed a Parsnip, and Eegis- 
trator Heerbrand was much overtaken with Liquor. 

Tbe Student Anselmus had now worked 
several days with Archivarius Lindhorst; these 
working hours were for him the happiest of his 
life ; still encircled with lovely tones, with Ser- 
pentina's encouraging voice, he was filled and 
overflowed with a pure delight, which often 
rose to highest rapture. Every strait, every 
little care of his needy existence, had vanished 
from his thoughts; and in the new life, which 
had risen on him as in serene sunny splendor, 
he comprehended all the wonders of a higher 



world, which before had filled him with aston- 
ishment, nay, with dread. His copying pro- 
ceeded rapidly and lightly; for he felt more 
and more as if he were writing characters long 
known to him ; and he scarcely needed to casf 
his eye upon the manuscript, while copying it 
all with the greatest exactness. 

Except at the hour of dinner, Archivarius 
Lindhorst seldom made his appearance ; and 
this always precisely at the moment when An- 
selmus had finished the last letter of some ma- 
nuscript: then the Archivarius would hand him 
another, and directly after, leave him. without 
uttering a word; having first stirred the ink 
with a little black rod, and changed the old 
pens with new sharp-pointed ones. One day, 
when Anselmus, at the stroke of twelve, had 
as usual mounted the stair, he found the door 
through which he commonly entered, standing 
locked; and Archivarius Lindhorst came for- 
ward from the other side, dressed in his strange 
flower-figured night-gown. He called aloud : 
"To-day come this way, good Herr Anselmus; 
for we must to the chamber where Bhogovotgi- 
ta's masters are waiting for us." 

He stept along the corridor, and led Ansehnus 
through the same chambers and halls, as at the 
first visit. The Student Anselmus again felt 
astonished at the marvellous beauty of the gar- 
den : but he now perceived that many of the 
strange flowers, hanging on the dark bushes 
were in truth insects glancing with lordly colors, 
hovering up and down with their litlle wings, 
as they danced and whirled in clusters, caress- 
ing one another with their antennae. On the 
other hand again, the rose and azure-colored 
birds were odoriferous flowers; and the per- 
fume which they scattered, mounted from tlieir 
cups in low lovely tones, which, with the gur- 
gling of distant fountains, and the sighing of the 
high groves and trees, mingled themselves into 
mysterious accords of a deep unutterable longing. 
The mock-birds, which had so jeered and flouted 
him before, were again fluttering to and fro 
over his head, and crying incessantly with their 
sharp small voices: "Herr Studiosus, Herr Stu- 
diosus, don't be in such a hurry ! Don't peep 
into the clouds so ! They may fall about your 
ears — He ! He ! Herr Studiosus, put your pow- 
der-mantle on; cousin Screech-Owl will frizzle 
your toupee." And so it went along, in all 
manner of stupid chatter, till Anselmus left the 
garden. 

Archivarius Lindhorst at last stept into the 
azure chamber : the porphyry, with the Golden 
Pot, was gone; instead of it, in the middle of 
the room, stood a table overhung with violet- 
colored satin, upon which lay the writing-ware 
already known to Anselmus; and a stuffed 
arm-chair, covered with the same sort of cloth, 
was placed beside it. 

"Dear Herr Anselmus," said Archivarius 
Lindhorst, "you have now copied me a number 
of manuscripts, rapidly and correctly, to my no 
small contentment : you have gained my confi- 



HOFFMANN. 



ss-" 



dence ; but the hardest is yet behind ; and that ' 
is the transcribing or rather painting of certain 
works, written in a peculiar character; I keep 
them in this room, and they can only be copied 
on the spot. You will, therefore, in future, 
work here ; but I must recommend to you the 
greatest foresight and attention ; a false stroke, 
or, which may Heaven forefend, a blot let fall 
on the original, will plunge you into niis.fortune." 

Anselmus observed that from the aolden 
trunks of the palm-trees, little emerald leaves 
projected : one of these leaves the Archivarius 
took hold of; and Anselmus could not but per- 
ceive that the leaf was in truth a roll of parch- 
ment, which the Archivarius unfolded, and 
spread out before the Student on the table. An- 
selmus wondered not a little at these strangely 
intertwisted characters; and as he looked over 
the many points, strokes, dashes, and twirls in 
the manuscript, he almost lo?t hope of ever 
copying it. He fell into deep thoughts on the 
subject. 

'• Be of courage, young man !" cried the Ar- 
chivarius; "if thou hast continuing Belief and 
true Love, Serpentina will help thee." 

His voice sounded like ringing metal ; and as 
Anselmus looked up in utter terror, Archivarius 
Lindhorst was standing before him in the kingly 
form, which, during the first visit, he had as- 
sumed in the library. Anselmus felt as if in 
his deep reverence he could not but sink on his 
knee ; but the Archivarius stept up the trunk 
of a palm-tree, and vanished aloft among the 
emerald leaves. The Student Anselmus per- 
ceived that the Prince of the Spirits had been 
speaking with him, and was now gone up to his 
study; perhaps intending, by the beams which 
some of the Planets had dispatched to him as 
envoys, to send back word what was to become 
of Anselmus and Serpentina. 

" It may be too," thought he farther, " that he 
is expecting news from the Springs of the Nile ; 
or that some magician from Lapland is paying 
him a visit: me it behoves to set diligently 
about my task." And with this, he began 
studying the foreign characters in the roll of 
parchment. 

The strange music of the garden sounded 
over to him, and encircled him with sweet 
lovely odors; the mock-birds too he still heard 
gifiglingand twittering, but could not distinguish 
their words, a thing which greatly pleased him. 
At times also it was as if the leaves of the 
palm-trees were rustling, and as if the clear 
cry.-tal tones, which Anselmus on that fateful 
Ascension-day had heard under the elder-bush, 
were beaming and flitting through the room. 
Wonderfully strengthened by this shining and 
tinkling, the Student Anselmus directed his eyes 
and thoughts more and more intensely on the 
superscription of the parchment roll; and ere 
long lie felt, as it were from his inmost soul, that 
the characters could denote nothing else than 
tbe.'e words ; 0/ Ihe marriage of the Salamander 
mith the green Snake. Then resounded a louder 



triphony of clear crystal bells : '■ Anselmus ! dear 
Anselmus!" floated to him from the leaves; 
and, wonder! on the trunk of the palm-tree 
the green Snake came winding down. 

"Serpentina! Serpentina!" cried Anselmus, 
in the madness of highest rapture; for as he 
gazed more earnestly, it was in truth a lovely 
glorious maiden that, looking at him with those 
dark blue eyes, full of inexpressible longing, as 
they lived in his heart, was hovering down to 
meet him. The leaves seemed to jut out and 
expand ; on every hand were prickles sprouting 
from the trujik ; but Serpentina twisted and 
winded herself deftly through them ; and so 
drew her fluttering robe, glancing as if in 
changeful colors, along with her, that, plying 
round the dainty form, it nowhere caught on 
the projecting points and prickles of the palm- 
tree. She sat down by Anselmus on the same 
chair, clasping him with her arm, and pressing 
him towards her, so that he felt the breath which 
carne from her lips, and the electric warmth of 
her frame. 

"Dear Anselmus!" began Serpentina, "thou 
shall now soon be wholly mine; by thy Belief, 
by thy Love thou shalt obtain me, and I will 
bring thee the Golden Pot, which shall make us 
both happy forevermore." 

"0 thou kind lovely Serpentina !" said Ansel- 
mus, "if I have but thee, what care I for all 
else! if thou art but mine, I will joyfully give 
in to all the wondrous mysteries that have beset 
me ever since the moment when I first saw 
thee." 

"I know," continued Serpentina, "that the 
strange and mysterious things, with which my 
father, often merely in the sport of his humor, 
has surrounded thee, have raised distrust and 
dread in thy mind ; but now, [ hope, it shall be 
so no more; for I come at this moment to tell 
thee, dear Anselmus, from tlie bottom of my 
lieart and soul, all and sundry to a tittle that 
thou needest to know for understanding my 
father, and so for seeing clearly what thy rela- 
tion to him and to me really is." 

Anselmus felt as if he were so wholly clasped 
and encircled by the gentle lovely form, that 
only with her could he move and live, and as 
it wgre but the beating of her pulse that throbbed 
through his nerves and fibres; he listened to 
each one of her words till it sounded in his in- 
most heart, and, like a burning ray, kindled in 
him the rapture of Heaven. He had put his 
arm round that daintier than dainty waist; but 
the changeful glistering cloth of her robe was 
so smooth and slippery, that it seemed to him 
as if she could at any moment wind herself from 
his arms, and glide away. He trembled at the 
thought. 

"Ah, do not leave me, gentlest Serpentina!" 
cried he; "thou art my life." 

"Not now," said Serpentina, "till I have told 
thee all that in thy love of me thou canst com- 
prehend : 

" Know then, dearest, that my father is sprung 



532 



HOFFMANN. 



from the wondrous race of the Salamanders; 
and that I owe my existence to his love for the 
green Snake. In primeval times, in the Fairy- 
land Atlantis, the potent Spirit-prince Phospho- 
rus bore rule ; and to him the Salamanders, and 
other Spirits of the Elements, were plighted. 
Once on a time, the Salamander, whom he 
loved before all others (it was my father), 
chanced to be walking in the stately garden, 
which Phosphorus' mother had decked in the 
lordliest fashion with her best gifts; and the 
Salamander hoard a tall Lily singing in low 
tones: 'Press down thy little eyelids, till my 
Lover, the Morning-wind, awake thee.' He 
slept towards it : touched by his glowing breath, 
the Lily opened her leaves; and he saw the 
Lily's daughter, the green Snake, lying asleep 
in the hollow of the flower. Then was the 
Salamander inflamed with warm love for the 
fair Snake ; and he carried her away from the 
Lily, whose perfumes in nameless lamentation 
vainly called for her beloved daughter through- 
out all the garden. For the Salamander had 
borne her into the palace of Phosphorus, and 
was there beseeching him : ' Wed me with my 
beloved, and she shall be mine for evermore.' — 
'Madman, what askest thou!' said the Prince 
of the Spirits; 'Know that once the Lily was 
my mistress, and bore rule with me ; but the 
Spark, which I cast into her, threatened to an- 
nihilate the fair Lily; and only my victory over 
the black Dragon, whom now the Spirits of the 
Earth hold in fetters, maintains her, that her 
leaves continue strong enough to enclose this 
Spark, and preserve it within them. But when 
thou claspest the green Snake, thy fire will con- 
sume her frame ; and a new Being rapidly 
arising from her dust, will soar away and leave 
thee.' 

"The Salamander heeded not the warning of 
the Spirit-prince : full of longing ardor he folded 
the green Snake in his arms; she crumbled into 
aslies ; a winged Being, born from her dust, 
soared away throu£;h the sky. Then the mad- 
ness of desperation caught the Salamander ; 
and he ran through the garden, dashing forth 
fire and flames; and wasted it in his wild fury, 
till its fairest flowers and blossoms hung down, 
blackened and scathed ; and their lamentation 
filled the air. The indignant Prince of the Spi- 
rits, in his wrath, laid hold of the Salamander, 
and said : 'Thy fire has burnt out, thy flames are 
extinguished, tliy rays darkened : sink down to 
the Spirits of the Earth; let these mock and jeer 
thee, and keep thee captive, till the Fire-ele- 
ment shall again kindle, and beam up with thee 
as with a new being from the Earth.' The poor 
Salamander sank down extinguished: but now 
the testy old Earth-spirit, who was Phosphorus' 
gardener, cam i; forth and said: 'Master! who 
has greater cause to complain of die Salamander 
than I? Had not all the fair flowers, which he 
has burnt, been decorated with my gayest me- 
tals; had I not stoutly nursed and tended them, 
and spent many a fair hue on their leaves ? And 



yet I must pity the poor Salamander; for itwaa 
but love, in which thou, Master, hast full often 
been entangled, that drove him to despair, and 
made him desolate the garden. Remit him the 
too harsh punishment!' — 'His fire is for the 
present extinguished,' said the Prince of the 
Spirits ; ' but in the hapless time, when the 
Speech of Nature shall no longer be intelligible 
to degenerate man ; when the Spirits of the 
Elements, banished into their own regions, 
shall speak to him only from afar, in faint, 
spent echoes ; when, displaced from the har- 
monious circle, an infinite longing alone shall 
give him tidings of the Land of Marvels, which 
he once might inhabit while Belief and Love 
still dwelt in his soul: in this hapless time, the 
fire of the Salamander shall again kindle; but 
only to manhood shall he be permitted to rise, 
and entering wholly into man's necessitous ex- 
istence, he shall learn to endure its wants and 
oppressions. Yet not only shall the remem- 
brance of his first state continue with him; but 
he shall again rise into the sacred harmony of 
all Nature; he shall understand its wonders, 
and the power of his fellow-spirits shall stand 
at his behest. Then, too, in a Lily-bush, shall 
he find the green Snake again: and the fruit of 
his marriage with her shall be three daughters, 
which, to men, shall appear in the form of their 
mother. In the spring season these shall disport 
them in the dark Elder-bush, and sound with 
their lovely crystal voices. And then if, in that 
needy and mean age of inward stuntedness, 
there shall be found a youth who understands 
their song; nay, if one of the little Snakes look 
at him with her kind eyes; if the look awaken 
in him forecastings of the distant wondrous 
Land, to which, having cast away the burden 
of the Common, he can courageously soar; ifj 
with love to the Snake, there rise in him beliet 
in the Wonders of Nature, nay, in his own ex- 
istence amid these Wonders, then the Snake 
shall be his. But not till three youths of this 
sort have been found and wedded to the three 
daughters, may the Salamander cast away his 
heavy burden, and return to his brothers.' — 
' Permit me. Master,' said the Earth-spirit, ' to 
make these three daughters a present, which 
may glorify their life with the husbands they 
shall find. Let each of them receive from me 
a Pot, of the fairest metal which I have; I will 
polish it with beams borrowed from the dia- 
mond; in its glitter shall our Kingdom of 
Wonders, as it now exists in the Harmony of 
universal Nature, be imaged back in glorious 
dazzling reflection; and from its interior, on the 
day of marriage, shall spring forth a Fire-lily, 
whose eternal blossoms shall encircle the youth 
that is found worthy, with sweet wafting odors. 
Soon too shall he learn its speech, and under- 
stand the wonders of our kingdom, and dwell 
with his beloved in Atlantis itself.' 

"Thou perceivest well, dear Anselmus, that 
the Salamander of whom I speak is no other 
than my father. Spite of his higher nature, ho 



HOFFMANN. 



533 



was forced to subject himself to the paltriest 
contradictions of common life ; and hence, in- 
deed, often comes the wayward humor with 
which he vexes many. He has told me now 
and then, that, for the inward make of mind, 
which the Spirit-prince Phosphorus required as 
a condition of marriage with me and my sisters, 
men have a name at present, which, in truth, 
they frequently enough misapply: they call it a 
childlike poetic character. This character, he 
says, is often found in youths, who, by reason 
of their high simplicity of manners, and their 
total want of what is called knowledge of the 
world, are mocked by the populace. Ah, dear 
Ansehnus! benealli the Elder-bush, thou under- 
stoodest my song, my look : thou lovest the 
green Snake, thou believest in me, and wilt be 
mine foreverniore ! The fair Lily will bloom 
forth from the Golden Pot; and we shall dwell, 
happy, and united, and blessed, in Atlantis to- 
gether! 

"Yet I must not hide from thee that in its 
deadly battle with the Salamanders and Spirits 
of the Earih, the black Dragon burst from their 
grasp, and hurried off through the air. Phos- 
phorus, indeed, again holds him in fetters; but 
from the black Quills, which, in the struggle, 
rained down on the ground, there sprung up 
hostile Spirits, which on all hands set them- 
selves against the Salamanders and Spirits of 
the Earth. That woman who so hates thee, 
dear Anselmus, and who, as my father knows 
full well, is striving for possession of the Golden 
Pot ; that woman owes her existence to the love 
of such a Quill (plucked in battle from the Dra- 
gon's wing) for a certain Parsnip beside which 
it dropped. She knows her origin and her 
power ; for, in the moans and convulsions of 
the captive Dragon, the secrets of many a mys- 
terious constellation are revealed to her; and 
she uses every means and effort to work from 
the Outward into the Inward and unseen ; while 
my father, with the beams which shoot forth 
from the spirit of the Salamander, withstands 
and subdues her. All the baneful principles 
which lurk in deadly herbs and poisonous 
beasts, she collects; and, mixing them under 
favorable constellations, raises therewith many 
a wicked spell, which overwhelms the soul of 
man with iear and trembling, and subjects him 
to the power of those Demons, produced from 
the Dragon when it yielded in battle. Beware 
of that old woman, dear Anselmus! She hates 
thee; because thy childlike pious character has 
aiudhilated many of her wicked charms. Keep 
true, true to me; soon art thou at the goal !' 

"O my Serpentina! my own Serpentina!" 
cried the Student Anselmus, "how could I 
leave thee, how shoulil I not love thee for- 
ever!'' A kiss was burning' on his lips; he 
Bwoke as from a deep dream : Serpentina had 
vanished; six o clock was striking, and it fell 
heavy on his heart that to-day he had not copied 
a single stroke. Full of anxiety, and dreading 
reproaches from the Archivarius, he lo ked into 



the sheet; and, wonder I the copy of the 
mysterious manuscript was fairly concluded; 
and he thought, on viewing the characters more 
narrowly, that the writing was nothing else but 
Serpentina's story of her father, the favorite of 
the Spirit-prince Phosphorus, in Atlantis, the 
Land of Marvels. And now entered Archiva- 
rius Lindhorst, in his light-grey surtout, with 
hat and staff: he looked into the parchment on 
which Anselmus had been writing; took a large 
pinch of snuff, and said with a smile: "Just as 
I thought! — Well, Herr Anselmus, here is your < 
speziesthaler ; we will now to the Linke Bath: 
do but follow me !" The Archivarius stept ra- 
pidly through the garden, in which there was 
such a din of singing, whistling, talking, that the 
Student Anselmus was quite deafened with it, 
and thanked Heaven when he found himself on 
the street. 

Scarcely had they walked twenty paces, when 
they met Registrator Heerbian<l, who compan- 
ionably joined them. At the Gate, they filled 
their pipes, which they had abo.it them : Regis- 
trator Heerbrand coinplained that he had left 
his tinder box behind, and could not str'ke fire. 
"Fire!" cried Archivarius Lindhorst, scornfully ; 
"here is fire enough, and to spare!'' And with 
this he snapped his fingers, out of which came 
streams of sparks, and directly kindled the 
pipes. — "Do but observe the chemical knack 
of some men!' said Registrator Heerbrand; 
but the Student Anselmus thought, not without 
internal awe, of the Salamander and his history. 

In the Linke Bath, Registrator Heerbrand 
drank so much strong double beer, that at last, 
though usually a good-natured quiet man, he 
began singing student songs in squeaking tenor ; 
he asked every one sharply. Whether he was 
his friend or not? and at last had to be taken 
home by the Student Anselmus, long after Ar- 
chivarius Lindhorst had gone his ways. 

NINTH VIGIL. 

How the Student Anselmus attained to some Sense. The Punch 
Party. Hovv the Student Anselmus took Conrector Paulmann 
for a Screech-Owl. and the latter felt much hurt at it. The 
Ink-blot, and its Consequences. 

The strange and mysterious things which day 
by day befell the Student Anselmus, had entirely 
withdrawn him from his customary life. He 
no longer visited any of his friends, and waited 
every morning with impatience, for the hour of 
noon, which was to unlock his paradise. And 
yet while his whole soul was turned to tlie 
gentle Serpentina, and the wonders of Arcliiva 
rius Lindhorst's fairy kingdom, he could not help 
now and then thinking of Veronica; nay, often 
it seemed as if she came before hiin and con- 
fessed with blushes how heartily she loved him ; 
how much she longed to rescue him from the 
phantoms, which were mocking and befooling 
him. At times he felt as if a foreign power, 
suddenly breaking in on his mind, were draw- 
ing him with resistless force to the forgotten 'Ve- 
ronica; as if he must needs follow her whithei 
45* 



!)34 



HOFFMANN. 



she pleased to lead him, nay, as if lie ■were 
bound to her by ties that would not break. 
That very night after Serpentina had first ap- 
peared to him in the form of a lovely maiden; 
after the wondrous secret of the Salamander's 
nuptials with the green Snake had been dis- 
closed, Veronica came before him more vividly 
than ever. Nay, not till he awoke, was he 
clearly aware that he had but been dreaming; 
for he had felt persuaded that Veronica was 
actually beside him, complaining with an ex- 
pression of keen sorrow, which pierced through 
his inmost soul, that he should sacrifice her deep 
true love to fantastic visions, which only the 
distemper of his mind called into being, and 
which, moreover, would at last prove his ruin. 
Veronica was lovelier than he had ever seen 
her; he could not drive her from his thoughts: 
and in this perplexed and contradictory mood 
he hastened out, hoping to get rid of it by- a 
morning walk. 

A secret magic influence led him on to the 
Pirna gate: he was just turning into a cross 
street, when Conrector Paulmann, coming after 
him, cried out: " Ey ! Ey! — Dear Herr Ansel- 
mus! — Amice! Amice! Where, in Heaven's 
name, have you been buried so long? We 
never see you at all. Do yon know, Veronica 
is longing very much to have another song with 
you. So come along; you were just on the road 
to me, at any rate." 

The Student Anselmus, constrained by this 
friendly violence, went along with the Conrector. 
On entering the house, they were met by Ve- 
ronica, attired with such neatness and attention, 
that Conrector Paulmann, full of amazement, 
asked her: "Why so decked, Mamsell? Were 
you expecting visitors? Well, here I bring you 
Herr Anselmus." 

The Student Anselmus, in daintily and ele- 
gantly kissing Veronica's hand, felt a small soft 
pressure from it, which shot like a stream of fire 
over all his frame. Veronica was cheerfulness, 
was grace itself; and when Paulmann left them 
for his study, she contrived, by all manner of 
rogueries and waggeries, so to uplift the Student 
Anselmus, that he at last quite forgot his bash- 
fulness, and jigged round the room with the 
light-headed maiden. But here again the De- 
mon of Awkwardness got hold of him : he jolted 
on a table, and Veronica's pretty little work-box 
fell to the floor. Anselinus lifted it; the lid had 
started up; and a little round metallic mirror 
was glittering on him, into which he looked 
with peculiar delight. Veronica glided softly 
up to him; laid her hand on his arm, and 
pressing close to him, looked over his shoulder 
into the mirror also. And t]OW Anselmus felt 
as if a battle were beginning in his soul : 
thoughts, images flashed out — Archivarius Lind- 
hoi-st,— Serpentina, — the green Snake — at last 
the tumult abated, and all this chaos arranged 
and shaped itself into distinct consciousness. 
It was now clear to him that he had always 
tliought of Veronica alone ; nay, that the form 



which had yesterday appeared to him in the 
blue chamber, had been no other than Veronica; 
and that the wild legend of the Salamander's 
marriage with the green Snake, had merely 
been written down by him froin the manuscript, 
but nowise related in his hearing. He wondered 
not a little at all these dreams; and ascribed 
them solely to the heated state of mind into 
which Veronica's love had brought him, as well 
as to his working with Archivarius Lindhorst, 
in whose rooms there were, besides, so many 
strangely intoxicating odors. He could not but 
laugh heartily at the mad whim of falling in 
love with a little green Snake; and taking a 
well-fed Privy Archivarius for a Salamander: 
" Yes, yes ! It is Veronica !" cried he aloud ; but 
on turning round his head, he looked right into 
Veronica's blue eyes, from which warmest love 
was beaming. A faint soft Ah ! escaped her 
lips, which at that moment were burning on his 

"O happy I!" sighed the enraptured Student: 
"What I yesternight but dreamed, is in very 
deed mine to-day." 

"But wilt thou really wed me, then, when 
thou art Hofrath ?" said Veronica. 

"That I will," replied the Student Anselmus; 
and just then the door creaked, and Conrector 
Paulmann entered with the words : 

"Now, dear Herr Anselmus, I will not let 
you go to-day. You will put up with a bad 
dinner; then Veronica will make us delightful 
coff'ee, which we shall drink with Registrator 
Heerbrand, for he promised to coine hither." 

"Ah, best Herr Conrector!" answered the 
Student Anselmus, "are you not aware that I 
must go to Archivarius Lindhorst's and copy?" 

" Look you. Amice !'^ said Conrector Paulmann, 
holding up his watch, which pointed to half past 
twelve. 

The Student Anselmus saw clearly that he 
was much too late for Archivarius Lindhorst; 
and he complied with the Conrector's wishes 
the more readily, as he might now hope to look 
at Veronica the whole day long, to obtain many 
a stolen glance, and little squeeze of the hand, 
nay, even to succeed in conquering a kiss. So 
high had the Student Anselmus' desires now 
mounted ; he felt more and more contented in 
soul, the more fully he convinced himself that 
he should be delivered from all the fantastic 
imaginations, which really might have made a 
sheer idiot of him. 

Registrator Heerbrand came, as he had pro- 
mised, after dinner; and coffee being over, and 
the dusk come on, the Registrator, puckering his 
face together, and gaily rubbing his hands, sig- 
nified that he had something about him, which, 
if mingled and reduced to form, as it were, 
paged and titled, by Veronica's fair hands, might 
be pleasant to them all, on this October evening 

"Come out, then, with this mysterious sub- 
stance which you carry with you, most valued 
Registrator," cried Conrector Paulmann. Then 
Registrator Heerbrand shoved his hand into his 
deep pocket, and at three journeys, brought ou 



HOFFMANN. 



SSh 



a bottle of arrack, two citrons, and a quantity 
of sugar. Before half an hour had passed, a 
savory bowl of punch was smoking on Paul- 
mann's table. Veronica drank their health in 
a sip of the liquor ; and ere long there was 
plenty of gay, good-natured chat among the 
friends. But the Student Anselmus, as the 
spirit of the drink mounted into his head, felt 
all the images of those wondrous things, which 
for some time he had experienced, again coming 
through his mind. He saw the Archivarius in 
his damask night-gown, which glittered like 
phosphorus; he saw the azure room, the golden 
palm-trees; nay, it now seemed to him as if he 
must still believe in Serpentina: there was a 
fermentation, a conflicting tumult in his soul. 
Veronica handed him a glass of punch ; and in 
taking it, he gently touched her hand. "Ser- 
pentina! Veronica!" sighed he to himself He 
sank into deep dreams; but Registrator Heer- 
brand cried quite aloud : " A strange old gen- 
tleman, whom nobody can fathom, he is and 
will be, this Archivarius Lindhorst. Well, long 
life to him! Your glass, Herr Anselmus!" 

Then the Student Anselmus awoke from his 
dreams, and said, as he touched glasses with Re- 
gistrator Heerbrand : "That proceeds, respected 
Herr Registrator, from the circumstance, that 
Archivarius Lindhorst is in reality a Salaman- 
der, who wasted in his fury the Spirit-prince 
Phosphorus' garden, because the green Snake 
had flown away from him." 

" How? what?" inquired Conrector Paulmann. 

"Yes," continued the Student Anselmus; 
"and for this reason he is now forced to be a 
Royal Archivarius; and to keep house here in 
Dresden with his three daughters, who, after all, 
are nothing more than little gold-green Snakes, 
that bask in elder-bushes, and traitorously sing, 
and seduce away young people, like as many 
syrens." 

"Herr Anselmus! Herr Anselmus!" cried 
Conrector Paulniaim, "is there a crack in your 
brain ? In Heaven's name, what monstrous stuff" 
is this you are babbling?" 

" He is right," interrupted Registrator Heer- 
brand : " that fellow, that Archivarius, is a 
cursed Salamander, and strikes you fiery snips 
from his fingers, which burn holes in your sur- 
tout like red-hot tinder. Ay, ay, thou art in the 
right, brotlierkin Anselmus; and whoever says 
No, is saying No to me!" And at these words 
Registrator Heerbrand struck the table with his 
fist, till the glasses rung again. 

"Registrator! Are you frantic?" cried the 
wroth Conrector. " Herr Studiosus, Herr Stu- 
dio-Ms ! what is this you are about again ?" 

"Ah !" said the Student, "you too are nothing 
but a bird, a screech-owl, that frizzles toupees, 
Herr Conrector !" 

" What ! — I a bird ? — A screech-owl, a friz- 
zier?" cried the Conrector, full of indignation: 
"Sir, you are mad, horn mad!" 

" But tlie crone will get a clutch of him," cried 
Registrator Heerbrand. 



" Yes, the crone is potent," interrupted the 
Student Anselmus, "though she is but of mean 
descent ; for her father was nothing but a ragged 
wing-feather, and her mother a dirty parsnip : 
but the most of her power she owes to all sorts 
of baneful creatures, poisonous vermin which 
she keeps about her." 

" That is a horrid calumny," cried Veronica, 
with eyes all glowing in anger: "old Liese is a 
wise woman; and the black Cat is no baneful 
creature, but a polished young gentleman of 
elegant manners, and her cousin german." 

"Can he eat Salamanders without singing his 
whiskers, and dying like a candle-snuff'?" cried 
Registrator Heerbrand. 

"No! no!" shouted the Student Anselmus, 
"that he never can in this world; and the 
green Snake loves me, and I have looked into 
Serpentina's eyes." 

" The Cat will scratch them out," cried Ve- 
ronica. 

"Salamander, Salamander beats them all, 
all," hollowed Conrector Paulmann, in the high- 
est fury : " But am I in a madhDuse ? Am I mad 
myself? What unwise stuff" am I chattering? 
Yes, I am mad too ! mad too !" And with this, 
Conrector Paulmann started up ; tore the peruke 
from his head, and dashed it against the ceiling 
of the room; till the battered locks whizzed, 
and, tangled into utter disorder, rained down 
the powder far and wide. Then the Student 
Anselmus and Registrator Heerbrand seized the 
punch-bowl and the glasses; and, hallooing and 
liuzzaing, pitched them against the ceiling also, 
and the sherds fell jingling and tingling about 
their ears. 

'■'■Vivat the Salamander! — Pere.at, pereat the 
crone! — Break the metal mirror! — Dig the cat's 
eyes out ! — Bird, little Bird, from the air — Eheti— 
Eheu — Evoe — Evoe, Salamander!' So shrieked, 
and shouted, and bellowed the three, like utter 
maniacs. With loud weeping, Franzchen ran 
out; but Veronica lay whimpering for pain and 
sorrow on. the sofa. 

At this moment the door opened : all was in- 
stantly still ; and a little man, in a small grey 
cloak, came stepping in. His countenance had 
a singular air of gravity; and especially the 
round hooked nose, on v/hich was a huge pair 
of spectacles, distinguished itself from all the 
noses ever seen. He wore a strange peruke 
too ; more like a feather-cap than a wig. 

" Ey, many good evenings!" grated and 
cackled the little comical mannikin. "Is the 
Student Herr Anselmus among you, gentlemen? 
— Best compliments from Archivarius Lind- 
horst; he has waited to-day in vain for Herr 
Anselmus; but to-morrow he begs most respect- 
fully to request that Herr Anselmus would not 
forget the hour.'' 

And with this he went out again ; and all of 
them now saw clearly that the grave little 
mannikin was in fact a grey Parrot. Conrectoi 
Paulmann and Registrator Heerbrand raised a 
horse-laugh, which reverberated through the- 



536 



HOFFMANN. 



room ; and in the intervals, Veronica was moan- 
ing and whimpering, as if torn by nameless sor- 
row ; but, as to the Student Ansehnus, the 
madness of inward horror was darting through 
him; and unconsciously he ran through the door, 
along the streets. Instinctively he reached his 
house, his garret. Ere long Veronica came in 
to him, with a peaceful and friendly look, and 
asked him why, in the festivity, he bad so vexed 
her ; and desired him to be on his guard against 
imaginations, while working at Archivarius 
Lindhorst's. "Good night, good night, my be- 
loved friend!' whispered Veronica, scarce au- 
dibly, and breathed a kiss on his lips. He 
stretched out his arms to clasp her, but the 
dreamy shape had vanished, and he awoke 
cheerful and refreshed. He could not but laugh 
heartily at the effects of the punch ; but in 
thinking of Veronica, he felt pervaded by a 
most delightful feeling. "To her alone," said 
he within himself, "do I owe this return from 
my insane whims. In good sooth, I was little 
better than the man who believed himself to be 
of glass; or he who durst not leave his room 
for fear the hens should eat him, as he was a 
barleycorn. But so soon as I am Hofrath, I 
marry Mademoiselle Paulmann, and be happy, 
and there's an end of it." 

At noon, as he walked through Archivarius 
Lindhorst's garden, he could not help wondering 
how all this had once appeared so strange and 
marvellous. He now saw nothing past com- 
mon; earthen flowerpots, quantities of gerani- 
ums, myrtles, and the like. Instead of the 
glittering party-colored birds which used to flout 
him, there were nothing but a few sparrows, 
fluttering hither and thidier, which raised an 
unpleasant unintelligible cry at sight of Ansel- 
mus. The azure room also had quite a difl"erent 
look; and he could not understand how that 
glaring blue, and those unnatural golden trunks 
of palm-trees, with their shapeless glistening 
leaves, should ever have pleased him for a mo- 
ment. The Archivarius looked at him with a 
most peculiar ironical smile, and asked : -'Well, 
how did you like the punch last night, good 
Anselmus?" 

"Ah, doubtless you have heard from the grey 

Parrot how '' answered the Student Aiisel- 

mus, quite ashamed; but he stopt short, be- 
thiiddng him that this appearance of the Parrot 
was all a piece of jugglery. 

" I was there myself," said Archivarius Lind- 
horst; "did you not see me? But, among the 
mad pranks you were playing, I had nigh got 
lamed: for I was sitting in the punch-bowl, at 
the very moment when Registrator Heerbrand 
laid hands on it, to dash it against the ceiling; 
and I had to make a quick retreat into the Con- 
rector's pipe-head. Now, adieu, Herr Anselmus ! 
Be diligent at your task; for the lost day also 
you shall have a speziesthaler, because you 
worked so well before." 

" How can the Archivarius babble such mad 
ituf}'?" thought the Student Anselmus, sitting 



down at the table to begin the copying of the 
manuscript, which Archivarius Lindhorst had 
as usual spread out before him. But on the 
parchment roll, he perceived so many strange 
crabbed strokes and twirls all twisted together 
in inexplicable confusion, offering no resting- 
point for the eye, that it seemed to him well 
nigh impossible to copy all this exactly. Nay, 
in glancing over the whole, you might have 
thought the parchment was nothing but a piece 
of thickly veined marble, or a stone sprinkled 
over with lichens. Nevertheless he determined 
to do his utmost; and boldly dipt in his pen: 
but the ink would not run, do what he liked; 
impatiently he spirted the point of his pen 
against his nail, and — Heaven and Earth ! — a 
huge blot fell on the outspread original ! Hissing 
and foaming, rose a blue flash from the blot; 
and crackling and wavering, shot through the 
room to the ceiling. Then a thick vapor rolled 
from the walls ; the leaves began to rustle, as 
if shaken by a tempest ; and down out of them 
darted glaring,basilisks in sparkling fire ; these 
kindled the vapor, and the bickering masses of 
flame rolled round Anselmus. The golden 
trunks of the palm-trees became gigantic snakes, 
which knocked their frightful heads together 
with piercing metallic clang; and wound their 
scaly bodies round Anselmus. 

"Madman! suff"er now the punishment of 
what, in capricious irreverence, thou hast 
done !'' So cried the frightful voice of the 
crowned Salamander, who appeared above the 
snakes like a glittering beam in the midst of 
the flame: and. now the yawning jaws of the 
snakes poured forth cataracts of fire on Ansel- 
mus; and it was as if the fire-streams were 
congealing about his body, and changing into a 
firm ice-cold mass. But while Anselmus' limbs, 
more and more pressed together, and contracted, 
stiffened into powerlessness, his sense passed 
away. On returning to himself, he could not 
stir a joint: he was as if surrounded with a 
glistening brightness, on which he struck if he 
but tried to lift his hand. — Alas! He was sitting 
in a well-corked crystal bottle, on a shelf, in the 
library of Archivarius Lindhorst. 

TENTH TIOII. 

Sorrows of the Student Anselmus in the Glass Bottle. Happy 
Life of the Cross Church Scliolars and Law Clerks. The Bat- 
tle in the Library of Archivarius Lindhorst. Victory of the 
Salamander, and Deliverance of the Student Anselmus. 

Justly may I doubt whether thou, favorable 
reader, wert ever sealed up in a glass bottle; 
or even that any vivid tormenting dream ever 
oppressed thee with such necromatic trouble. 
If so were the case, thou wilt keenly enough 
figure out the poor Student Anselmus' woe : but 
sliouldst thou never have even dreamed such 
things, then will thy quick fancy, for Anselrnus' 
sake and mine, be obliging enough still to en- 
close itself for a few moments in the crystal. 
Thou art drowned in dazzling splendor; all 
objects about thee appear illuminated and begirt 



HOFFMANN. 



537 



with beaminsr rainbow hues : all quivers and 
wavers, and clangs and drones, in the sheen; 
thou art swimminof. motionless and powerless 
as in a firmly con>realed ether, which so presses 
thee together that the spirit in vain aives orders 
to the dead and stiffened body. Weightier and 
weightier the mountain burden lies on thee; 
more and more does every breath exhaust the 
little handful of air, that still played up and 
down in the narrow space; thy pulse throbs 
madly; and cut through with horrid anguish, 
every nerve is quivering and bleeding in this 
deadly aaony. Have pity, favorable reader, on 
the Student Anselmus! Him this inexpressible 
torture laid hold of in his glass prison : but he 
felt too well that death could not relieve him ; 
for did he not awake from the deep swoon into 
which the excess of pain had cast him, and open 
his eyes to new wretchedness, when the morn- 
ing sun shone clear into the room ? He could 
move no limb; but his thoughts struck against 
the glass, stupifying him with discordant clang; 
and instead of the words, which the spirit used 
to speak from within him, he now heard only 
the stifled din of madness. Then he exclaimed 
in his despair: "O Serpentina! Serpentina! 
save me from this agony of Hell!" And it was 
as if faint siglis breathed around him, which 
spread like green transparent elder-leaves over 
the glass; the clanging ceased; the dazzling 
perplexing glitter was gone, and he breathed 
more freely. 

"Have not I myself solely to blame for my 
misery? Ah! Have not I sinned against thee, 
tliou kind, beloved Serpentina? Have not I 
raised vile doubts of thee? Have not I lost my 
Belief; and with it, all, all that was to make 
me so blessed ? Ah ! Thou wilt now never, 
never be mine; for me the Golden Pot is lost, 
and [ shall not behold its wonders any more. 
All ! But once could I see thee; but once hear 
thy kind sweet voice, thou lovely Serpentina !'' 

So wailed the Student Anselmus, caught with 
deep piercing sorrow; then spoke a voice close 
by him : •' What the devil ails you Herr Studio- 
siis? What makes you lament so, out of all 
compass arid measure?' 

The Student Anselmus mo-w perceived that 
on the same shelf with him were five other 
bottles, in which he perceived three Cross 
Church Scholars, and two Law Clerks. 

'•All, gentlemen, my fellows in misery," cried 
he, " how is it possible for you to be so calm, 
nay so happy, as I read in your cheerful looks? 
You are siding here corked up in glass bottles, 
as well as I, and cannot move a finger; nay, 
not think a reasonable thought, but there rises 
such a murder-tumult of clanging and droning, 
and in your head itself a tumbling and rumbling 
enough to drive one mad. But doubtless you 
do not believe in the Salamander, or the green 
Snake." 

"You are pleased to j.'st, Mein Herr Studio- 
sus," replied a Cross Church Scholar; "we 
have never been better off than at present: for 
3s 



the speziesthalers which the mad Archivarius 
gave us for all manner of pot-hook copies, are 
chinking in our pockets; we have now no Ita- 
lian choruses to learn by heart; we go every 
day to Joseph's or other houses of call, where 
the double-beer is sufficient, and we can look a 
pretty girl in the face; so we sing like real Stu- 
dents, Gaudeamus igitur, and are contented in 
spirit !" 

"They of the Cross are quite right," added a 
Law Clerk; "I too am well furnished with 
speziesthalers, like my dearest colleague beside 
me here ; and we now diligently walk about on 
the Weinberg, instead of scurvy Act-writing 
within four walls." 

" But, my best, worthiest masters !" said the 
Student Anselmus, "do you not observe, then, 
that you are all and sundry corked up in glass 
bottles, and cannot for your hearts walk a hairs- 
breadth?" 

Here the Cross Church Scholars and the Law 
Clerks set up a loud laugh, and cried: "The 
Student is mad ; he fancies himself to be sitting 
in a glass bottle, and is standing on the Elbe- 
bridge and looking right down into the water. 
Let us go along!" 

"Ah !" sighed the Student, "they have never 
seen the kind Serpentina; they know not what 
Freedom, and life in Love, and Belief, signifies; 
and so by reason of their folly and low-mi nded- 
ness, they feel not the oppression of the impri- 
sonment into which the Salamander has cast 
them. But I, unhappy I, must perish in want 
and woe, if she, whom I so inexpressibly love, 
do not deliver me!" 

Then waving in faint tinkles, Serpentina's 
voice flitted through the room: "Anselmus! 
believe, love, hope !" And every tone beamed 
into Anselmus' prison ; and the crystal yieliled 
to his pressure, and expanded, till the breast of 
the captive could move and heave. 

The torment of his situation became less and 
less, and he saw clearly that Serpentina still 
loved him ; and that it was she alone, who had 
rendered his confinement tolerable. He dis- 
turbed himself no more about his insane com- 
panions in misfortune; but directed all his 
thoughts and meditations on the gentle Serpen- 
tina. Suddenly, however, there arose on the 
other side a dull croaking repulsive murmur. 
Ere long he could observe that it proceeded 
from an old coHfee-pot, with half-broken lid, 
standing over against him on a little shelf As 
he looked at it more narrowly, the ugly feature? 
of a wrinkled old woman by degrees unfolded 
themselves; and in a few moments, the Apple- 
wife of the Schwarzthor stood before him. She 
grinned and laughed at him, and cried with 
screeching voice ■ " Ey, Ey, my pretty boy, must 
thou lie in limbo now ? To the crystal thou 
hast run: did I not tell thee long ago?" 

"Mock and jeer me; do, thou cursed witch!" 
said the Student Anselmus, "ihou art to blauic 
for it all ; but the Salamander will catch tliee, 
thou vile Parsnip I" 



538 



HOFFMANN. 



" Ho, ho !" replied the crone, " not so proud, 
good readywriter! Thou hast squelched my 
little sons to pieces, thou hast burnt my nose; 
but I must still like thee, thou knave, for once 
thou wert a'Jjretty fellow; and my little daugh- 
ter likes thee too. Out of the crystal thou wilt 
never come unless I help thee: up thither I 
cannot clamber ; but my cousin gossip the Rat, 
that lives close behind thee, will eat the shelf 
in two ; thou shalt jingle down, and I catch 
thee in my apron, that thy nose be not broken, 
or thy fine sleek face at all injured : then I carry 
thee to Mamsell Veronica ; and thou shalt 
marry her, when thou art Hofrath." 

" Avaunt, thou devil's brood!" cried the Stu- 
dent Anselmus full of fury; "it was thou alone 
and thy hellish arts that brought me to the sin 
which I must now expiate. But I bear it all 
patiently : for only here can I be, where the 
kind Serpentina encircles me with love and 
consolation. Hear it, thou beldam, and despair! 
I bid defiance to thy power: I love Serpentina, 
and none but her for ever ; I will not be Ho- 
frath, will not look at Veronica, who by thy 
means entices me to evil. Can the green 
Snake not be mine, I will die in sorrow and 
longing. Take thyself away, thou filthy rook ! 
Take thyself away!" 

The crone laughed, till the chamber rung: 
" Sit and die then," cried she : " but now it is 
time to set to work ; for I have other trade to 
follow here." She threw off her black cloak, 
and so stood in hideous nakedness ; then she 
ran round in circles, and large folios came tum- 
bhng down to her; out of these she tore parch- 
ment leaves, and rapidly patching them together 
in artful combination, and fixing them on her 
body, in a few instants she was dressed as if 
in strange party-colored harness. Spitting fire, 
the black Cat darted out of the ink-glass, which 
was standing on the table, and ran mewing to- 
wards the crone, who shrieked in loud triumph, 
and along with him vanished through the door. 

Anselmus observed that she went towards 
the azure chamber; and directly he heard a 
hissing and storming in the distance; the birds 
in the garden were crying; the Parrot creaked 
out: "Help! help! Thieves! thieves!" That 
moment the crone returned with a bound into 
the room, carrying the Golden Pot on her arm, 
and with hideous gestures, shrieking wildly 
through the air; "Joy! joy, little son! — Kill the 
green Snake! To her, son! To her!" 

Anselmus thought he heard a deep moaning, 
heard Serpentina's voice. Then horror and 
despair took hold of him: he gathered all his 
force, he dashed violently, as if nerve and ar- 
tery were bursting, against the crystal; a pierc- 
ing clang went through the room, and the 
Archivarius in his bright damask nightgown 
was standing in the door. 

"Hey, hey! vermin! — Mad spell! — Witch- 
work! — Hither, holla!" So shouted he: then 
me black hair of the crone started up in tufts ; 
lier red eyes glanced with infernal fire, and 



clenching together the peaked fangs of hei 
abominable jaws, she hissed: "Hiss, at him! 
Hiss, at him ! Hiss !" and laughed and neighed 
in scorn and mockery, and pressed the Golden 
Pot firmly towards her, and threw out of it 
handfuls of glittering earth on the Archivarius; 
but as it touched the nightgown, the earth 
changed into flowers, which rained down on 
the ground. Then the lilies of the nightgown 
flickered and flamed up ; and the Archivarius 
caught these lilies blazing in sparky fire and 
dashed them on the witch ; she howled for 
agony, but still as she leapt aloft and shook her 
harness of parchment the lilies went out, and 
fell away into ashes. 

"To her, my lad!" creaked the crone: then 
the black Cat darted through the air, and soused 
over the Archivarius' head towards the door; 
but the grey Parrot fluttered out against him; 
caught him with his crooked bill by the nape, 
till red fiery blood burst down over his neck; 
and Serpentina's voice cried : " Saved ! Saved !" 
Then the crone, foaming with rage and despe- 
ration, darted out upon the Archivarius : she 
threw the Golden Pot behind her, and holding 
up the long talons of her skinny fists, was for 
clutching the Archivarius by the throat: but he 
instantly doffed his nightgown, and hurled it 
against her. Then, hissing, and sputtering, and 
bursting, shot blue flames from the parchment 
leaves, and the crone rolled round in howling 
agony, and strove to get fresh earth from the 
Pot, fresh parchment leaves from the books, 
that she might stifle the blazing flames ; and 
whenever any earth or leaves came down on 
her, the flames went out. But now, from the 
interior of the Archivarius issued fiery crack- 
ling beams, and darted on the crone. 

" Hey, hey ! To it again! Salamander! Vic- 
tory !" clanged the Archivarius' voice through 
the chamber ; and a hundred bolts whirled 
forth in fiery circles round the shrieking crone. 
Whizzing and buzzing flew Cat and Parrot in 
their furious battle; but at last the Parrot, with 
his strong wing, dashed the Cat to the ground ; 
and with his talons transfixing and holding fast 
his adversary, which, in deadly agony, uttered 
horrid mews and howls, he, with his sharp bill, 
picked out his glowing eyes, and the burning 
froth spouted from them. Then thick vapor 
streamed up from the spot where the crone, 
hurled to the ground, was lying under the night- 
gown : her howling, her terrific, piercing cry of 
lamentation, died away in the remote distance. 
The smoke, which had spread abroad with irre 
sistible smell, cleared off; the Archivarius pick 
ed up his nightgown; and under it lay an ugly 
Parsnip. 

" Honored Herr Archivarius, here let me offer 
you the vanquished foe," said the Parrot, hold- 
ing out a black hair in his beak to Archivarius 
Lindhorst. 

"Very right, my worthy friend,'' replied the 
Archivarius: "here lies my vanquished foe too: 
be so good now as to manage what remains. This 



HOFFMANN. 



539 



very day, as a small douceur, you shall have 
six cocoa-nuts, and a new pair of spectacles 
also, for I see the Cat has villainously broken 
the glasses of these old ones." 

"Yours forever, most honored friend and pa- 
tron!'' answered the Parrot, much delighted; 
then took the Parsnip in his bill, and fluttered 
out with it by the window, which Arcliivarius 
Lindhorst had opened for him. 

The Archivarius now lifted the Golden Pot, 
and cried, with a strong voice, "Serpentina! 
Serpentina!'' But as the Student Ansehnus, 
joying in the destruction of the vile beldam 
who had hurried him into misfortune, cast his 
eyes on the Archivarius, behold, here stood once 
more the high majestic form of the Spirit-prince, 
looking up to him with indescribable dignity and 
grace. "Anselmus," said the Spirit-prince, " not 
thou, but a hostile Principle, which strove de- 
structively to penelrate into thy nature, and 
divide thee against thyself, was to blame for 
tliy unbelief. Thou hast kept thy faithfulness: 
be free and happy." A bright flash quivered 
through the spirit of Anselmus: the royal tri- 
phony of the crystal bells sounded stronger and 
louder than he had ever heard it: his nerves 
and fibres thrilled ; but, swelling higher and 
higher, the melodious tones rang through the 
room ; the glass which enclosed Anselmus 
broke ; and he rushed into the arms of his dear 
and gentle Serpentina. 

ELEVENTH VIGII. 

Conrec^or Paulmann's anger at the Madness which had broken 
out in bis Family. How Registrator Heerhrand became Ho- 
frath ; and, in the keenest Frost, walked about in Shoes and 
silk Stockings. Veronjca's Confessions. Betrothment over the 
steaming Soup-plate. 

"But tell me, best Registrator! how the 
cursed punch last night could so mount into our 
heads, and drive us to all manner of allolriaf 
So said Conrector Paulmann, as he next morn- 
ing entered his room, which still lay full of 
broken sherds ; with his hapless peruke, dis- 
solved into its original elements, floating in 
punch among the ruin. For after the Student 
Anselmus ran out of doors, Conrector Pauhnann 
and Registrator Heerbrand had still kept trotting 
and hobbling up and down the room, shouting 
like maniacs, and butting their heads together; 
till Franzchen, with much labor, carried her 
vertiginous papa to bed; and Registrator Heer- 
brand in the deepest exhaustion, sunk on the 
sofa, which Veronica had left, taking refuge in 
her bed-room. Registrator Heerbrand had his 
blue handkerchief tied about his head; he 
looked quite pale and melancholic, and moan- 
ed out: "Ah, worthy Conrector, not the punch 
which Mamsell Veronica most admirably brew- 
ed, no! but simply that cursed Student is to 
blame for all the mischief Do you not observe 
that he has long been mente captus? And are 
y<)u not aware that madness is infectious? One 
fool makes twenty; pardon me, it is an old 
proverb: especially when you have drunk a 



glass or two, you fail into madness quite readily, 
and then involuntarily you manoeuvre, and go 
througli your exercise, just as the crack-brained 
fugleman makes the motion. 'Would you believe 
it, Conrector? I am still giddy when I think of 
that grey Parrot!" 

"Grey fiddlestick!" interrupted the Conrec- 
tor : " it was nothing but Archivarius Lindhorst's 
little old Famulus, who had thrown a grey cloak 
over him, and was seeking the Student Ansel- 
mus." 

"It may be," answered Registrator Heerbrand, 
"but, I must confess, I am quite downcast in 
spirit; the whole night through there was such 
a piping and organing." 

"That was I," said the Conrector, "for I 
snore loud." 

" 'Well, may be," answered the Registrator : 
"but, Conrector, Conrector! Ah, not without 
cause did I wish to raise some cheerfulness 
among us last night — And that Anselmus has 
spoiled all! You know not — O Conrector, Con- 
rector!" And with this, Registrator Heerbrand 
started up; plucked the cloth from his head, 
embraced the Conrector, warmly pressed his 
hand, and again cried, in quite heart-breaking 
tone: "O Conrector, Conrector!" and snatching 
his hat and staff", rushed out of doors. 

" This Anselmus comes not over my threshold 
again," said Conrector Paulmann; "for I see 
very well, that, with this moping madness of 
his, he robs the best gentlemen of their senses. 
The Registrator is now over with it too: I have 
hitherto kept safe; but the Devil, who knocked 
hard last night in our carousal, may get in at 
last, and play his tricks with me. So ^page, 
Satanas! Off' with thee, Anselmus !" Veronica 
had grown quite pensive; she spoke no word: 
only smiled now and then very oddly, and liked 
best to be alone. "She too has Anselmus in 
her head," said the Conrector, full of spleen: 
"but it is well that he does not show himself 
here; I know he fears me, this Anselmus, and 
so he never comes." 

These concluding words Conrector Paulmann 
spoke aloud ; then the tears rushed into Vero- 
nica's eyes, and she said, sobbing : "Ah! how 
can Anselmus come? He has long been corked 
up in the glass bottle." 

"How? What?" cried Conrector Paulmann. 
"Ah Heaven! Ah Heaven! she is doting too, 
like the Registrator: the loud fit will soon 
come! Ah, thou cursed, abominable, thrice- 
cursed Anselmus!" He ran forth directly to 
Doctor Eckstein ; who smiled, and again said : 
" Ey ! Ey!" This time, however, he prescribed 
nothing; but added, to the little he had uttered, 
the following words, as he walked away: 
"Nerves! Come round of itself Take the air; 
walks; amusements; theatre; playing Soutags- 
kind, Schwestern von Prag. Come round of itself" 

" So eloquent I have seldom seen the Doctor," 
thought Conrector Paulmann; "really talkative, 
I declare !" 

Several days and weeks and months were 



540 



HOFFMANN. 



gone; Anselmus had vanished ; but Registrator 
Heerbrand also did not make his appearance : 
not till the fourth of February, when the Regis- 
trator, in a new fashionable coat of the finest 
cloth, in shoes and silk stockings, notwithstand- 
ing the keen frost, and with a large nosegay of 
fresh flowers in his hand, did enter precisely at 
noon into the parlor of Conrector Paulmann, 
who wondered not a little to see his friend so 
dizened. With a solemn air, Registrator Heer- 
brand slept forward to Conrector Paulmann; 
embraced him with the finest elegance, and 
then said: "Now at last, on the Saint's-day of 
your beloved and most honored Mamsell Ve- 
ronica, I will tell you out, straight forward, 
what I have long had lying at my heart. That 
evening, that unfortunate evening, when I put 
the ingredients of our noxious punch in my 
pocket, I purposed imparting to you a piece of 
good news, and celebrating the happy day in 
convivial joys. Already I had learned that I 
was to be made Hofrath ; for which promotion 
I have now the patent, cum nomine et sigillo 
Principit, in my pocket." 

" Ah ! Herr Registr — Herr Hofrath Heerbrand, 
I meant to say,'' stammereii the Conrector. 

"But it is you, most honored Conrector," con- 
tinued the new Hofrath; "it is you alone that 
can complete my happiness. For a long time, 
1 have in secret loved your daughter, Mamsell 
Veronica; and I can boast of many a kind look 
wliich she has given me, evidently showing that 
she would not cast me away. In one word, 
honored Conrector! I, Hofrath Heerbrand, do 
now entreat of you the hand of your most amia- 
ble Mamsell Veronica, whom I, if you have 
nothing against it, purpose shortly to take home 
as my wife." 

Conrector Paulmann, full of astonishment, 
clapped his hands repeatedly, and cried : " Ey, 
Ey, Ey! Herr Registr — Herr Hofrath, I meant 
to say — who would have thought it? Well, if 
Veronica does really love you, I for my share 
cannot object: nay, perhaps, her present melan- 
choly is nothing but concealed love for you, 
most honored Hofrath! You know what freaks 
they have!" 

At this moment Veronica entered, pale and 
agitated as she now commonly was. Then 
Hofrath Heerbrand stept towards her; men- 
tioned in a neat speech her Saint's day and 
handed her the odorous nosegay, along with a 
little packet; out of which, when she opened 
it, a pair of glittering earrings beamed up to 
her. A rapid flying blush tinted her cheeks; 
her eyes sparkled in joy, and she cried: "O 
Heaven! These are the very earrings which I 
wore some weeks ago, and thought so much of" 

'•How can this be, dearest Mamsell," inter- 
rupted Hofrath Heerbrand, somewhat alarmed 
and hurt, "when I bought these jewels not an 
hour ago in tlie Schlossgasse, for current mo- 
ney?" 

But Veronica heeded him not; she was 
standing before the mirror to witness the effect 



of the trinkets, which she had already suspended 
in her pretty little ears. Conrector Paulinann 
disclosed to her, with grave countenance and 
solemn tone, his friend Heerbrand's preferment 
and present proposal. Veronica looked at the 
Hofrath with a searching look, and said; "I 
have long known that you wished to marry me. 
Well, be it so! I promise you my heart and 
hand ; but I must now unfold to you, to both of 
you, I mean, my father and my bridegroom, 
much that is lying heavy on my heart; yes, 
even now, though the soup should get cold, 
which I see Franzchen is just putting on the 
table." 

Without waiting for the Conrector's or the 
Hofrath's reply, though the words were visibly 
hovering on the lips of bodi, Veronica continued: 
"You may believe me, best father, I loved An- 
selmus from my heart, and when Registrator 
Heerbrand, who is now become Hofrath him- 
self, assured us that Anselmus might probably 
enough get some such length, I resolved that he 
and no other should be iny husband. But then 
it seemed as if alien hostile beings were for 
snatching him away from me: I had recourse 
to old Liese, who was once my nurse, but is 
now a wise woman, and a great enchantress. 
She promised to help me, and give Anselmus 
wholly into my hands. We went at midnight 
on the Equinox to the crossing of the roads: 
she conjured certain hellish spirits, and by aid 
of the black Cat, we manufactured a little me- 
tallic mirror, in which I, directing my thoughts 
on Anselmus, had but to look, in order to rule 
him wholly in heart and mind. But now I 
heartily repent having done all this; and here 
abjure all Satanic arts. The Salamander has 
conquered old Liese; 1 heard her shrieks ; but 
there was no help to be given: so soon as the 
Parrot had eaten the Parsnip, my metallic mir- 
ror broke in two with a piercing clang." Ve- 
ronica took out both the pieces of the mirror, 
and a lock of hair from her work-box, and 
handing them to Hofrath Heerbrand, she pro- 
ceeded : "Here, take the fragments of the mir- 
ror, dear Hofrath : throw them down, to-night, 
at twelve o'clock, over the Elbe-bridge, from 
the place where the Cross stands ; the stream 
is not frozen there: the lock, however, do you 
wear on your faidiful breast. I here abjure all 
magic: and heartily wish Anspiuius joy of his 
good fortune, seeing he is wedded with the 
green Snake, who is much prettier aud richer 
than I. You, dear Hofrath, I will love and 
reverence as becomes a true honest wife." 

"Alake! Alake !" cried Conrector Paulmann, 
full of sorrow ; " she is cracked, she is cracked ; 
she can never be Frau Hofrathiim ; she is 
cracked !" 

"Not in the smallest," interrupted Hofrath 
Heerbrand ; "I know well that Mamsell Vero- 
nica has had some kindness for the loutish An- 
selmus ; and it may be that in some fit of pas- 
sion, she has had recourse to the wise woman, 
who, as I perceive, can be no other than tho 



HOFFMANN. 



Ml 



cartl-caster and coffee-pourer of the Seethor; in 
a word, old Rauerin. Nor can it be denied that 
there are secret arts, which exert their influence 
on men but too balefully; we read of such in 
the Ancients, and doubtless there are still such; 
but as to what Mamsell Veronica is pleased to 
say about the victory of the Salamander, and 
the marriage of Anselmus with the green Snake, 
this, in reality, I take for nothing but a poetic 
allegory; a sort of song, wherein she sings her 
entire farewell to the Student." 

"Take it for what you will, best Hofrath !" 
cried Veronica; "perhaps for a very stupid 
dream.'' 

" That I nowise do,' replied Hofrath Heer- 
brand ; "for I know well that Anselmus him- 
self is possessed by secret powers, which vex 
liirn and drive him on to all imaginable mad 
freaks." 

Conrector Paulmann could stand it no longer; 
he broke loose : " Hold ! For the love of Heaven, 
hold ! Are we again overtaken with the cursed 
punch, or has Anselmus' madness come over us 
too? Herr Hofrath, what stuff is tliis you are 
talking? I will suppose, however, that it is love 
which haunts your brain : this soon comes to 
rights in marriage: otherwise I should be ap- 
prehensive that you too had fallen into some 
shade of madness, most honored Herr Hofrath; 
then what would become of the future branches 
of the family, inheriting the malum of their pa- 
rents? But now I give my paternal blesjing to 
this happy union; and permit you as bride and 
bridegroom to take a kiss." 

This happened forthwith ; and thus before 
the presented soup had grown cold, was a for- 
mal betiothment concluded. In a few weeks, 
Frau Hofrathinn Heerbrand was actually, as 
she had been in vision, sitting in the balcony of 
a fine house in the NeumarUt, and looking down 
with a smile on the beaux, who passing by 
turned their glasses up to her, and said: "She 
is a heavenly woman, the Hofrathinn Heer- 
brand." 

TWELFTH TIGIL. 

Accoanf of the Freehold Frupcrty to wliich Anselmus removed, 
as Son-in-law of Archivarius Litidhurst; and how he lives 
there with Serpentina. Conclusion. 

How deeply did I feel, in the centre of my 
spirit, the blessedness of the Student Anselmus, 
who now, indissolubly united with his gentle 
Serpentina, has wididrawn to the mysterious 
Land of Wonders, recognised by him as the 
home towards which his bosom, filled with 
strange Ibrecastings, liad always longed. But 
in vain was all my striving to set belbre thee, 
favorable reader, those glories with which An- 
selmus is encompassed, or even in the faintest 
degree to sliatlow tliem forth to thee in words. 
Reluctantly I could not but acknowledge the 
feebleness of my every expression. I felt my- 
self entliralled amid the paltriness of every-day 
life; I sickened in tormenting dissatisfaction ; I 
glided about like a dreamer; in brief, I fell into 



that condition of the Student Anselmus, which, 
in the Fourth Vigil, I have endeavored to set 
before thee. It grieved me to the heart, when 
I glanced over the Eleven Vigils, now happily 
accomplished, and thought that to insert the 
Twelfth, the keystone of the whole, would 
never be vouchsafed me. For whensoever, in 
the night season, 1 set myself to coiriplete the 
work, it was as if mischievous Spirits (they 
might be relations, perhaps cousins-german, of 
the slain witch) held a polished glittering piece 
of metal before me, in wliich I beheld my own 
mean Self, pale, overwatched, and melancholic, 
like Registrator Heerbrand after his bout of 
punch. Then I threw down my pen, and 
hastened to bed. that I might behold the happy 
Anselmus and the fair Serpentina at least in 
my dreams. This had lasted for several days 
and nights, when at length quite unexpectedly 
I received a note from Archivarius Lindhorst, 
in which he addressed me as follows: 

'•Respected Sir, — It is well known to me that 
you have written down, in F.leven Vigils, the 
singular fortunes of my good son-in-law Ansel- 
mus, whilom Student, now Poet; and are at 
present cudgelling your brains very sore, that 
in the Twelfth anil Last Vigil you may tell 
somewhat of his happy life in Atlantis, where 
he now lives with my daughter, on the pleasant 
Freehold, which I possess in that country. Now, 
notwithstanding I much regret that hereby my 
own peculiar nature is unfolded to the reading 
world ; seeing it may, in my office as Privy Ar- 
chivarius, expose me to a thousand inconveni- 
ences ; nay, in the Collegium even give ris'? to 
the question : How far a Salamander can juitly, 
and with binding consequences, plight himself 
by oath, as a Servant of the State? and how 
far, on the whole, important affairs may be in- 
trusted to him, since, according to Gabalis vi\<X 
Swedenborg, the Spirits of the Elements are not 
to be trusted at all? — notwithstanding, my best 
friends must now avoid my embrace ; feanng 
lest, in some sudden anger, I dart out a flash or 
two, and singe their hair-curls, and Sunday 
frocks; notwitlistaiiding all tliis, I say, it is still 
my purpose to assist you in the completion of 
the Work, since much good of me anil of iny 
dear married daughter (woiiKl the other two 
were off" my Viands also!) has therein been 
said. Would you write your Twelfth Vigil, 
therefore, then descend your cursed five pair 
of stairs, leave your garret, and come over to 
me. In the blue palm-tree-room, which you 
already know, you will find fit writing mate- 
rials; and you can then, in few words, specify 
to your readers, what you have seen ; a beuer 
plan for you than any loug-wimled description 
of a life, which you know only by hearsay. 
"With esteem, your obedient servant, 

"Thk Salamander Ltnuhorst, 
" P. T. Royal Archivarius.' 

This truly somewhat rough, yet on the whole 
friendly note from Archivarius Lindhorst, gave 
me high pleasure. Clear enough it seemed, 
46 



542 



HOFFMANN. 



indeed, that the singular manner in which the 
fortunes of his son-in-law had been revealed to 
me, and which I, bound to silence, must conceal 
even from thee, favorable reader, was well 
known to this peculiar old gentleman ; yet he 
had not taken it so ill as I might readily have 
apprehended. Nay, here was he offering me 
his helpful hand in the completion of my work; 
and from this I might justly conclude, that at 
bottom he was not averse to have his marvel- 
lous existence in the world of spirits thus di- 
vulged through the press. 

"It may be," tliought I, "that he himself ex- 
pects from this measure, perhaps, to get his two 
other daughters the sooner married: for who 
knows but a spark may fall in this or that young 
man's breast, and kindle a longing for the green 
Snake; whom, on Ascension-day, under the 
elder-bush, he will forthwith seek and find? 
From the woe which befell Anselmus, when 
inclosed in the glass bottle, he will take warn- 
ing to be doubly and trebly on his guard against 
all Doubt and Unbelief." 

Precisely at eleven o'clock, I extinguished my 
study-lamp; and glided forth to Archivarius 
Lindhorst, who was already waiting for me in 
the lobby. 

"Are you there, my worthy friend? Well, 
this is what I like, that you have not mistaken 
my good intentions : do but follow me !" 

And with this he led the way through the 
garden, now filled with dazzling brightness, 
into the azure chamber, where I observed the 
same violet table, at which Anselmus had been 
writing. 

Archivarius Lindhorst disappeared : but soon 
came back, carrying in his hand a fair golden 
goblet, out of which a high blue flame was 
sparkling up. "Here," said he, "I bring you 
the favorite drink of your friend the Bandmas- 
ter, Johannes Kreisler.* It is burning arrack, 
into which I have thrown a little sugar. Sip a 
touch or two of if. I will doff my night-gown, 
and to amuse myself and enjoy your worthy 
company while you sit looking and writing, I 
shall just bob up and down a little in the goblet." 

" As you please, honored Herr Archivarius," 
answered I: "but if I am to ply the liquor, you 
will get none." 

" Don't fear that, my good fellow," cried the 
Archivarius; then hastily threw off his night- 
gown, mounted, to my no small amazement, 

* An imaginary musical enthusiast of whom Hoffmann 
has written much; undiir the fiery sensitive wayward 
character of tins crazy Bandmaster, presenting, it would 
seem, a shadowy likeness of himself. The Kreisleriana 
occupy a large .^pace among these Fantasy-pieces; and 
Johannes Kreisler is the main figure in Kater Marr, 
Hoffmann's favorite but unfinished work. In the the 
third and last volume, Kreisler was to end, not in com- 
posure and illumination, as the critics would have re- 
quired, but in utter madness : a sketch of a wild, flail-like 
scarecrow, dancing vehemently and blowing soap-bub- 
bles, and wliich had been intended to front the last title- 
page, was fc)und among Hoffmann's papers, and engraved 
and published in his Life and Remaiits.—Eo, 



into the goblet, and vanished in the blaz" 
Without fear, softly blowing back the flame, I 
partook of the drink: it was truly precious! 

Stir not the emerald leaves of the palm-trees 
in soft sighing and rustling, as if kissed by the 
breath of the morning wind? Awakened from 
their sleep, they move, and mysteriously whisper 
of the wonders, which from the far distance 
approach like tones of melodious harps ! The 
azure rolls from the walls, and floats like airy 
vapor to and fro ; but dazzling beams shoot 
through it; and whirling and dancing, as in ju- 
bilee of childlike sport, it mounts and mounts 
to immeasurable height, and vaults itself over 
the palm-trees. But brighter and brighter shoots 
beam on beam, till in boundless expanse opens 
the grove where I behold Anselmus. Here 
glowing hyacinths, and tulips, and roses, lift 
their fair heads; and their perfumes, in loveli- 
est sound, call to the happy youth : "Wander, 
wander among us, our beloved ; for thou under- 
standest us! Our perfume is the Longing of 
Love: we love thee, and are thine forever- 
more!" The golden rays burn in glowing tones: 
" We are Fire, kindled by love. Perfume is 
Longing; but Fire is Desire: and dwell we 
not in thy bosom ? We are thy own !" The dark 
bushes, the high trees rustle and sound: "Come 
to us, thou loved, thou happy one ! Fire is De- 
sire; but Hope is our cool Shadow. Lovingly 
we rustle round thy head : for thou understand- 
est us, because Love dwells in thy breast!" 
The brooks and fountains murmur and patter. 
"Loved one, walk not so quickly by: look into 
our crystal ! Thy image dwells in us, which we 
preserve with Love, for thou hast understood 
us." In the triumphal choir, bright birds are 
singing: "Heariis! Hear us! We are Joy, we 
are Delight, the rapture of Love !" But anxiously 
Anselmus turns his eyes to the glorious Temple, 
which rises behind him in the distance. The 
fair pillars seem trees; and the capitals and 
friezes acanthus leaves, which in won<lrous 
wreaths and figures form splendid decorations. 
Anselmus walks to the Temple ; he views with 
inward delight the variegated marble, die steps 
with their strange veins of moss. "Ah, no!" 
cries he, as if in the excess of rapture, "she is 
not far from me now ; she is near !"' Then ad- 
vances Serpentina, in the fulness of beauty and 
grace, from the Temple; she bears the Golden 
Pot, from which a bright Lily has sprung. The 
nameless rapture of infinite longing glows in 
her meek eyes; she looks at Anselmus, and 
says: "Ah! Dearest, the Lily has sent forth her 
bowl: what we longed for is fulfilled; is there 
a happiness to equal ours?" Anselmus clasps 
her with the tenderness of warmest ardor: the 
Lily burns in flaming beams over his head. 
And louder move the trees and bushes; clearer 
and gladder play the brooks; the birds, the 
shining insects dance in the waves of perfinne: 
a gay, bright rejoicing tumult, in the air, in the 
water, in the earth, is holding the festival of 



HOFFMANN. 



M3 



Love! Now rush sparkling streaks, gleaming 
over all the bushes; diamonds look from the 
ground like shining eyes: strange vapors are 
wafted hither on sounding wings : they are the 
Spirits of the Elements, who do homage to the 
Lily, and proclaim the happiness of Anselmus. 
Tlieii Anselmus raises his bead, as if encircled 
with a beamy glory. Is it looks? Is it words? 
Is it song? You hear the sound : "Serpentina! 
Belief in thee. Love of thee has unfolded to my 
soul the inmost spirit of Nature! Thou hast 
brought me the Li'y, which sprung from Gold, 
from the primeval Force of the world, before 
Phosphorus had kindled the spark of Thought; 
this Lily is Knowledge of the sacred Harmony 
of all Beinas ; and in this do I live in highest 
blessedness forevermore. Yes, I, thrice happy, 
have perceived what was higliest : I must in- 
deed love thee forever, O Serpentina ! Never 
shall the golden blossoms of the Lily grow pale ; 
for, like Belief and Love this Knowledge is 
eternal."' 

For the vision, in which I had now beheld 
Anselmus bodily, in his Freehold of Atlantis, I 
stand indebted to the arts of the Salamander; 
and most fortunate was it tliat, when all had 
melted into air, I found a paper lying on the 



violet-table, with the foregoing statement of the 
matter, written fairly and distinctly by my own 
hand. But now I felt myself as if transpierced 
and torn in pieces by sharp sorrow. " Ah, 
happy Anselmus, who hast cast away the bur- 
den of week-day life, who in the love of thy 
kind Serpentina fliest with bold pinion, and now 
livest in rapture and joy on thy Freehold in At- 
lantis ! while I — poor I ! — must soon, nay, in 
few moments, leave even this fair hall, which 
itself is far from a Freehold in Atlantis; and 
again be transplanted to my garret, where, en- 
thralled among the pettinesses of necessitous 
existence, my heart and my sight are so be- 
dimmed with thousand mischiefs, as with thick 
fog, that the fair Lily will never, never be be- 
held by me." 

Then Archivarius Lindhorst patted me gently 
on the shoulder, and said: "Soft, soft, my ho- 
nored friend! Lament not so! Were you not 
even now in Atlantis; and have you not at 
least a pretty little copyhold Farm there, as the 
poetical possession of your inward sense? And 
is the blessedness of Anselmus aught else but a 
Living in Poesy? Can aught else but Poesy 
reveal itself as the sacred Harmony of all Be 
ings, as the deepest secret of Nature?" 



ADALBEKT VON CHAMISSO.* 



Born 1781. Died 1839. 



We would fain perform in some degree an 
act of tardy justice to the memory of a poet of 
no mean order, and a man of rare and sterling 
worth. Considering the early and extensive 
popularity which the story of Peter Schlemihl 
obtained in this country, it is surprising how 
rarely the author's name is mentioned amongst 
us. Few English readers, we believe, are 
aware that he ever wrote a line of poetry, or 
acquired any other title to celebrity than that 
which his far-famed romance conferred upon 
him. Yet neither as to the man nor his works 
is this neglect deserved. Both have long been 
regarded in Germany with fervent love and 
admiration, and both commend themselves to 
our sympathies by qualities peculiarly adapted 
to win the cordial esteem of Englishmen. But 
even were it not so, even though Chamisso 
claimed our attention on no higher grounds, 
curiosity at least might well be directed towards 
the productions of a Frenchman, whose German 
style has been accepted in the country of his 
adoption as a model of purity, force, and ele- 
gance. Such an example of eminent mastery 
achieved both in prose and verse over a lan- 
guage which was not the writer's mother 
tongue, is almost unique in the history of lite- 
rature. 

Louis Charles Adelaide, or, as he was after- 
wards called, Adalbert von Chamisso, was one 
of the younger sons of the count of that name, 
and was born in the Chateau de Boncourt, in 
Champagne, in January, 1781. His family, 
which was of Lorrainian origin, had been dis- 
tinguished for its loyalty to its suzerains, its 
ample feudal honors and possessions, and its 
intermarriages with many reigning houses. 
Not less eminent than its prosperous fortunes 
were the disasters that afterwards befel it. 
Adalbert's parents were residing in the chateau 
where he was born when the Revolution broke 
out. Boncourt was assailed, ransacked, and 
destroyed. 

Little is known of Chamisso's childhood, ex- 
cept that he was even then remarkable for the 

* Abridged from Foreign Q,uarlerly Review, No. LXXII. 



taciturn and thoughtful disposition that charac- 
terized his manhood, and already evinced a 
propensity to the pursuits of the naturalist and 
the reveries of the poet. "I used," he says, 
" to observe insects, search out new plants, and 
at an open window on stormy nights, stand 
contemplating and reflecting." When his 
more volatile companions teased and ridiculed 
him for his backwardness to join in their romps, 
his mother would come to the rescue, and cry 
out, "Let him alone; he will outstrip you all 
by and by as a man, as much as he surpasses 
you now in good conduct and infjrmation." 
He used to say of his own fourth son, a delicate 
boy, whose apparent weakness of intellect oc- 
casioned his mother much uneasiness, "Never 
fear, the lad will come right in time ; he is ex- 
actly such as I was myself at his age." 

Chamisso was nine years old when his im- 
poverished family fled from France. At thir- 
teen, he studied drawing and miniature paint- 
ing, at Wurtzburg. At fifteen, after having 
been for some time a pupil in the painting de- 
partment of the royal porcelain manufactory of 
Berlin, he became one of the Queen of Prus- 
sia's pages. At seventeen, he entered the 
Prussian army ; three years afterwards (1801) 
he was a lieutenant, and his family returned 
to France. The first occupation of the young 
Prussian officer was to make himself thoroughly 
acquainted with the German tongue ; for at 
twenty years of age he was not yet perfectly 
familiar with the language, in the literature of 
which he was afterwards to take so prominent 
a place. 

In 1810, he was called to France, to fill a 
professorship in the new college of Napoleon- 
ville; his errand was again a fruitless one, but 
the journey made him acquainted with Madame 
de Stael and M. de Barante, the historian, then 
prefect of Vendee. With the latter he spent 
the winter of 1810-11, agreeably enough, in- 
structing the future translator of Schiller in 
German literature, and filling up his leisure 
with the perusal of old fabliaux and romances 
of chivalry. He was also a welcome guest of 

^544) 



CHAMISSO. 



545 



Madame de Stael's, at Chaumont and Blois; 
and after her banishment he followed her to 
Geneva and Coppet. 

It was during his visit to Coppet that Cha- 
misso began the study of Botany, which was 
afterwards the professional occupation of his 
life. In 1812, he made a pedestrian tour in 
Switzerland, hesitated on the frontiers of Italy, 
and then turned short round to the north, hun- 
gering for his beloved Germany. Hastening 
to Berlin, he entered the university as a medi- 
cal pupil, and began to study anatomy and 
physiology with intense zeal. 

In 1813, he composed his famous tale of 
"Peter Schlemihl," the man who was rendered 
miserable by the loss of his shadow. Ampere 
has an ingenious passage on this subject, which 
is worth quoting : 

" Is there a latent moral in this whimsical 
story? Without doing like Schlemihl, and 
running after a shadow, it seems to me we may 
attribute to the author the intention of express- 
ing this truth, that in society, as it is now con- 
stituted, virtue, merit, and even fortune, are 
not everything. It is not enough that one is 
rich, something more is wanting to give one 
mark and consequence in the world; there 
needs a slight shadowy something, designated 
by the vague, but not insignificant words, spe- 
ciality, notability, position. To be other than 
a nobody in society in these days, when men 
are no longer classed according to rank, one 
must bear a known name, or have produced a 
book, or possess some striking accomplishment; 
one must have the supplementary aid of fashion, 
or enjoy a celebrity, a notoriety, a distinction, 
as they phrase it, of one kind or another. This 
is the indispensable shadow for which the devil 
sometimes tempts us to sell our souls, and with- 
out which we succeed in nothing. The author 
of 'Peter Schlemihl' is right in concluding, 
that when one has not a shadow, one ought not 
to go into the sunshine." 

We accept this interpretation, although since 
it was written Ilitzig has published Chamisso's 
positive declaration that he had no didactic 
purpose in view when he composed the tale. 
We hold that every well-constructed story, in- 
asmuch as it purports to present a regular 
series of events and circumstances, bound to- 
gether by known laws, must of necessity supply 
data from which may be deduced one moral or 
more. In other words, the details of any fable 
will suggest pointed analogies just in proportion 
3t 



as they are consistent with each other and co- 
herent. It is generally conceded that although 
the poet's functions have a moral tendency, he 
is not required to be solicitous about teaching 
categorically ; and perhaps it would not be too 
much to say that if he thinks about his moral 
at all, the less he does so the better. Chamisso 
appears to have been of this opinion : 

"I have seldom," he says, '-any ulterior aim 
in my poetry ; if an anecdote or a word strikes 
me in a particular manner (mich selbst in Leibe 
von der Seile der linken Pfole bewegl) I sup- 
pose it must have the same effect on others, 
and I set to work, wrestling laboriously with 
the language, till the thing comes out dis- 
tinctly. 

" If by chance I have had a notion to evolve, 
I am always disappointed with the way in 
which the thing turns out. It looks flimsy ; 

there is no life in it You may call me 

for this a nightingale, or a cuckoo, or any other 
singing bird, rather than a reasoning man ; 

with all my heart ! I ask no better 

Schlemihl, too, came forth in this way. I had 
lost on a journey my hat, portmanteau, gloves, 
pocket-handkerchiefj and all my movable es- 
tate. Fouque asked me whether I had not also 
lost my shadow ; and we pictured to ourselves 
the effects of such a disaster. Another time, 
in turning over the leaves of a book by Lafbn- 
taine (I do not know the title), was found a 
passage in which a very obliging man was de- 
scribed as producing all sortsof things from his 
pocket in a party, as fast as they were called 
for ; upon this I remarked that, only ask him 
civilly, the good fellow would, no doubt, lug 
out a coach and horses from his pocket. — Here 
was Schlemihl complete in conception, and as 
time hung heavy enough on my hands in the 
country, I began to write. In truth I had no 
need to have read the 'Baron de Feneste' 
(Daubigne's philosophical romance) to have 
picked up all sorts of practical knowledge, 
touching the ^awcaOai and the sivai. But it 
was not my object to embody this knowledge, 
but to amuse Hitzig's wife and children, whom 
I looked upon as my public, and so it has come 
to pass that you and others have laughed over 
my performance." 

He employed the latter part of 1813, and 
the greater part of the following year, upon 
natural history, attending lectures on mineral- 
ogy, which surprised him with the discovery 
"that stones had so much sense in them," as- 
46* 



{)46 



CHAMISSO. 



sisting in the arrangement of the Crustacea in 
the Zoological Museum of Berlin, and exercis- 
ing himself in writing and speaking Latin, pre- 
paratory to taking his doctor's degree. The 
storm of war broke out again in 1815, and made 
him more than ever solicitous to withdraw for 
a while from the scene of strife. He endea- 
vored to join the Prince de Neuwied, who was 
about to travel in Brazil, but was disappointed 
in this and many other similar attempts. At 
last the opportunity he so much longed for ar- 
rived. Taking up a newspaper one day at 
Hitzig's, he chanced to see the announcement 
of a voyage of discovery towards the North 
Pole and in the Pacific, which was about to be 
undertaken on board the Russian ship of war, 
commanded by Otto von Kotzebue, son of the 
German author of that name. Stamping with 
his foot, Chamisso exclaimed, " I wish I was 
with these Russians at the North Pole." "Are 
you in earnest?" said Hitzig. "Quite so." 
And, on the 15th of July, Chamisso left Berlin 
for a voyage of three years. 

He published a very lively and entertaining 
account of this voyage. In 1829, he produced 
his grandest work, Salas y Gomez, which pro- 
bably first germinated in his mind during this 
voyage. 

Returning to Berlin in the autumn of 1818, 
he employed the remainder of that year in ar- 
ranging the specimens of natural history he 
had brought home, and which he bestowed on 
the Berlin Museum. In 1819 he was married, 
and of his bride he speaks thus : " She is young, 
blooming and strong, handsome and good, pure 
and innocent, clear, cloudless and serene, calm, 
rational and cheerful, and so amiable !" 

Whilst he was writing verses for his young 
wife, and arranging the Herbaria of the Museum 
of Berlin, Chamisso, it is probable, scarcely re- 
collected his quality of French emigrant. He 
was agreeably reminded of this, in the autumn 
of 1825, by a call to Paris to receive 100,000 
francs lodged to his credit by the Commissioners 
of the Indemnity Fund. He was welcomed 
with marked distinction bj' the learned world 
of Paris, and passed his time far more plea- 
santly than he had done when he visited the 
luxurious capital in his needy and obscure 
youth. The letters he wrote home were filled 
with accounts of the many remarkable things, 
literary and theatrical, social and political, 
which Paris presented to his view at that stir- 
ring period. But in the midst of all this ex- 



citement he did not lose sight of the least 
every-day detail of his beloved home. " Don't 
forget," he says, writing to his wife, "don't 
forget the roses; don't forget the children's 
letters ; don't forget to strew food for the spar- 
rows on my window. 1 shall return to you the 
same as I left you; let me find everything 
again just as it was." 

After his return from Paris, in 1827, a second 
German edition of" Schlemihl" was published, 
with an appendix containing a small collection 
of his poems. Up to this time he had no serious 
belief in his own poetical powers, and in a let- 
ter to Varnhagen's sister (May 24, 1827), he 
says, " That I am no poet, nor ever was, is 
manifest, but that does not prevent me from 
having a feeling for poetry." But the new 
publication began to attract public attention 
towards him, and, in June, 1828, he ventured 
to write to De la Foye. " I almost begin to 
think I am one of the poets of Germany." 
The matter was put beyond all doubt by the 
reception given to his " Salas y Gomez" in the 
following year. Soon after this we find him 
mentioning, with honest pride, that next to 
Uhland's Poems, none were in such frequent 
demand for presents as his own. Bridegrooms 
especially selected them as gifts for their 
brides. 

Chamisso's existence had now reached the 
culminating point from which began its conti- 
nuous descent. In 1831, he was seized by that 
worst form of influenza, which we all remember 
to have been the precursor of the cholera. It 
broke down his iron constitution, and left be- 
hind it a chronic affection of the lungs, from 
which he never recovered. His declining 
years were still cheered by the increasing ho- 
nors conferred on him, both as a poet and a 
naturalist, but they were visited by a calamity 
for which there was no balm on earth. His 
wife died on the 21st of May, 1837, in her 
thirty-sixth year. He bore this fatal blow with 
manly fortitude, thankful for the blessings he 
had enjoyed, and patiently awaiting his dis- 
missal. It was not long delayed. He survived 
his wife exactly fifteen months, and expired on 
the 21st of August, 1839. 

Most characteristic of the man, was the man- 
ner in which he passed this interval. Earnest 
and strenuous to the last, he increased ^ rather 
than relaxed his mental activity. He found in 
occupation the best alleviation of his sorrows, 
and employed himself simultaneously on two 



CHAMISSO. 



547 



works of very dissimilar character. He pub- 
lished a grammar of the Havai language, 
spoken in some of the islands of the South Sea, 
and entered upon an elaborate philological in- 
vestigation of the kindred dialects; and he 
joined Baron Gaudy in translating, or rather, 
as he says, Germanizing a selection of ninety- 
eight songs of Beranger. He continued also, 
the troublesome task of editing the "Musen 
Almanach," and shortly before his death, he 
showed that the old ardor was not extinct 
within him, by undertaking a journey to Leip- 



zig, in order to run over the first portion of the 
Dresden Railway. He was radiant with de- 
light. Speaking as a poet, he called the loco- 
motive " Time's wings ,-" and in the language 
of a naturalist, he defined it as a warm-blooded 
animal without eyes. He looked on the inven- 
tion as the certain commencement of a new 
era, and deemed that every moneyed man was 
morally bound to contribute a portion of his 
means towards the promotion of a system from 
which such grand results were to accrue. 



THE WONDERFUL HISTORY OF PETER 
SCHLEMIHL. 

CHAPTER I. 

Afteii a fortunate, but for me very trouble- 
some voyage, we finally reached the port. The 
instant that I touched land in the boat, I loaded 
myself with my few effects, and passing through 
the swarming people, I entered the first, and 
least house, before wliicli I saw a sign hang. I 
reques'.ed a room ; the boots maasured me with 
a look, and conducted me into the garret. I 
caused fresh water to be brought, and made 
him exactly describe to me where I should find 
Mr. Thomas John. 

" Before the north-gate; the first country-bouse 
on the right hand ; a large new house of red 
and white marble, with many columns." 

"Good." It was still eirly in the day. I 
opened at once my bundle ; took thence my 
new black cloth coat; clad myself cleanly in 
my best apparel: put my letter of introduction 
into my pocket, and set out on the way to the 
man who was to promote my modest expecta- 
tions. 

When I had ascended the long North Street, 
and reached the gate, I soon saw the pillars 
glimmer through the foliage. "Here it is then," 
tliouyht I. I wiped the dust from my feet with 
my pocket-handkerchief; put my neckcloth in 
order, and in God's name rung the bell. The 
dcor flew open. In the hall I had an examina- 
tion to undergo; the porter, however, permitted 
me to be anrjouiiced, and I bad the honor to be 
called into the park, where Mr. Johii was 
walking with a select party. I recognised the 
man at once by the lustre of his corpuler.t self- 
complacency. He received me very well — as 
a rich man receives a poor devil, — even turned 
tOivards me, without turning from the rest of 
the company, and took the offered letter from 
my hand. "So, so, from my brother. I have 
heard nothing from him for a long time. But 
lie is well ? There, " continued he, addressing 
■die comiiany, without waiting for an answer, 
and pointing with the letter to a hill, "there I 
am jjoinj to erect the new building." He broke 



the seal without breaking off the conversation, 
which turned upon riches. 

" He that is not master of a million, at least," he 
observed, "is — pardon me the word — a wretch!" 

"0! how true!" I exclaimed with a rush of 
overflowing feeling. 

That pleased him. He smiled at me, and 
said — " Stay here, my good friend: in awhile 
I shall perhaps have lime to tell you what I 
think about this." He pointed to the letter, 
which he then thrust into his pocket, and turned 
again to the company. He offered his arm to 
a young lady; the other gentlemen addressed 
themselves to other fair ones; each found what 
suited him; and all proceeded towards the 
rose-blossomed mount. 

I slid into the rear, without troubling any 
one, for no one troubled himself any I'urther 
about me. The company was excessively 
lively; there was dalliance and playfulness; 
trifles were sometimes discussed with an im- 
portant tone, but oftener important matters with 
levity; and especially pleasantly flew the wit 
over absent friends and their circumstances. I 
was too strange to understand much of all this; 
too anxious and introverted to take an interest 
in such riddles. 

We had reached the rosary. The lovely 
Fanny, the belle of the day, as it appeared, 
would, out of obstinacy, herself break off a 
blooming bough. She wounded herself on a 
thurn, and as if from the dark roses, flovved the 
purple on lier tender hand. This circumstance 
put the whole party into a flutter. English 
plaister was sought for. A still, thin, lanky, 
longish, oldish man, who stood near, and whom 
I had not hitherto remarked, put his hand in- 
stantly iuto the close-lying breast-pocket of his 
old French grey tafl'etty coat; produced thence 
a little pocket-book ; opened it; and presented 
to the lady, with a profound obeisance, the re- 
quired article. She took it witliout noticing the 
giver, and M'ithout thanks ; the wound was 
bound up ; and we went forward over the hill, 
from whose back the company could enjoy the 
wide prospect over the green labyrinth of the 
park to the boundless ocean. 



548 



CHAMISSO. 



The view was in reality vast and splendid. 
A light point appeared on the horizon between 
the dark flood, and the blue of the heaven. 
" A telescope here !" cried John ; and already 
before the servants who appeared at the call, 
were in motion, the grey man, modestly bowing, 
had thrust his hand into his coat-pocket, and 
drawn thence a beautiful Dollond, and handed 
it to Mr. John. Bringing it immediately to bis 
eye, he informed the company that it was the 
ship which went out yesterday, and was de- 
tained in view of port by contrary winds. The 
telescope passed from hand to hand, but not 
again into that of its owner. I, however, gazed 
in wonder at the man, and could not conceive 
how the great machine had come out of the 
narrow pocket: but this seemed to have struck 
no one else, and nobody troubled himself any 
farther about the grey man than about myself. 

Refreshments were handed round ; the choic- 
est fruits of every zone, in the costliest vessels. 
Mr. John did the honors with an easy grace, 
and a second time addressed a word to me. 
" Help yourself ; you have not had the like at 
sea." I bowed, but he saw it not, he was 
alroady speaking with some one else. 

The company would fain have reclined upon 
the sward on the slope of the hill, opposite to 
the outstretched landscape, had they not feared 
the dampness of the earth. "It were divine," 
observed one of the party, "had we but a Tur- 
key carpet to spread here." The wish was 
scarcely expressed when the man in the grey 
coat liad his hand in his pocket, and was busied 
in drawing thence, with a modest and even 
humble deportment, a rich Turkey carpet in- 
terwoven with gold. The servants received it 
as a matter of course, and opened it on the re- 
quired spot. The company without ceremony, 
took their places upon it; for myself, I looked 
again in amazement on the man ; at the carpet, 
which measured above twenty paces long and 
ten in breadth : and rubbed my eyes, not know- 
ing what to think of it, especially as nobody saw 
anything extraordinary in it. 

I would fain have had some explanation re- 
garding the man, and have asked who he was, 
but I knew not to whom to address myself, for 
I was almost more afraid of the gentlemen's 
servants dian of tlie served gentlemen. At 
length I took courage, and stepped up to a 
yoinig man who appeared to me to be of less 
consideration than the rest, and who had often 
stood alone. I begged liim softly to tell me 
who the agreeable uja'i in tlie grey coat there 
was. 

" He there, who looks like an end of thread 
that has esca])ed out of a tailor's needle?" 

"Yes, he who stands alone." 

" [ don't know him," he replied, and as it 
seemed in order to avoid a longer conversation 
with me, he turned away, and spoke of indif- 
ferent matters to another. 

The sun began now to shine more powerfully, 
iind to inconvenience the ladies. The lovely 



Fanny addressed carelessly to the grey man, 
whom as far as I am aware, no one had yet 
spoken to, the trifling question, "'Whether he 
had not, perchance, also a tent by him?" — He 
answered her by an obeisance most profound, 
as if an unmerited honor were done him. and 
had already his hand in his pocket, out of which 
1 saw come canvass, poles, cordage, iron-work, 
in short, everything which belongs to the most 
splendid pleasure-tent. The young gentlemen 
helped to expand it, and it covered the whole 
exteni of tlie carpet, and nobody found anything 
remarkable in it. 

I was already become uneasy, nay horrified 
at heart, but how completely so, as, at the ver" 
next wish expressed, I saw him yet pull cat c" 
his pocket three roadsters — 1 tell thee three 
beautiful great black horses, with saddle and 
caparison. Bethink thee ! for God's sake ! — 
three saddled horses, still out of the same 
pocket out of which already a pocket-book, a 
telescope, an embroidered carpet, twenty paces 
long and ten broad, a pleasure-tent of equal di- 
mensions, and all the requisite poles and irons, 
had come forth! If I did not protest to thee 
that I saw it myself with my own eyes, thou 
couldst not possibly believe it. 

Embarrassed and obsequious as the man 
himself appeared to be, little as was the atten- 
tion which had been bestowed upon him, yet 
to me his grisly aspect, from which I could not 
turn my eyes, became so fearful, that I could 
bear it no longer. 

I resolved to steal away from the couips-iy, 
■which from the insignificant part I played in it 
seemed to me an easy affair. I proposed to 
myself to return to the city, to try my hick again 
on the morrow with Mr. John, and if i could 
muster the necessary courage, to question hun 
about the singular grey man. Had I only had 
the good fortune to escape so well ! 

I had already actually succeeded in stealing 
through the rosary, and in descending the hill, 
found myself on a piece of lawn, when fearing 
to be encountered in crossing the grass out of 
the path, I cast an enquiring glance round me. 
What was my terror to behold tlie man in the 
grey coat behind ine, and making towards me ! 
In the next moment he took ofi' his hat before 
me, and bowed so low as no one had ever yet 
done to me. There was no doubt but that he 
wished to address me, and without being rude, 
I could not prevent it. I also took off my hatj 
bowed also; and stood there in the sun with 
baiH head as if rooted to die ground. I stared 
at him full of terror, and was like a bird which 
a serpent has fascinated. He himself appeared 
very much embarrassed. He raised not :., s 
eyes; again bowed repeatedly; drew nearer, 
and addressed me with a soft, tremulous voice, 
almost in a tone of supplication. 

"May I hope, sir, that you will pardon my 
boldness in venturing in so unusual a manner to 
approach you, but I would ask a favor. Per 
mit me most condescendingly — " 



CHAMISSO. 



549 



"But in God's name!" exclaimed I in my 
trepidation, "what can I do for a man who — " 
we hoth started, and, as I believe, reddened. 

After a moment's silence, he again resumed: 
"During the short time that I had the happiness 
to find myself near you, I have, sir, many 
times, — allow me to say it to you — really con- 
templated with inexpressible admiration, the 
beautiful, beautiful, shadow which, as it were, 
with a certain noble disdain, and without your- 
self remarking it, you cast from you in the sun- 
shine. The noble shadow at your feet there. 
Pardon me the bold supposition, but possibly 
you might not be indisposed to make this sha- 
dow over to me." 

I was silent, and a mill-wheel seemed to 
whirl round in my head. What was I to make 
ol'ihis singular proposition to sell my own sha- 
dow? He must be mad, thought I, and with 
an altered tone which was more assimilated to 
that of his own humility, 1 answered thus: 

" Ha ! ha ! good friend, have not you then 
enough of your own shadow? I take this for a 
business of a very singular sort — ." 

He hastily interrupted me; — "I have many 
things in my pocket which, sir, might not ap- 
pear worthless to you, and for this inestimable 
shadow I hold the very highest price too small." 

It struck cold through me again as I was re- 
minded of the pocket. I knew not how I could 
have called him good friend. I resumed the 
conversation, and sought, if possible, to set all 
right again by excessive politeness. 

"But, sir, pardon your most humble servant; 
I do not understand your meaning. How in- 
deed could my shadow " — He interrupted me — 

"1 beg your permission only here on the spot 
to be allowed to take up this noble shadow and 
put it in my pocket; how I shall do that be my 
care. On the other hand, as a testimony of my 
grateful acknowledgment to you, I give you the 
choice of all the treasures which I carry in my 
pocket, — the genuine Spring-root,* the Man- 
drake-root, the Change-penny, the Rob-dollar, 
the napkin of Roland's Page, a mandrake-man, 
at your own price. But these, probably don't 
interest you, — rather Fortunatus's Wishing-cap 
newly and stoutly repaired, and a lucky-bag 
such as he had !" 

"The Luck-purse of Fortunatus!'' I exclaimed, 
interrupting him ; and great as my anxiety was, 
with that one word he had taken my whole 
mind captive. A dizziness seized me, and 
double ducats seemed to glitter before my eyes. 

" Honored Sir, will you do me the favor to 
view, and to make trial of this purse ?" He 
thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out a 
tolerably large, well-sewed purse of stout Cor- 

*'lliese are tefen-iicfls to facts in the pnpular tales of 
Germany: as for insianr.e, the Spring-wiirzel, or Spring- 
root, is found in the story of Ruherzahl ; and the Galgen- 
niannlein, or uallovvsnien, were little figures cut out of 
a r<iot. said by the dealers in such things in the middle 
nges, to lie actual mnndrake-ronts growing in that shape 
at the feet of galliivvses, etc., etc. 



duan leather, with two strong strings, and 
handed it to me. 1 plunged my hand into it, 
and drew out ten gold pieces, and again ten, 
and again ten, and again ten. I extended him 
eagerly my hand — "Agreed! the business is 
done; for the purse you have my shadow!" 

He closed with me; kneeled instantly down 
before me, and I beheld him, with an admirable 
dexterity, gently loosen my shadow from top to 
toe from the grass, lift it up, roll it together, fold 
it, and finally, pocket it. He arose, made me 
another obeisance, and retreated towards the 
rosary. I fancied that I heard him there softly 
laughing to himself; but I held the purse fast 
by the strings; all round me lay the clear sun- 
shine, and within me was yet no power of re- 
flection. 

CHAPTER II. 

At length I came to myself, and hastened 
to quit the place where I had nothing more to 
expect. In the first place I filled my pockets 
with gold; then I secured the strings of the 
purse fast round my neck, and concealed the 
purse itself in my bosom. I passed unobserved 
out of the park, reached the highway and took 
the road to the city. As, sunk in thought, 1 
approached the gate, I heard a cry behind me. 

"Young gentleman! eh! young gentleman! 
hear yon !" 

I looked round, an old woman called aftet 
me. 

"Do take care, sir,you have lost your shadow !" 

"Thank you, good mother!'' I threw her a 
gold piece for her well-meant intelligence, and 
stopped under the trees. 

At the city gate I was compelled to hear again 
from the sentinel — "Where has the gentleman 
left his shadow?" And immediately again from 
some wojnen — "Jesus Maria! the poor fellow 
has no shadow !" That began to irritate me, and 
I became especially careful not to walk in the 
sun. This could not, however, be accomplished 
everywhere, i'br instance, over the broad street 
which I next must approach actually, as mis 
chief would have it, at the very moment that 
the boys came out of school. A cursed hunch- 
backed rogue, I see him yet, spied out instantly 
that I had no shadow. He proclaimed the fact 
with a loud outcry to the whole assembled lite- 
rary street youth of the suburb, who began 
forthwith to criticise me, and to pelt me with 
mud. "Decent people are accustomed to take 
their shadow with them, when they go into the 
sunshine." To defend myself from them 1 
threw whole handfuls of gold amongst them 
and sprang into a hackney-coach, whicli some 
compassionate soul procured for me. 

As soon as I found myself alone in the rolling 
carriage I began to weep bitterly. The pre- 
sentiment must already have arisen in me, that 
far as gold on earth transcends in estimatioa 
merit and virtue, so much higher than gold it- 
self is the shadow valued ; and as I had earlier 
sacrificed wealth to conscience, I had now 



650 



CHAMISSO. 



thrown away the shadow for mere gold. What 
in the world could and would become of me! — 

I was ajjain greatly annoyed as the carriage 
stopped before my old inn. I was horrified at 
the bare idea of entering that wretched cock- 
loft. I ordered my things to be brought down ; 
received my miserable bundle with contempt, 
threw down some gold pieces, and ordered the 
coachman to drive to the most fashionable hotel. 
The house faced the north, and 1 had not the 
sun to fear. I dismissed the driver with gold ; 
caused the best front rooms to be assigned me, 
and shut myself up in them as quiokly as I 
could! 

What thinkest thou I now began? Oh, my 
dear Chamisso, to confess it even to thee makes 
me blush. I drew the unlucky purse from my 
bosom, and witti a kind of desperation which, 
like a rushing conflagration, grew in me with 
self-increasing growth, I extracted gold, and 
gold, and gold, and ever more gold, and strewed 
it on the floor, and strode amongst it, and made 
it ring again, and feeding my poor heart on the 
splendor and the sound, flung continuallyimore 
metal to metal, till in my weariness, I sank 
down on the rich heap, and rioting thereon, 
rolled and revelled amongst it. So passed the 
day, the evening. I opened not my door ; night 
and day found me lying on my gold, and then 
sleep overcame me. 

I dreamed of thee. I seemed to stand behind 
the glass-door of thy little room, and to see thee 
sitting then at thy work-table, between a skele- 
ton and a bundle of dried plants. Before thee 
lay open Haller, Humboldt, and Linnseus; on 
thy sofa a volume of Goethe and "The Magic- 
Ring." 1 regarded thee long, and every thing 
in thy room, and then thee again. Thou didst 
not move, thou drewest no breath ; — thou wert 
dead ! 

I awoke. It appeared still to be very early. 
My watch stood. I was sore all over; thirsty 
and hungry too; I had taken nothing since the 
evening before. I pushed from me with loath- 
ing and indignation the gold on which I had 
before sated my foolish heart. In my vexation 
I knew not what I should do with it. It must 
not lie there. I tried whether the purse would 
swallow it again, — but no! None of my win- 
dows opened upon the sea. I found myself 
compelled laboriously to drag it to a great cup- 
board which stood in a cabinet, and there to 
pile it. I left only some handfuls of it lying. 
When I had finished the work, I threw myself 
exhausted into an easy chair, and waited for 
the stirring of the people in the liouse. As soon 
as possible I ordered food to be brought, and 
the landlord to come to me. 

I fixed in consultation with this man the fu- 
ture arrangements of my house. He recom- 
mended for the services about my person a 
certain Bende', whose honest and intelligent 
physiognomy immediately captivated me. He 
it was whose attachment has since accompanied 
me consolingly through the wretchedness of 



life, and has helped me to support my gloomy 
lot. I spent the whole day in my room among 
masterless servants, shoemakers, tailors, and 
tradespeople. I fitted myself out, and purchased 
besides a great many jewels and valuables for 
the sake of getting rid of some of the vast lieap 
of hoarded up gold ; but it seemed to me as if 
it were impossible to diminish it. 

In the mean time I brooded over my situation 
in the most agonising despair. I dared not 
venture a step out of my doors, and at evening 
I caused forty waxlights to be lit in my room 
before I issued from the shade. I thought with 
horror on the terrible scene with the schoolboys, 
yet I resolved, much courage as it demanded, 
once more to make a trial of public opinion. 
The nights were then moonlight. Late in the 
evening I thre<v on a wide cloak, pressed my 
hat over my eyes, and stole, treinbling like a 
criminal, out of the house. I stepped first out 
of the shade in whose protection I had arrived 
there, in a remote square, into the full moon- 
light, determined to learn my fate out of the 
mouths of the passers by. 

Spare me, dear friend, the painful repetition 
of all that I had to endure. The women often 
testified the deepest compassion with which I 
inspired them, declarations which no less trans- 
pierced me than the mockery of the youth and 
the proud contempt of the men, especially of 
those fat, well-fed fellows, who themselves cast 
a broad shadow. A lovely and sweet girl, who, 
as it seemed, accoinpanied her parents, while 
these suspiciously only looked before their feet, 
turned by chance her flashing eyes upon me. 
She was obviously terrified ; she observed my 
want of a shadow, let fall her veil over her 
beautiful countenance, and dropping her head, 
passed iti silence. 

I could bear it no longer. Briny streams 
started from my eyes, and cut to the heart, I 
staggered back into the shade. I was obliged to 
support myself against the houses to steady my 
steps and wearily and late reached my dwelling. 

I spent a sleepless night. The next morning 
it was my first care to have the man in the grey 
coat everywhere sought after. Possibly I might 
succeed in finding him again, and how joyful! 
if he repented of the foolish bargain as heartily 
as I did. I ordered Bendel to come to me, he 
appeared to possess address and tact; I de- 
scribed to him exactly the man in whose pos- 
session lay a treasure without which my life 
was only a misery. I told him the time, the 
place in which I had seen him; I described to 
him all who had been present, and added, 
moreover, this token: he should particularly 
inquire after a Dollond's telescope ; after a gold 
interwoven Turkish carpet; after a splendid 
pleasure tent; and, finally, after the black 
chargers, whose story, we knew not how, wa* 
connected with that of the mysterious man, who 
seemed of no consideration amongst them, and 
whose appearance had destroyed the quiet and 
happiness of my life. 



CHAMISSO. 



SSI 



When I had done speaking I fetched out gold, 
such a load that I was scarcely able to carry it, 
and laid upon it precious stones and jewels of a 
far greater value. " Bendel,'' said I, " these 
level many ways, and make easy many things 
which appeared rjuite impossible; don't be 
stingy witVi it, as I am not, but go and rejoice 
thy master with the intelligence on which his 
only hope depends." 

He went. He returned late and sorrowful. 
None of the people of Mr. John, none of his 
guests, and he had spoken with all, were able 
in the remotest degree, to recollect the man in 
the grey coat. The new telescope was there, 
and no one knew whence it had come; the 
carpet, the tent were still there spread and 
pitched on the self-same hill; the servants 
boasted of the atfluenee of their master, and no 
one knew whence these same valuables had 
come to him. He himself took his pleasure in 
them, and did not trouble himself because he 
did not know whence he had them. The young 
gentlemen had the horses, which they had rid- 
den, in their stables, and they praised the libe- 
rality of Mr. John who on that day made them 
a present of them. Thus much was clear from 
the circumstantial relation of Bendel, whose 
active zeal and able proceeding, although with 
such fruitless result, received from me their 
merited commendation. I gloomily motioned 
him to leave me alone. 

"I have," began he again, "given my master 
an account of the matter which was most im- 
portant to him. I have yet a message to deliver 
which a person gave me whom I met at the 
door as I went out on the business in which I 
have been so unfortunate. The very words of 
the man were these: -Tell Mr. Peter Schlemihl 
he will not see me here again as I am going 
over sea, and a favorable wind calls me at this 
moment to the harbor. But in a year and a 
day I will have the honor to seek him myself, 
and then to propose to him another and probably 
to him more agreeable transaction. Present my 
most humble compliments to him, and assure 
him of my thanks.' I asked him who he was, 
but he replied, your honor knew him already." 

"What was the man's appearance?" cried I, 
filled with foreboding, and Bendel sketched me 
the man in the grey coat, trait by trait, word for 
word, as he had accurately described in his 
former relation the man after whom he had 
inquired. 

"Unhappy one!'' I exclaimed, wringing my 
hands, — "that was the very man!" and there 
fell, as it were, scales from his eyes. 

' If es ! it was he, it was, positively!'' cried 
he in horror, "and I, blind and imbecile wretch 
have not recognized hiin, have not recognized 
him, and have betrayed my master!" 

He broke out into violent weeping; heaped 
the bitterest reproaches on himself, and the de- 
spair in which he was inspired even me with 
compassion. I spoke comfort to him, assured 
him repeatedly that I entertained not the slight- 



est doubt of his fidelity, and sent him instarlly 
to the port, if possible to follow the traces c ' 
this singular man. But in the morning a greai 
number of ships which the contrary winds had 
detained in the harbor, had run out, bound to 
different climes and different shores, and the 
grey man had vanislied as tracelessly as a 
dream. 

CHAPTER III. 

Of what avsil are wings to him who is fast 
bound in iron fetters? He is compelled only 
the more fearfully to despair. I lay like Faffner 
by his treasure far from every consolation, suf- 
fering much in the midst of my gold. But my 
heart was not in it, on the contrary, I cursed it, 
because I saw myself through it cut off from 
all life. Brooding over my gloomy secret alone, 
I trembled before the meanest of my servants, 
whom at the same time I was forced to envy, 
for he had a shadow ; he might show himself 
in the sun. I wore away days and nights in 
solitary sorrow in my chamber, and anguish 
gnawed at my heart. 

There was another who pined away before 
my eyes : my faithful Bendel never ceased to 
torture himself with silent reproaches, that he 
had betrayed the trust reposed in him by his 
master, and had not recognized him after whom 
he was despatched, and with whom he must 
believe that my sorrowful fate was intimately 
interwoven. I could not lay the fault to his 
charge ; I recognised in the event the mysteri- 
ous nature of the Unknown. 

That I might leave nothing untried, I one 
time sent Bendel with a valuable brilliant ring 
to the most celebrated painter of the city, and 
begged that he would pay me a visit. He 
came. I ordered my people to retire, closed 
the door, seated myself by the man, and after I 
had praised his art, I came with a heavy heart 
to the business, causing him before that to pro- 
mise the strictest secrery. 

"Mr. Professor," said I, "could not you, think 
you, paint a false shadow for one, who by the 
most unlucky chance in the world, has become 
deprived of his own ?" 

"You mean a personal shadow?" 

"That is precisely my meaning" 

"But," continued he, "through what awk 
wardness, through what negligence could he 
then lose his proper shadow?' 

"How it happened," replied I, "is now of 
very little consequence, but thus far I may say," 
added I, lying shamelessly to him, "in Russia, 
whither he made a journey las', winter, in an 
extraordinary cold his shadow froze so fast to 
the ground that he could by no means loose it 
again." 

"The false shadow that I couUl paint him," 
replied the professor, " would only be such a 
one as by the slightest agitation he might lose 
again, especially a person, who, as appears by 
your relation, has so little adhesion to his own 
native shadow. He who has no shadow, let 



J53 



CHAMISSO. 



him keep out of the sunshine, that is the safest 
and most sensible thing for him." He arose 
and wit)idrew, casting at me a transpiercing 
glance which mine could not support. I sunk 
back in my seat, and covered my face with my 
hands. 

Thus Bendel found me, as he at length entered. 
He saw tlie grief of his master, and was desirous 
silently and reverently to withdraw. I looked 
up, I lay under the burden of my trouble; I 
must communicate it. 

"Bendel!" cried 1, " Bendel, thou only one 
who seest my affliction and respectest it, seek- 
est not to pry into it, but appearest silently and 
kindly to sympathise, come to me, Bendel, and 
be the nearest to my heart; I have not locked 
from thee the treasure of my gold, neither will 
1 lock from thee the treasure of my grief Ben- 
del, forsake me not. Bendel, thou beholdest me 
rich, liberal, kind. Thou iraaiiinest that the 
world ought to honor me, and thou seest me fly 
the world, and hide myself from it. Bendel, 
the world has passed judgment, and cast me 
from it, and perhaps thou too wilt turn from 
me when thou knowest my fearful secret. 
Bendel, I am rich, liberal, kind, but, — God! 
— I have no shadow !" 

" No shadow !" cried the good youth with 
horror, and the bright tears gushed from his 
eyes. " Woe is me, that I was born to serve a 
shadowless master!'' He was silent, and I held 
my face buried in my hands. 

"Bendel,'' added I, at length, tremblingly — 
"now hast thou my confidence, and now canst 
thou betray it — go forth and testify against me." 
He appeared to be in a heavy conflict with 
himself; at length, he flung himself before me 
and seized my hand, which he bathed with his 
tears. 

" No !" exclaimed he, " think the world as it 
will, I cannot, and will not, on account of a 
shadow abandon my kind master; I will act 
justly, and not with policy. I will continue 
with you, lend you my shadow, help you when 
I can, and when I cannot, weep with you." I 
fell on his neck, astonished at such unusual 
sentiment, for I was convinced that he did it 
not for gold. 

From that time my fate and my mode of life 
were in some degree changed. It is indescri- 
bable how much Bendel continued to conceal 
my delect. He was everywhere before me 
and with ine ; foreseeing everything, hitting on 
contrivances, and where danger threatened, 
covering me quickly with his shadow, since he 
was taller and bulkier than I. Thus I ventured 
myself again among men, and began to play a 
part in the world. I was obliged, it is true, to 
assume many peculiarities and humors, but such 
became the rich, and so long as the truth con- 
tinued to be concealed, I enjoyed all the honor 
and respect which were paid to my wealth. I 
looked calmly forward to the promised visit of 
the mysterious unknown, at the end of the year 
<»nd the day. 



I felt, indeed, that I must not remain longer 
in a place where I had once been seen without 
a shadow, and where I might easily be betrayed. 
Perhaps I yet thought too much of the manner 
in which I had introduced myself to Thomas 
John, and it was a mortifying recollection. I 
would therefore here merely make an experi- 
ment, to present myself with more ease and 
confidence elsewhere, but that now occurred 
which held me a long time riveted to my van- 
ity, for there it is in the man that the anchor 
bites the firmest ground. 

Even the lovely Fanny, whom I in this place 
again encountered, honored me with some no- 
tice without recollecting ever to have seen me 
before; for I now had wit and sense. As I 
spoke, people listened, and I could not, for the 
life of me, comprehend myself how I had ar- 
rived at the art of maintaining and engrossing 
so easily the conversation. The impression 
which I perceived that I had made on the fair 
one, made of me just what she desired — a fool, 
and I thenceforward followed her through 
shade and twilight wherever I could. I was 
only so far vain that I wished to make her vain 
of myself, and found it impossible, even with 
the very best intentions, to force the intoxication 
from my head to my heart. 

But why relate to thee the whole long ordi- 
nary story ? Thou thyself hast often related it 
to me of other honorable people. To the old, 
well known play in which I goodnaturedly un- 
dertook a wornout part, there came in truth to 
her and me, and everybody, unexpectedly a 
most peculiar and poetic catastrophe. 

As, according to my wont, I had assembled 
on a beautiful evening a party in a garden, I 
wandered with the lady, arm in arm at some 
distance from the other guests, and exerted my- 
self to strike out pretty speeches for her. She 
cast down modestly her eyes, and returned 
gently the pressure of my hand, when suddenly 
the moon broke through the clouds behind me, 
and — she saw only her own shadow thrown 
forward before her ! She started and glanced 
wildly at me, then again on the earth, seeking 
my shadow with her eyes, and what passed 
within her, painted itself so singularly on her 
countenance, that I should have burst into a 
loud laugh if it had not itself ran ice-cold over 
my back. 

I let her fall from my arms in a swoon, shot 
like an arrow through the terrified guests, 
reached the door, flung myself into the first 
chaise which I saw on the stand, and drove 
back to the city, where this time, to my cost, I 
had left the circumspect Bendel. He was ter- 
rified as he saw me; — one word revealed to 
him all. Post horses were immediately fetched. 
I took only one of my people with me, an arrant 
knave, called Rascal, who had contrived to 
make himself necessary to me by his clever- 
ness; and who could suspect nothing of the 
present occurrence. That night I left upwarils 
of a hundred miles behind me. Bendel re- 



CHAMISSO. 



053 



mained behind me todischarge my establishment, 
to pay money, and to bring me what I most 
required. When he overtooli me next day, I 
tlirew myself into his arms, and swore to him, 
never again to run into the like folly, but in fu- 
ture to be more cautious. We continued our 
journey without pause, over the frontiers and 
the mountains, and it was not till we began to 
descend and had placed those lofty bulwarks 
between us and our former unlucky abode, that 
I allowed myself to be persuaded to rest from 
the fatigues I liad undergone, in a neighboring 
and little frequented Bathing-place. 

CHAPTER IV. 

I MUST pass in my relation hastily over a time 
in wliicli, how gladly would I linger, could I 
but conjure up the living spirit of it with the re- 
collection. But the color which vivified it, and 
can only vivify it again, is extinguished in me; 
and when I seek in my bosom what then so 
mightily animated it, the grief and the joy, the 
innocent illusion, — then do I vainly smite a rock 
in which no living spring now dwells, and the 
god is departed from me. How changed does 
this past time now appear to me. I would act 
in the wati-ring place an heroic character, ill 
studied, and myself a novice on the boards, and 
my gaze was lured from my part by a pair of 
blue eyes. The parents, deluded by the play, 
otl'er everything only to make the business 
quickly secure ; and the poor farce closes in 
mockery. And that is all, all ! That presents 
itself now to me so absurd and commonplace, 
and yet is it terrible, that that can thus appear 
to ine which then so richly, so luxuriantly, 
swelled my bosom. Mina! as I wept at losing 
thee, so weep I still to have lost thee also in 
myself. Am I then become so old? Oh, me- 
lancholy reason ! Oh, but for one pulsation of 
that time ! one moment of that illusion ! But no! 
alone on the high waste sea of thy bitter flood! 
and long out of the last cup of champagne the 
elfin has vanished ! 

I had sent forward Bendel with some purses 
of geld to procure for me a dwelling adapted to 
my needs. He had there scattered about much 
money, and expressed himself somewhat inde- 
finitely respecting the distinguished stranger 
whom he served, for I would not be named, and 
that filled the good people with extraordinary 
fancies. As soon as my house was ready Ben- 
del returned to conduct me thither. We set 
out. 

About three miles from the place, on a sunny 
jilain, our progress was obstructed by a gay fes- 
tal throng. The carriage stopped. Music, sound 
of bells, discharge of cannon, were heard; a 
loi'd vivat! rent the air; before the door of the 
cruiiage appeared, clad in white, a troop of 
Jarrisels of extraordinary beauty, but who were 
ccKp>crl ill' one in particular,as tlie stars of night 
b/ the SUM. She ste|)ped fortli from the midst 
o:" 1;bi sisters; the tall and delicate figure 
kneeled blusliing before me, and presented to 
3 IJ 



me on a siiken cushion a garland woven oi 
laurel, olive branches, and roses, while she ut- 
tered some words about majesty, veneration and 
love, which I did not understand, but whose 
bewitching silver tone intoxicated my ear and 
heart. It seemed as if the heavenly apparition 
had sometime already passed before me. The 
chorus struck in, and sung the praises of a good 
king and the happiness of his people. 

And this scene, my dear friend, in the face 
of the sun I She kneeled still only two paces 
from me, and I without a shadow, could not 
spring over the gulph, could not also fall on the 
knee before the angel ! Oh ! what would I then 
have given for a shadow! I was compelled to 
hide my shame, my anguish, my despair, deep 
in the bottom of my carriage. At length Bendel 
recollected himself on my behalf He leaped 
out of the carriage on the other side. I called 
him back, and gave him out of my jewel-case, 
which lay at hand, a splendid diamond crown, 
which had been made to adorn the brows of 
the lovely Fanny! He stepped forward, and 
spoke in the name of his master, who could not 
and would not receive such tokens of homage; 
there must be some mistake; and the good 
people of tlie city were thanked for their good 
will. As he said this, he took up the proffered 
wreath, and laid the brilliant coronet in its 
place. He then extended respectfully his hand 
to the lovely maiden, that she might arise, and 
dismissed, with a sign, clergy, magistrates, and 
all the deputations. No one else was allowed 
to approach. He ordered the throng to divide, 
and make way for the horses ; sjirang again 
into the carriage, and on wc went at full gallop, 
through a festive archway of foliage and flowers 
towards the city. The discharges of cannon 
continued. The carriage stopped before my 
house. I sprang hastily in at the door, dividing 
the crowd which the desire to see me had col- 
lected. The mob hurrahed under my window, 
and I let double ducats rain out of it. In the 
evening the city was voluntarily illuminated. 

And yet I did not at all know what all this 
could mean, and who I was supposed to be. I 
sent out Rascal to make enquiry. He brought 
word to this effect: — that the people had re- 
ceived certain intelligence that the good king 
of Prussia travelled through the country umler 
the name of a Graf; that my adjutant had been 
recognised; and, finally, how great the jrjy was 
as they became certain that they really hud me 
in the place. They now saw clearly that I evi- 
dently desired to maintain the strictest incognito, 
and liow very wrong it had been to attempt so 
importunately to lift the veil. But I bad resented 
it so graciously, so kindly, — I should certainly 
pardon their good heartedness. 

The thing appeared so amusing to the rogue, 
that he did his best, by reproving worils, the 
more to strengthen the good folk in their belief. 
He made a very comical recital of all this: and 
as he found that it diverted me, he made a joke 
to me of his own additional wickedness. Shall 
47 



554 



CHAMISSO. 



I confess it? It flattered me, even by such 
means, to be taken for that honored head. 

I commanded a feast to be prepared for the 
evening of the next day, beneath the trees which 
over-shadowed theopen space before my house; 
and tlie wliole city to be invited to it. The 
mysterious power of my purse ; the exertions 
of Bendel and the active invention of Rascal, 
succeeded in triumphing over time itself It is 
really astonishing how richly and beautifully 
everything was arranged in those few hours. 
The splendor and abundance which exhibited 
themselves, and the ingenious lighting up, so 
admirably contrived that I felt myself quite se- 
cure, left me nothing to desire. I could not but 
praise my servants. 

The evening grew dark ; the guests appeared, 
and were presented to me. Nothing more was 
said about Majesty; I was styled with deep 
reverence and obeisance, Herr Graf What 
was to be done'? I allowed the Herr Graf to 
please, and remained from that hour the Graf 
Peter. In the midst of festive multitudes my 
soul yearned alone after one. She entered late, 
— she was and wore the crown. She followed 
modestly her parents, and seemed not to know 
that she was the loveliest of all. They were 
presented to me as Mr. Forest-master, his lady 
and their daughter. I found many agreeable 
and obliging things to say to the old people; 
before the daughter I stood like a rebuked boy, 
and could not bring out one word. I begged 
her, at length, with a faltering tone, to honor 
this feast by assuming the office wliose insignia 
she graced. She entreated with blushes and a 
moving look to be excused; but blushing still 
more than herself in her presence, I paid her as 
her first subject my homage, with a most pro- 
found respect, and the hint of the Graf became 
to all the guests a command which every one 
with emulous joy liastened to obey. Majesty, 
innocence and grace, presided in alliance with 
beauty over a rapturous feast. Mina's happy 
parents believed their child only thus exalted 
in honor of them. I myself was in an indescri- 
bable intoxication. I caused all the jewels 
which yet remained of those which I had for- 
merly purchased, in order to get rid of burthen- 
some gold, all the pearls, all the precious stones, 
to be laid in two covered dishes, and at the 
table, in the name of the queen, to be distributed 
round to her companions and to all the ladies. 
Gold, in the mean time, was incessantly strewed 
over the inclosing lists among the exulting people. 

Bendel, the next morning, revealed to me in 
confidence that the suspicion which he had long 
entertained of Rascal's honesty, was now be- 
come certainty. That he had yesterday em- 
bezzled whole purses of gold. " Let us permit," 
replied I, "the poor scoundrel to enjoy the petty 
plunder. I spend willingly on everybody, why 
not on him ? Yesterday he and all the fresh 
people you have brought me, served me hon- 
estly; they helped me joyfully to celebrate a 
joyful feast." 



There was no farther mention of it. Rascal 
remained the first of my servants, but Bendel 
was my friend and my ponfidant. The latter 
was accustomed to regard my wealth as inex- 
haustible, and he pried not after its sources 
entering into my humor, he assisted me rathei 
to discover opportu nines to exercise it, and to 
spend my gold. Of that unknown one, that 
pale sneak, he knew only this, that I could alone 
through him be absolved from the curse which 
weighed on me; and that I feared him, on 
whom my sole hope reposed. That, for the 
rest, I was convinced that he could discover me 
anywhere ; I him nowhere ; and that therefore 
awaiting the promised day, I abandoned every 
vain enquiry. 

The magnificence of my feast, and my belia- 
vior at it, held at first the credulous inhabitants 
of the city firmly to their preconceived opinion. 
True, it was soon stated in the newspapers tliat 
the whole story of the journey of the king of 
Prussia had been a mere groundless rumor: hut 
a king I now was, and must spite of everything 
a king remain, and truly one of the mo^t rich 
and royal who had ever existed ; only people 
did not rightly know what king. 'I'iie world 
has never had reason to complain of the scarcity 
of monarchs, at least in our time. The good 
people who had never seen any of them, pitched 
with equal correctness first on one and then on 
another; Graf Peter still reinained who he \i'as. 

At one time appeared amongst the guests at 
the Bath, a tradesman, who had made himself 
bankrupt in order to enrich himself; and who 
enjoyed universal esteem, and had a broad 
though somewhat pale shadow. The property 
which he had scraped together, he resolved to 
lay out in ostentation, and it even occurred to 
him to enter into rivalry with me. I had re- 
course to my purse, and soon brought the poor 
devil to such a pass, that in order to save his 
credit he was obliged to become bankrupt a 
second time, and hasten over the frontier. Thus 
I got rid of him. In this neighborhood I made 
many idlers and good-for-nothing fellows. 

With all the royal splendor and exiienditnre 
by which I made all succumb to me, I still in 
my own house lived very simply and retired. 
I had established the strictest circumspection as 
a rule. No one except Bendel, under any i)re- 
tence whatever, was allowed to enter the rooms 
which I inhabited. So long as the sun shone, I 
kept myself shut up there, and it was said the 
Graf is employed in his cabinet. With this 
employment numerous couriers stood in con- 
nexion, whom I, for every trifle, sent out and 
received. I received company alone under my 
trees, or in my hall arranged and lighted accord- 
ing to Bendel's plan. When I went out, on 
which occasions it was necessary that I should 
be constantly watched by the Argus eyes of 
Bendel, it was only to the Forester's Garden, 
for the sake of one alone; for my love was the 
innermost heart of my life. 

Oh, my good Chamisso! I will hcpe tliat thou 



CHAMISSO. 



555 



bast not yet foro;otten what love is ! I leave much 
nninentioned here to thee. Mina was really an 
amiable, kinil, good child. I had taken her 
whole imagination captive. She could not, in 
her humility, conceive how she could be worthy 
that I should alone have fixed my regard on 
her; and she returned love for love with all the 
youthful power of an innocent heart. She loved 
like a woman, otfering herself wholly up; self- 
forgetting; living wholly and solely for him 
who was her life; regardless if she herself 
perished ; — that is to say — she really loved. 

But I — oh what terrible hours — terrible and 
yet worthy that 1 should wish them back again, 
— have I often wept on Bendel's bosom, when, 
after the first unconscious intoxication, I recol- 
lected myself; looked sharply into myself; — I, 
without a shadow, with knavish selfishness de- 
stroying this angel, this pure soul which I had 
deceived and stolen. Then did I resolve to 
reveal myself to her; then did I swear with a 
most passionate oath to tear myself from her, 
and to fly ; then did I burst out into tears, and 
concert with Bendel how in the evening 1 should 
visit her in the Forester's garden. 

At other times I flattered myself with great 
expectations from the rapidly approaching visit 
from the grey man, and wept again when I had 
in vain tried to believe in it. I had calculated 
the day on which I expected again to see the 
fearful one; for he had said in a year and a 
day; and I believed his word. 

The parents, good honorable old people, who 
loved their only child extremely, were amazed 
at the connexion, as it already stood, and they 
knew not what to do in it. Earlier they could 
not have believed that the Graf Peter could 
think only of their child; but now he really 
loved her and was beloved again. The mother 
was probably vain enough to believe in the 
probability of an union, anil to seek for it; the 
sound masculine understanding of the father did 
not give way to such overstretched iiv.»'ginations. 
Both were persuaded of the purity of my love! 
they could do nothing more than pray for their 
child. 

1 have laid my hand on a letter from Mina 
of this date, which I still retain. Yes, this is 
her own writing. I transcribe it for thee. 

" I am a weak silly maiden, and cannot be- 
lieve that my beloved, because I love him 
dearly, dearly, will make the poor girl unhappy. 
Ah ! thou art so kind, so inexpressibly kind, but 
do not misunderstand me. Thou ^halt sacrifice 
nothing for me, desire to sacrifice nothing for 
me. Oh God ! I should hate myself if thou 

didst! No thou hast made me immeasurably 

happy; liast taught me to love thee. Away! 1 
know my own fate. Graf Peter belongs not to 
me, he belongs to the world. I will be proud 
when I hear — 'that was he, and that was he 
again, — and that has he accoinplisheil ; there 
they have worshipped him, and there they have 
deihed liijn !' See, when I think of this, then 
am I angrj M-ith thee, that with a simple child 



thou canst forget thy high destiny. Away! nr 
the thought will make me miserable! I — oh! 
who through thee am so happy, so blessed. 
Have I not woven, too, an olive branch and a 
rosebud into thy life, as into the wreath which 
I was allowed to present to thee? I have thee 
in my heart, my beloved, fear not. to leave me. 
I will die oh! so happy, so inetfably happy 
through thee !" 

Thou canst imagine how the words must cut 
through my heart. I explained to her that I 
was not what people believed me, that I was 
only a rich but infinitely miserable man. That 
a curse rested on nie, which must be the only 
secret between us, since I was not yet without 
hope that it should be loosed. That this was 
the poison of my days; that I might drag her 
down with me into the gulph, — she who was 
the sole light, the sole happiness, the sole heart 
of my life. Then wept she again, because I 
was unhappy. Ah, she was so loving, so kind ! 
To spare me but one tear, she, and with what 
transport, would have sacrificed herself without 
reserve. 

In the mean time she was far from rightly 
comprehending my words; she conceived in 
me some prince on whom had fallen a heavy 
bann, some high and honored head, and her 
imagination amidst lieroic pictures liinned forth 
her lover gloriously. 

Once I said to her — "Mina, the last day in 
the next month may change my fate and deciiie 
it, — if not I must die, for I will not make thee 
unhappy." Weeping she hid her head in my 
bosom. "If thy fortune changes, let me know 
that thou art happy. I have no claim on thee. 
Art thou wretched, bind me to thy wretched- 
ness, that I may help thee to bear it." 

"Maiden! maiden! take it back, that word, 
that foolish word which escaped thy lips. And 
knowest thou this wretchedness? Knowest thou 
this curse? Knowest who thy love, — what he? 
Seest thou not that I convulsively shrink together, 
and have a secret from thee?" She fell sobbini; 
to my feet, and repeated with oaths her intreaty, 

I announced to the Forest-master, who enter- 
ed, that it was my intention on the first ap- 
proaching of the month to solicit the hand of his 
daughter. I fixed precisely this time, because 
in the interim many things might occur which 
might influence my fortunes. That I was ur» 
changeable in my love to his daughter. 

The good man was quite startled as he heard 
such words out of the mouth of Graf Peter, lie 
fell on iny neck, and again became quite ashamed 
to have thus forgotten himself. Then he began 
to doubt, to weigh, and to enquire. He spoke 
of dowry, security, and the fortune for his be- 
loved child. I thanked him for reminding me 
of these things. I told him that I desired tc 
settle myself in this country where I seemed to 
be beloved, and to lead a care-free life. I begged 
him to purchase the finest estate that the coun- 
try had to orter, in the name of his daughter, 
and to charge the cost to me. A father could, 



556 



CHAMISSO. 



in such matter, best serve a lover. It gave him 
enough to do, for everywhere a stranger was 
before him, and he could only purchase for 
about a million. 

My thus employing him was, at the bottom, 
an innocent scheme to remove him to a distance, 
and I had employed him similarly before. For 
I must confess that he was rather wearisome. 
The good mother was, on the contrary, some- 
what deaf, and not like him jealous of the honor 
of entertaining the Graf 

The mother joined us. The happy people 
pressed me to stay longer with them that even- 
ing, — I dared not remain another minute. I 
saw already the rising moon glimmer on the 
horizon, — my time was up. 

The next evening I went again to the For- 
ester's garden. I had thrown my cloak over 
my shoulders and pulled my hat over my eyes. 
I advanced to Mina. As she looked up and 
beheld me, she gave an involuntary start, and 
there stood again clear before my soul the ap- 
parition of that terrible night when I showed 
myself in the moonlight without a shadow. It 
was actually she! But had she also recognised 
me again? She was silent and thoughtful; on 
my bosom lay a hundred-weight pressure. I 
arose from my seat. She threw herself silently 
weeping on my bosom. I went. 

I now found her often in tears. It grew 
darker and darker in my soul ; the parents 
meanwhile swam in supreme felicity; the 
eventful day passed on sad and sullen as a 
thunder cloud. The eve of the day was come. 
1 could scarcely breathe. I had in precaution 
filled several chests with gold. I watched the 
midniglit hour approach — It struck. 

I now sat, my eye fixed on the fingers of the 
clock, counting the minutes, the seconds, like 
dagger-strokes. At every noise which arose, I 
started up; — the day broke. The leaden hours 
crowded upon eacti other. It was noon — even- 
ing — night: as the clock fingers sped on, hope 
withered; it struck eleven and nothing aji- 
peared ; the last minutes of the last hour fell, 
and nothing appeared. It struck the first stroke, 
— tlie last stroke of the twelfth hour, and I sank 
hopeless and in boundless tears upon my bed. 
On the morrow I should — forever shadowless, 
solicit the hand of my beloved. Towards morn- 
ing an anxious sleep pressed down my eyelids. 

CHAPTEn y. 

It was still early morning when voices, which 
were raised in my ante-chamber in violent dis- 
pute, awoke me. I listened. Bendel forbade 
entrance; Rascal swore high and hotly that he 
would receive no commands from his fellow, 
and insisted in forcing his way into my room. 
The good Bendel warned him that such words, 
came they to my ear, would turn him out of his 
most advantageous service. Rascal threatened 
to lay hands on him if he any longer obstructed 
his entrance. 

I had Tialf dressed myself. 1 flung the door 



wrathfully open, and advanced to Rascal— 
" What wantest thou, villain ?" He stepped two 
strides backwards, and replied quite coolly: 
"To request you most humbly, Herr Graf, jnst 
to allow me to see your shadow ; — the sun 
shines at this moment so beautifully in the 
court." 

I was struck, as with thunder. It was some- 
time before I could recover my speech. " How 
can a servant towards his master" — He inter- 
rupted very calmly my speech — 

" A servant may be a very honorable man, 
and not be willing to serve a shadowless 
master — I demand my discliarge." It was ne- 
cessary to try other chords. "But honest, dear 
Rascal, who has put the unlucky idea into your 
head? How canst thou believe — ?" 

He proceeded in the same tone — "People 
will assert that you have no shadow — and, in 
short, you show me your shadow, or give me 
my discharge." 

Bendel, pale and trembling, but more discreet 
than I, gave me a sign. I sought refuge in the 
all-silencing gold ; and that had lost its power. 
He threw it at my feet. "From a shadowless 
man I accept nothing!" He turned his back 
upon me, and went most deliberately out of the 
room with his hat upon his head and whistling 
a tune. I stood there with Bendel as one turned 
to stone, thoughtless, motionless, gazing after him. 

Heavily sighing and with death in my heart, 
I prepared myself to redeem my promise, and 
like a criminal before his judge, to appear in the 
Forest-master's garden. I alighted in the dark 
arbor, which was named after me, and where 
they would be s\tre also at this time to await 
me. The mother met me, care-free and joyous. 
Mina sate there, pale and lovely as the first 
snow which often in the autumn kisses the last 
flowers, and then instantly dissolves into bitter 
water. The Forest-master went agitatedly to 
and fro, a written paper in his hand, and ap- 
peared to force down many things in himself 
which painted themselves with rapidly alter- 
nating flushes and paleness on his otherwise 
immovable countenance. He came up to me 
as I entered and with frequently choked words, 
begged to speak with me- alone. The path in 
which he invited me to follow him, conducted 
towards an open, sunny part of the garden. I 
sunk speechless on a seat, and then followed a 
long silence, which even the good mother dared 
not interrupt. 

Tlie Forest-master raged continually with 
unequal steps to and fro in the arbor, and sud- 
denly halting before me, glanced on the paper 
which he held, and demanded of me with a 
searching look — 

"May not, Herr Graf, a certain Peter Schle- 
mihl be not quite unknown to you ? ' I was 
silent. "A man of superior character and sin- 
gular attainments — " He paused for an answer. 

"And suppose I were the same man?" 

"Who," added he vehemently — " has by some 
means, lost his shadow !" 



CHAMISSO. 



557 



"Oh, my foreboding, my foreboding!" ex- 
claimed Mina, "Yes, I liave long known it, he 
bas no shadow,'' and she flung herself into the 
arms of her mother, who terrified, clasped her 
convulsively, and upbraided her that to her own 
liurt she had kept to herself such a secret. But 
she, like Arethusa, was changed into a fountain 
of tears, which at the sound of my voice flowed 
still more copiously, and at my approach burst 
forth in torrents. 

"And you," again grimly began the Forest- 
master, "and you, with vinparalleled impudence, 
have made no scruple to deceive these and my- 
self, and you give out that you love her whom 
you have so deeply humbled. See, there, how she 
weeps and writhes! Oh, horrible! horrible!" 

I had to such a degree lost all reflection, that 
talking like one crazed, I began — "And, after 
all, a shadow is nothing but a shadow ; one can 
do very well without that, and it is not worth 
while to make such a riot about it." But I felt 
so sharply the baselessness of what I was saying, 
that I stopped of myself, without his deigning 
me an answer, and I then added, — " What one 
has lost at one time, may be found again at 
another !" 

He rushed fiercely towards me — "Confess to 
me, sir ! confess to me, how became you deprived 
of your shadow !" 

I was compelled again to lie. "A rude fel- 
low one day trod so heavily on my shadow that 
he rent a great hole in it. I have only sent it 
to be mended, for money can do much, and I 
was to have received it back yesterday." 

"Good, sir, very good!' replied the Forest- 
master. "You solicit my daughter's hand; 
others do the same. I have, as her father, to 
care for her. I give you three days in which 
you may see after a shadow. If you appear 
before me within these three days with a good, 
well-fitting shadow, you shall be welcome to 
me ; but on the fourth day — I tell you plainly, — 
my daughter is the wife of another." 

I would yet attempt to speak a word to Mina, 
but she clung, sobbing violently, only closer to 
her njother's breast, who motioned me to be 
silent and to withdraw. I reeled away, and 
the world seemed to close itself behind me. 

Escaped from Bendels affectionate oversight, 
I traversed in erring course, woods and fields. 
The perspiration of my agony dropped from my 
brow, a hollow groaning convulsed my bosom, 
madness raged within me. 

I know not how long this had continued, 
when on a sunny heath, I felt myself plucked 
by the sleeve. I stood still and looked round — 
it was the man in the grey coat, who seemed to 
have run himself quite out of breath in pursuit 
jf me. He immediately began : 

"I had announced myself for to-day, but you 
could not wait the time. There is nothing amiss, 
however, yet. You consider the matter, receive 
your shadow again in exchange, which is at 
your service, and turn immediately back. You 
Ehall be welcome in the Forest-master's garden; 



the whole has been only a joke. Eascal, who 
has betrayed you, and who seeks the hand of 
your bride, I will take charge of; the fellow is 
ripe.'' 

I stood there as still asleep. "Announced for 
to-day 1" I counted over again the time, — he 
was right. I had constantly miscalculated a 
day. I sought with the right hand in my bosom 
for my purse : he guessed my meaning, and 
stepped two paces backwards. 

" No, Herr Graf, that is in too good hands, 
keep you that." I stared at bim with eyes of 
enquiring wonder, and he proceeded: "I re- 
quest only a trifle, as memento. You be so 
good as to set your name to this paper." On 
the parchment stood the words : 

" By virtue of this my signature, I make over 
my soul to the holder of this, after its natural 
separation from the body." 

I gazed with speechless amazement, alter- 
nately at the writing and the grey unknown. 
Meanwhile, with a new made pen he had taken 
up a drop of blood which flowed from a fresh 
thorn-scratch on my hand and presented it to me. 

"Who are you then?'' at length I asked him. 

"What signifies it?" he replied. "And is 
not that plain enough to be seen in me? A 
poor devil, a sort of learned man and doctor, 
who in return for precious arts, receives from 
his friends poor thanks, and for himself, has no 
other amusement on earth but to make his little 
experiments. — But, however, sign. To the right 
there — P etek Scblemihe." 

I shook my head, and said, "Pardon me, sir, 
I do not sign that." 

"Not?'' replied he, in amaze, "and why not?" 

"It seems to me to a certain degree serious to 
stake my soul on a shadow." 

"So, so," repeated he, "serious!" and he 
laughed almost in my face. "And if I might 
venture to ask, what sort of a thing is that soul 
of yours? Have you ever seen it? And what 
do you think of doing with it when you are 
dead ? Be glad that you have found an ama- 
teur who in your lifetime is willing to pay you 
for the bequest of this X, of this galvanic power, 
or polarised Activity, or whatever this silly thing 
may be, with something actual; that is to say, 
with your real shadow, through which you may 
arrive at the hand of your beloved, and at the 
accomplishment of all your desires. Will you 
rather push forth, and deliver up that poor 
young creature to that low bred scoundrel Ras- 
cal ? No, you must witness that with your own 
eyes. Here, I lend you the Tarn-cap," (the cap 
of invisibility) — he drew it from his pocket — 
"and we will proceed unseen to the Forester's 
garden." 

I must confess that I was excessively ashamed 
of being ridiculed by this man. I detested hiin 
from the bottom of my heart; and I believe that 
this personal antipathy withheld me, more than 
principle, or prejudice, from purchasing my 
shadow, essential as it was, by the required 
signature. The thought also was injolerahle to 
47* 



me of making the excursion which he proposed, 
in his company. To see this abhorred snealt, 
this moclfiiig cobold, step between me and my 
beloved, two torn and bleeding hearts, revolted 
my innermost feeling. I regarded what was 
past as predestined, and my wretchedness as 
unchangeable, and turning to the man, I said to 
him, 

"Sir, I have sold you my shadow for this in 
itself most excellent purse, and I have suffi- 
ciently repented of it. Let the bargain be at an 
end, in God's name!" He shook his head, and 
made a very gloomy face. I continued, "I will 
then sell you nothing further of mine, even for 
this offered price of my shadow ; and, therefore, 
I shall sign nothing. From this you may un- 
derstand, that the cap- wearing to which you 
invite me, must be much more amusing for you 
than for me. Excuse me, therefore ; and as it 
cannot now be otherwise, let us part." 

"It grieves me, Monsieur Schlemihl, that you 
obstinately decline the business which I propose 
to you. Perhaps another time I may be more 
fortunate. Till our speedy meeting again! — 
Apropos: Permit me yet to show you, that the 
things which I purchase I by no means suffer 
to grow mouldy, but honorably preserve, and 
that they are well used by me." 

With that he drew my shadow out of his 
pocket and with a dexterous throw unfolding it 
on the heatl), spread it out on the sunny side of 
his feet, so that he walked between two attend- 
ant shadows, his own and mine, for mine must 
equally obey him, and accommodate itself to 
and follow all his movements. 

When I once saw my poor shadow again, 
after so long an absence, and beheld it degraded 
to so vile a service, whilst I, on its account, was 
in such unspeakable trouble, my heart broke, 
and I began bitterly to weep. The detested 
wretch swaggered with the plunder snatched 
from me, and impudently renewed his proposal. 

" You can yet have it. A stroke of the pen, 
and you snatch therewith the poor unhappy 
Mina from the claws of the villain into the arms 
of the most honored Herr Graf; — as observed, 
only a stroke of the pen." 

My tears burst forth with fresh impetuosity, 
but I turned away and motioned to him to 
withdraw himself. Bendel, who filled with 
anxiety, had traced me to this spot, at this mo- 
ment arrived. When the kind, good soul, found 
me weeping, and saw my shadow, which could 
not be mistaken, in the power of the mysterious 
grey man, he immediately resolved, was it even 
by Ibrce, to restore to me the possession of my 
property; and as he did not understand going 
much about with tender phrases, he immediately 
assaulted the man with words, and without 
n.uch asking, ordered him bluntly to allow that 
which was my own, instantly to follow me. 
Instead of answer, he turned his back, and 
went. But Bendel up with his buckthorn cud- 
gel which he carried, and following on his 
heels, without mercy, and with reiterated com- 



mands to give up the shadow, made him feel 
the full force of his vigorous arm. He, as ac- 
customed to such handling, ducked his head, set 
up his shoulders, and with silent and deliberate 
steps pursued his way over the heath, at once 
going off with my shadow and my faithful ser- 
vant. I long heard the heavy sounds roll over 
the waste, till they were finally lost in the dis- 
tance. I was alone, as before, with my misery. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Left alone on the wild heath, I gave free 
current to tny countless tears, relieving my heart 
from an ineffably weary weight. But I saw no 
bound, no outlet, no end to my intolerable mi- 
sery, and I drank besides with savage thirst of 
the fresh poison which the unknown had poured 
into my wounds. When I called the image of 
Mina before my soul, and the dear, sweet form 
appeared pale and in tears, as I saw her last in 
my shame, then stepped the shadow of the im- 
pudent and mocking Rascal between her and 
me; I covered my face and fled through the 
wild. But the hideous apparition left me not, 
but pursued me in my flight, till I sank breath- 
less on the ground, and moistened it with a 
fresh torrent of tears. 

And all for a shadow. And this shadow a 
pen-stroke had obtained for me. I thought on 
the strange proposition and my refusal. All was 
chaos in me. I had no longer either judgment 
or mastership of thought. 

The day went over. I stilled my hunger 
with wild fruits; my thirst in the nearest moun- 
tain stream. The night fell ; I lay down beneath 
a tree. The damp morning awoke me out of a 
heavy sleep in which I heard myself rattle in 
the throat as in deatli. Bendel must have lost 
all trace of me, and it rejoiced me to think so. 
I would not return again amongst men before 
whom I fled in terror, like the timid game of 
the mountains. Thus I lived through three 
weary days. 

On the fourth morning I found myself on a 
sandy plain bright with the sun, and sate on the 
fragment of a rock in its beams, for I loved now 
to enjoy its long-withheld countenance. I still 
fed my heart with its despair. A light rustle 
startled me. Ready for flight I threw round 
me a hurried glance; I saw no one, but in the 
sunny sand there glided past me a human sha- 
dow, not unlike my own, which wandering 
there alone, seemed to have got away from its 
possessor. There awoke in me a miglity yearn- 
ing. "Shadow," said I, "dost thou seek thy 
master? I will be he," and I sprang forward to 
seize it. I thought that if I succeeded in tread- 
ing on it so that its feet touched mine, it probably 
would remain hanging there, and in time ac- 
commodate itself to me. 

The shadow, on my moving, fled before me, 
and 1 was compelled to begin a strenuous chase 
of the light fugitive, for which the thought of 
rescuing myself from my fearful condition could 
alone have endowed me with the requisite 



CHAMISSO. 



559 



vigor. It flew towards a wood, at a great dis- 
tance, ill which I must of necessity, have lost it. 
I perceived this, — a horror convulsed my heart, 
inflamed my desire, added wings to my speed; 
I gained evidently on the shadow, I came con- 
tinually nearer, I must certainly reach it. Sud- 
denly it stopped, and turned towards me. Like 
a lion on its prey, I shot with a mighty spring 
• forwards to make seizure of it, — and dashed 
unexpectedly against a hard and bodily object. 
Invisibly I received the most unprecedented 
blows on the ribs that mortal man probably 
ever received. 

The effect of the terror in me was convul- 
sively to close my arms, and firmly to enclose 
that which stood unseen before me. In the 
rapid transaction, I plunged forward to the 
ground, but backwards and under me was a 
man whom 1 had embraced and who now first 
became visible. 

The whole occurrence became now very 
naturally explicable to me. The man must 
have carried the invisible bird's nest which ren- 
ders him who holds it, but not his shadow, im- 
perceptible, and had now cast it away. I 
glanced round, soon discovered the shadow of 
the invisible nest itself, leaped up and towards 
it, and did not miss the precious prize. Invisi- 
ble and shadowless, I held the nest in my hand. 

The man swiftly springing up, gazing round 
instantly after his fortunate conqueror, descried 
on the wide sunny plain neither him nor his 
shadow, for which he sought with especial 
avidity. For that I was myself entirely sha- 
dowless he had no leisure to remark, nor could 
he imagine such a thing. Having convinced 
himself that every trace had vanished, he turned 
his hand against himself, and tore his hair. To 
me, however, the acquired treasure had given 
the power and desire to mix again amongst 
men. I did not want for self-satisfying pallia- 
tives for my base robbery, or rather I had no 
need of them ; and to escape from every thought 
of die kind, I hastened away, not even looking 
round at the unhappy one, whose deploring 
voice I long heard resounding behind me. — 
Thus, at least, appeared tome the circumstances 
at the time. 

I was on fire to proceed to the Forester's 
garden, and there myself to discern the truth of 
what the Detested One had told me. I knew 
not, however, where I was. I climbed the next 
hill, in order to look round over the country, and 
perceived from its summit the near city, and the 
Forester's garden lying at my feet. My heart 
beat violently, and tears of another kind than 
what I had till now shed, rushed into my eyes. 
I should see her again ! Anxious desire hastened 
my steps down the most direct path. I passed 
unseen some peasants who came out of the city. 
They were talking of me, of Rascal and the 
Forest-master; I would hear nothing, — 1 hurried 
past. 

I entered the garden, all the tremor of expec- 
tation in iiiy bosom. I seemed to hear laughter 



near me. I shuddered, threw a rapid glance 
round me, but could discover nobody. I ad- 
vanced farther. I seemed to perceive a sound 
as of man's steps at hand, but there was nothing 
to be seen. I believed myself deceived by my 
ear. It was yet early, no one in Graf Peter's 
arbor, the garden still empty. I traversed the 
well-known paths. I penetrated to the very 
front of the dwelling. The same noise more 
distinctly followed me. I seated myself with 
an agonised heart on a bench which stood in 
the sunny space before the house-door. It 
seemed as if I had heard the unseen cobold, 
laughing in mockery, seat himself near me. 
The key turned in the door, it opened, and the 
Forest-master issued forth with papers in his 
hand. A mist seemed to envelope my head. I 
looked up, and — horror! the man in the grey 
coat sate by nie, gazing on me with a satanic 
leer. He had drawn his Tarncap at once over 
his head and mine; at his feet lay his and my 
shadow peaceably by each other. He played 
negligently with the well-known paper which 
he held in his hand, and as the Forest-master, 
busied with his documents, went to and fro in 
the shadow of the arbor, he stooped familiarly 
to my ear, and whispered in it these words, 
"So then you have notwithstanding accepted 
my invitation, and here sit we for once two 
heads under one cap. All right! all right! 
But now give me my bird's nest again; you 
have no further occasion for it, and are too 
honorable a man to wish to withhold it from 
me ; but there needs no thanks : I assure you 
that I have lent it you with the most hearty 
good will." He took it unceremoniously out of 
my hand, put it in his pocket, and laughed at 
me, and that so loud that the Forest-master 
himself looked round at the noise. 1 sate there 
as if changed to stone. 

"But you must allow,'' continued he, " that 
such a cap is much more convenient. It covers 
not only your person but your shadow at the 
same time, and as many others as you have a 
mind to take with you. See you, to-day again, 
I conduct two of them" — he laughed again. 
"Mark this, Schlemihl, what we at first won't 
do with a good will, that will we in the end be 
compelled to. I still fancy you will buy that 
thing from me, take back tlie bride (for it is yet 
time), and we leave Rascal dangling on the gal- 
lows, an easy thing for us so long as rope is to 
be had. Hear yoii — I will give you also my 
cap into the bargain." 

The mother came fortji, and the conversation 
began. "How goes it with Mina?" 

"She weeps." 

" Silly child ! it cannot be altered !'' 

"Certainly not; but to give her to another so 
soon. Oh, man ! thou art cruel to thy own 
child." 

" No, mother, that thou quite mistakest. When 
she, even before she has wept out her childish 
tears, finds herself the wife of a very rich and 
honorable man, she will awake comlbrtcd oul 



560 



CHAMISSO. 



of her trouble as out of a dream, and thank God 

and us, that wilt thou see!" 

" God grant it!" 

" She possesses now, indeed a very respectable 
property; but after the stir that this unlucky 
affair with the adventurer has made, canst thou 
believe that a partner so suitable as Mr. Rascal 
could be readily found for her? Dost thou know 
what a fortune Mr. Rascal possesses?" He has 
paid six millions for estates here in the country 
free from all dcbets. I have had the title deeds 
in my own hands! He it was who everywhere 
Lad the start of me ; and besides this, has in his 
possession bills on Thomas John for about five 
and a half millions." 

"He must have stolen enormously." 

" What talk is that again ! He has wisely 
saved what would otherwise have been lavished 
away." 

"A man that ?ias worn livery — " 

"Stupid stuff! he has, however, an unblem- 
ished shadow." 

"Thou art right, but — " 

The man in the greycoat laughed and looked 
at me. The door opened and Mina came forth. 
She supported herself on the arm of a chamber- 
maid, silent tears rolled down her lovely pale 
cheeks. She seated herself on a stool which 
was placed for her under the lime trees, and 
her father took a chair by her. He tenderly 
took her hand, and addressed her with tender 
words, while she began violently to weep. 

"Thou art my good, dear child, and thou wilt 
be reasonable, wilt not wish to distress thy old 
father, who seeks only thy happiness. I can 
well conceive it, dear heart, that it has sadly 
shaken thee. Thou art wonderfully escaped 
from thy misfortunes! Before we discovered 
the scandalous imposition, thou hadst loved this 
unworthy one greatly; see, Mina, I know it, 
and upbraid thee not for it. I myself, dear 
child, also loved him so long as I looked upon 
him as a great gentleman. But now tliou seest 
how different all has turned out. What! every 
poodle has his own shadow, and should my 
dear child have a husband — no! thou thinkst, 
indeed, no more about him. Listen, Mina. Now 
a man solicits thy hand, who does not shun the 
sunshine, an honorable man, who truly is no 
prince, but who possesses ten millions; ten 
times more than thou; a man who will make 
my dear child happy. Answer me not, make 
no opposition, be my good, dutiful daughter, let 
thy loving father care for thee, and dry thy 
tears. Promise me to give thy hand to Mr. 
Rascal. Say, wilt thou promise me tliis?" 

She answered with a faint voice, — "I have 
no will, no wish further upon earth. Happen 
with me what my father will." 

At this moment Mr. Rascal was announced, 
and stepped impudently into the circle. Mina 
lay in a swoon. My detested companion glanced 

archly at me, and whispered in hurried words 

'And that can you endure? What then flows 
instead of blood in your veins ?" He scratched 



with a hasty moyement a slight wound in my 
hand, blood flowed, and he continued — "Ac- 
tually red blood ! — So sign then !" I had the 
parchment and the pen in my hand. 

CHAPTER Til. 

Mt wish, dear Chamisso, is merely to submit 
myself to thy judgment, not to endeavor to bias 
it. I have long passed the severest sentence on 
myself, for I have nourished the tormenting 
worm in my heart. It hovered during this 
solemn moment of ray life, incessantly before 
my soul, and I could only lift my eyes to it with 
a despairing glance, with humility and contri- 
tion. Dear friend, he who in levity only sets 
his foot out of the right road, is unawares con- 
ducted into other paths, which draw him down- 
wards, and ever downwards; he, then sees in 
vain the guiding stars glitter in heaven ; there 
remains to him no choice; he must descend un- 
pausingly the declivity, and become a voluntary 
sacrifice to Nemesis. After the false step which 
had laid the curse upon me, I had, sinning 
through love, forced myself into the fortunes of 
another being, and what remained for me but 
that where I had sowed destruction, where 
speedy salvation was demanded of me, I should 
blindly rush forward to the rescue? — for the 
last hour struck! Think not so meanly of me, 
my Adelbert, as to imagine that I should have 
regarded any price that was demanded as too 
high, that I should have begrudged anything 
that was mine even more than my gold. No, 
Adelbert! but my soul was possessed with the 
most unconquerable hatred of this mysterious 
sneaker along crooked paths. I might do him 
injustice, but every degree of association with 
him maddened me. And here stepped forth, 
as so frequently in my life, and as especially 
often in the history of the world, an event in- 
stead of an action. Since then I have achieved 
reconciliation with myself. I have learned, in 
the first place, to reverence Necessity; and 
what is more than the action performed, the 
event accomplished — her property. Then I have 
learned to venerate this Necessity as a wise 
Providence, which lives through that great col- 
lective Machine in which we officiate simply as 
co-operating, impelling and impelled wheels. 
What shall he, must be; what should be, hap- 
pened, and not without that Providence, which 
I ultimately learned to reverence in my own 
fate, and in the fate of her on whom mine thus 
impinged. 

I know not whether I shall ascribe it to die 
excitement of ray soul under the impulse of such 
mig'ity sensations; or to the exhaustion of my 
physical strength, which during the last days 
such unwonted privations had enfeebled; or 
whether, finally, to the desolating commotion 
which the presence of this grey fiend excited in 
my whole nature; be that as it may, as I was 
on the point of signing, I fell into a deep swoon, 
and lay a long time as in the arms of death. 

Stamping of feet and curses were the first 



CHAMISSO. 



561 



sounds which struck my ear, as I returned to 
consciousness. I opened my eyes; it was dark; 
my detested attendant was busied scolding about 
me. "Is not that to beliave like an old woman? 
Up with yon, man ! and complete off-liand what 
you liave resolved on, if you have not taken 
another thought and had rather blubber." I 
raised myself with difficulty from the ground 
and gazed in silence around. It was late in 
the evening; festive music resounded from the 
brightly illuminated Forester's house, various 
groups of people wandered through the garden 
walks. One couple came near in conversation, 
and seated themselves on the bench which I 
liad just quilted. They talked of the union this 
morning solemnized between Mr. Rascal and 
the daughter of the house. So, then, it had 
taken place! 

I tore the Tarncap of the already vanished 
Unknown from my head, and hastened in 
brooding silence towards the garden gate, 
plunging myself into the deepest night of the 
thicket, and striking along the path past Graf 
Peter's arbor. But invisibly my tormenting 
spirit accompanied me, pursuing ine with keen- 
est reproaches. "These then are one's thanks 
for the pains which one has taken to support 
Monsieur, who has weak nerves, through the 
long precious day. And one shall act the fool 
in the play. Good, Mr. Wronghead, fly you 
from me if you please, but we are, nevertheless, 
inseparable. You have my gold and I your 
shadow, and this will allow us no repose. Did 
anybody ever hear of a shadow forsaking its 
master? Your's draws me after you till you 
take it again into favor, and I get rid of it. 
What you have hesitated to do out of fresh 
pleasure, will you, only too late, be compelled 
to seek through new weariness and disgust. 
One cannot escape one's fate.'' He continued 
speaking in the same tone. I fled in vain; he 
relaxed not, but ever present insultingly talked 
of gold and shadow. I could come to no single 
thought of rny own. 

I struck through unfrequented ways towards 
my house. When I stood before it, and gazed 
at it, I could scarcely recognise it. No light 
shone through the dashed-in windows. The 
doors were closed : no throng of servants was 
moving therein. There was a laugh near me. 
"Ha! ha! so goes it! But you'll probably find 
your Bendel at home, for he was the other day 
purposely sent back so weary, that he has most 
likely kept his bed since." He laughed again. 
'•He will have a story to tell! Well then, for 
the present, good night! We meet speedily 
again!'' 

I had rung repeatedly ; light appeared; Ben- 
del demanded from within who rung. When 
the good man recognised my voice, he could 
scarcely restrain his joy. The door flew open, 
and we stood weeping in each other's arms. I 
found him greatly changed, weak and ill; but 
for me, — my hair was become quite grey' 

He coiulucted me llirougli the dekolated rooms 
3 v 



to an inner apartment which had been sparct. 
He brought food and wine, and we seated our- 
selves, and he again began to weep. He related 
to me that he the other day had cudgelled the 
grey-clad man whom he had encountered with 
my shadow, so long and so far, that he had lost 
all trace of me, and had sunk to the earth in 
utter fatigue. That after this, as he could not 
find me, he returned home, whither presently 
the mob, at Rascal's instigation, came rushing 
in fury, dashed in the windows, and gave full 
play to their lust of demolition. Thus did they 
to their benefactor. The servants had fled va- 
rious ways. The police had ordered me, as a 
suspicious person to quit the city, and had al- 
lowed only four-and-twenty hours in which to 
evacuate their jurisdiction. To that which I 
already knew of Rascal's affluence and mar- 
riage, he had yet much to add. This scoundrel, 
from whom all had proceeded that had been 
done against me, must, from the beginning, have 
been in possession of my secret. It appeared 
that attracted by gold, he had c^ntrived to thrusi 
himself upon me, and at the very first had pro- 
cured a key to the gold cupboard, where he had 
laid the foundation of that fortune, whose aug- 
mentation he could now aflford to despise. 

All this Bendel narrated to me with abundant 
tears, and then wept for joy that he again beheld 
me, again had rne ; and that after he had long 
doubted whither this misfortune might have led 
me, he saw me bear it so calmly and collectedly; 
for such an aspect had despair now assumed in 
me. I beheld my misery unchangeably before 
me ; I had wept out to it my last tear ; not 
another cry could be extorted from my heart; I 
presented to it my bare head with chill indif- 
ference. 

" Bendel," I said, " thou knowest my lot. Not 
without earlier blame has my heavy punish- 
ment befallen me. Thou, innocent man, shall 
no longer bind thy destiny to mine. I do not 
desire it. I ride to-night still forward ; saddle 
me a horse; I ride alone; thou remainest: it is 
my will. Here still must remain some chests 
of gold ; that retain thou; but I will alone wan- 
der incessantly through the world : but if ever a 
happier hour should smile upon me, and fortune 
look on me with reconciled eyes, then will I 
remember thee, for I have wept upon thy firmly 
faithful bosom in heavy and agonising hours." 

With a broken heart was tliis honest man 
compelled to obey this last command of his 
master, at which his soul shrunk with terror. I 
was deaf to his prayers, to his representations, 
blind to his tears. He brought me out my steed. 
Once more I pressed the weeping man to my 
bosom, sprung into the saddle, and under the 
shroud of night hastened from the grave of iny 
existence, regardless which way my horse con 
ducted me, since I had longer on the earth, no 
aim, no wish, no hope. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

A PEDESxniAif soon joined me, who begged. 



X2 



CHAMISSO. 



fffVer he bad walked for some time by the side 
of my horse, that as we went the same way, he 
niiyht be allowed to lay a cloak which he car- 
rifu, on the steed behind me. I perinitted it in 
silence. He thanked me with easy politeness 
for the trifling service; praised my horse, and 
thence took occasion to extol the happiness and 
power of the rich, and let himself, I know not 
how, fall into a kind of monologue, in whifh he 
had me now merely for a listener. 

He unfolded his views of life and of the 
world, and came very soon npon metaphysics, 
in which the ultimate pretension extended to 
the discovery of the word that should solve all 
mysteries. He stated his premises with great 
clearness and proceeded to the proofs. 

Thou knowest, my friend, that I have clearly 
discovered, since I have nin through the schools 
of the philosophers, tliat I have by no means a 
turn for philosophical specidations, and that I 
have totally renounced for myself this field. 
Since then I have left many things to them- 
selves; abandoned the desire to know and to 
comprehend many things; and as thou thyself 
advised me, have, trusting to my common sense, 
followed as far as I was able the voice within 
me on the direct course. Now this rhetorician 
seemed to me to raise with great talent a firmly 
put-together fabric, which was at once self-based 
and self-supported, and stood as by an innate 
necessity. I missed, however, in it completely, 
what most of all I was desirous to find, and so 
it became for me merely a work of art, whose or- 
namental compactness and completeness served 
only to charm the eye; nevertheless I listened 
willingly to the eloquent man who drew my 
attention from my grief to him ; and I would 
have gladly yielded myself wholly up to him, 
had he captivated my heart as much as my un- 
derstanding. 

Meanwhile the time had passed, and unob- 
served the dawn had already enlightened the 
heaven. I was horrified as I looked suddenly 
up, and saw the pomp of colors unfold itself in 
the east, which announced the approach of the 
sun; while at this hour in which the sliadows 
ostentatiously display themselves in their great- 
est extent, there was no protection from it; no 
refuge in the open country to be descried. And 
I was not alone ! I cast a glance at my com- 
panion, and was again terror-struck. It was no 
other thau the man in the grey coat! 

He suiiled at my alarm, and went on without 
allowing me to get in a word. "Let, however, 
as is the way of the world, our mutual advan- 
tage for awhile unite us. It is all in good time 
for separating. The road here along the moun- 
tain-range, though you have not yet thought of 
it, is. nevertheless, the only one into which you 
could prudently have struck. Down into the 
valley you may not venture; and still less will 
you desire to return again over the heights, 
whence you are come; and this is also exactly 
niy way. I see that you already turn pale be- 
fcre the rising sun. I will, for the time we keep 



company, lend you your shadow, and yon, en 
that account, tolerate me in your society. You 
have no longer your Bendel with you, I will do 
you good service. You do not like me, and I 
am sorry for it; but, notwitlistanding, yr u can 
make use of me. The devil is not so black as 
he is painted. Yesterday you vexed me, it is 
true; I will not upbraid you with it to-day; and 
I have already shortened the way hither for 
you ; that you must allow. Only just take your 
shadow again awhile on trial." 

The sun had ascended ; people appeared on 
the road; I accepted, though with internal re- 
pugnance, the proposal. Smiling he let my 
shadow glide to the ground, which immediately 
took its place on that of the horse, and trotted 
gaily by my side. I was in the strangest state 
of mind. I rode pasta group of country -people, 
who made way for a man of consequence, re- 
verently, and with bared heads. I rode on, and 
gazed with greedy eyes and a palpitating heart 
on this my quondam shadow which I had now 
borrowed from a stranger, yes, from an enemy. 

The man went carelessly near me, and even 
whistled a tune. He on foot, I on horseback ; 
a dizziness seized me ; the temptation was too 
great; I suddenly turned the reins; clapped 
spurs to the horse, and struck at full speed into 
a side-path. But I carried not ofl' the shadow, 
which at the turning glided from the horse, and 
awaited its lawful possessor on the high road. 
I was compelled with shame to turn back. The 
man in the grey coat when he had calmly fin- 
ished his tune, laughed at me, set the shadow 
right again for me; and informed me, that it 
would then only hang fast and remain with me 
when I was disposed to become the rightful 
proprietor. " I hold you," continued he, " fast 
by the shadow, and you cannot escape me. A 
rich man, like you, needs shadow, it cannot be 
otherwise, and you only are to blame that you 
did not perceive that sooner." 

I continued my journey on .the same road; 
the comforts and the splendor of life again sur- 
rounded me; I could move about free and con- 
veniently, since I possessed a shadow, although 
only a borrowed one; and I everywhere inspired 
the respect which riches command. But I car- 
ried death in my heart. My strange companion, 
who gave himself out as the unworthy servant 
of the richest man in the world, possessed an 
extraordinary professional readiness, prompt 
and clever beyond comparison, the very model 
of a valet for a rich man, but he stirred not from 
my side, perpetually directing the conversation 
tovv-ards me, and continually blabbing out the 
most confidential matters; so that, at length, 
were it only to be rid of him, I resolved to set- 
tle the affair of the shadow. He was become 
as burthensome to me as he was hatel'ul. I was 
even in fear of him. He had made me de- 
pendent on him. He held me, after he had 
conducted me back into the glory of the world, 
which I had fled from. I was obliged to tole- 
rate hi3 eloquence upon myself, and felt, in fact. 



CHAMISSO. 



56? 



that he was in the right. A rich man in the 
worUl must have a shadow, anil so soon as I 
desired to command the rank which he had 
contrived again to make necessary to me, I saw 
but one issue. By tliis, however, I stood fast; — 
after having sacrificed my love, after my life 
had been blighted, I would never sign away 
my soul to this creature, for all the sliadows in 
the world. I knew not how it would end. 

We sate, one day, before a cave which the 
strangers who frequent these mountains, are 
accustomed to visit. We heard there the rush 
of subterranean streams roaring up from im- 
measurable depths, and the stone cast in seemed, 
in its resounding fail!, to find no bottom. He 
painted to me, as he often did, with a vivid 
power of imagination and in the lustrous charms 
of the most brilliant colors, the most carefully 
finished pictures of what I might achieve in the 
world by virtue of my purse, if I had but once 
my shadow in my possession. With my elbows 
rested on my knees, I kept my face concealed 
iu my hands, atid listened to the false one, my 
heart divided between the seduction and my 
own strong will. In such an inward conflict I 
could no longer contain myself, and the deciding 
strife began. 

" You appear, sir, to forget that I have indeed 
allowed you, upon certain conditions, to remain 
in my comimny, but that I have reserved my 
perfect freedom." 

"if you command it, I pack up." 

He was accustomed to menace. I was silent. 
He began immediately to roll up my shadow. 
I turned jiale, but I let it proceed. There fol- 
lowed a long pause ; he first broke it. 

"You cannot bear me, sir. You hate me; I 
know it; yet why do you hate me? Is it be- 
cause you attacked me on the highway, and 
sought to deprive me by violence of my bird's 
nest ? Or is it because you have endeavored in 
a thievish manner, to cheat me out of my pro- 
perty, the shadow, which was entrusted to you 
entirely on your honor? I, for my part, do not, 
therefore, hate you. I find it quite natural that you 
should seek to avail yourself of all your advan- 
tages, cunning, and power. For the rest, that 
you have the very strictest principles; and that 
you think like honor itself, is a taste that you 
have, against which I have nothing to say. In 
fact, I think not so strictly as you ; I merely act 
as you think. Or have I at any time pressed 
my linger on your throat in order to bring to me 
your most precious soul, for which I have a 
fancy? Have I, on account of my bartered 
purse, let a servant loose on you? Have I 
sought thus to swindle you out of it?'' I had 
notliing to oppose to this, and he proceeded. — 
" Very good, sir ! very good ! you cannot endure 
me: I know that very well, and am by no 
means angry with you for it. We must part, 
that is clear, and in fact, you begin to be very 
wearisome to me. In order, then, to rid you of 
my further, shame-inspiring presence, I counsel 
you once more purciiase this thing from me.'' I 



extended to him the purse : " At that price ?'' — 
" No !'' 

I sighed deeply, and added, "Be it so, then. 
I insist, sir, that vvu part, and tliat you, no longer, 
obstruct my path in a world whif-h it is to be 
hoped, has room enough in it for us both." He 
siniled, and replied, "I go, sir; but first let me 
instruct you how yon may ring for me when you 
desire to see again, your most devoted servant. 
Y'^ou have only to shake your purse, so that the 
eternal gold pieces therein jingle, and the sound 
will instantly attract me. Every one thinks of 
his own advantage in this world. Y'ou see that 
I at the same time am thoughtful of yours, since 
I reveal to you a new power. Oh ! this purse ! 
— had the moths already devoured your sha- 
dow, that would still constitute a strong bond be- 
tween us. Enough, you have me in my gold. 
Should you have any commands, even when 
far off, for your servant, you know that I can 
show myself very active in the service of my 
friends, and the rich stand particularly well 
with me. You have seen a yourself. Only 
your shadow, sir, — allow me to tell you that — 
never again, except on one sole condition." 

Forms of the past time swept before my soul. 
I demanded hastily — '-Had you a signature from 
Mr. John?" He smiled. "With so good a friend 
it was by no means necessary." " Where is he? 
By God I will know it!'' He plunged hesita- 
tingly his hand into his pocket, and, dragged 
thence by the hair, appeared Thomas John's 
ghastly disfigured Ibrm, and the blue death-lips 
moved themselves with heavy words — '-Justo 
judicio Dei judicatus sum ; justo judicio Dei con- 
demnatus sum." I shuddered with horror, and 
dashing the ringing purse into the abyss, I spoke 
to him the last words. "I adjure thee, horrible 
one, in the name of God ! take thyself hence, 
and never again show thyself in my siglit!'' 

He arose gloomily, and instantly vanished 
behind the masses of rook which bounded this 
wild, overgrown spot. 

CHAPTER IX. 

1 SATE there without shadow and without 
money, but a heavy weight was taken from my 
bosom. I was calm. Had I lost my love, or 
had I in that loss felt myself free from blame, I 
believe that I should liav'e been happy; but I 
knew not, however, what I should do. I e.\- 
amined my pockets: I found yet several gold 
pieces there; I counted them and laughed. I 
had my horses below at the inn ; I was ashamed 
of returning thither; I nmst, at least, wait till 
the sun was gone down ; it stood yet high in the 
heaven. I laid myself down in the shade of 
the nearest trees, and fell calmly asleep. 

Lovely shapes bleiuled themselves before ine 
in charming dance into a pleasing dreain. Mina 
with a flower-wreath in her hair floated by me, 
and smiled kindly upon me. The noble Bendel 
also was crowned with flowers, and went past 
with a friendly greeting. I saw many besides, 
and I believe thee too, Chamisso, in the distant 



564 



CHAMISSO. 



throng. A bright light appeared, but no one 
had a sliadow, and wliat was stranger, it had 
by no means a bad efle'jt. Flowers and songs, 
love and joy, under groves of pplm. I could 
neither hold fast nor single out the moving, 
lightly floating, loveable forms : but I knew that 
I dreamed such a dream with joy, and was 
carefr.l to avoid waking. I was already awake, 
but still kept my eyes closed in order to retain 
the fading apparition longer before my sonl. 

I finally opened my eyes; the sun stood still 
high in the heaven, but in the east; I had slept 
through the night. I took it for a sign that I 
should not return to the inn. I gave up readily 
as lost, what I yet possessed there, and deter- 
mined to strike on foot into a neigliboring path, 
which led along the ■wood-grown feet of the 
inountains, leaving it secretly to fate to fulfil 
what it had yet in store for me. I looked not 
behind tne, and thoiiglit not even of applying to 
Bendel, whom I left rich behind me, and wliich 
I could reatfily have done. I considered the 
new character which I should support in the 
world. My dress was very modest. I had on 
ail old black Polonaise, wliich I had already 
worn in Berlin, and which, I know not liow, 
had first come again into my hands for this 
journey. I had also a travelling cap on my 
head, a pair of old boots on my feet. I arose, 
and cut me on the spot a knotty stick as a me- 
morial, and advanced at once on my wandering. 

I met in the wood an old peasant who friend- 
ly greeted me, and with whom I entered into 
conversation. I inquired, like an inquisitive 
traveller, first the way, then about the country, 
and its inhabitants, the productions of the moun- 
tains, and many such things. He answered my 
questions sensibly and loquaciously. We came 
to the bed of a mountain torrent, which had 
spread its devastations over a wide tract of the 
forest. I shuddered involuntarily at the sun- 
bright space, and allowed the countryman to go 
first; but in the midst of this dangerous spot, he 
s<ood still, and turned to relate to me the his- 
tory of this desolation. He saw immediately 
my defect, and paused in the midst of his dis- 
course. 

" But how does that happen, — the gentleman 
has actually no shadow !" 

"Alas! alas!" replied I, sighing, "during a 
Jong and severe illness, my hair, nails, and sha- 
dow fell off. See, father, at my age, my hair, 
which is renewed again, is quite wliite, the 
nails very short, and the shadow, — that will 
never grow again." 

^^ Ay\ ay!" responded the old man, shaking 
his head, — "no shadow, that is bad! That was 
a bad illness that the gentleman had." But he 
continued not his narrative, and at the next 
cross way which presented itself, he left me 
without saying a word. Bitter tears trembled 
anew upon my cheeks, and my cheerfuhiess 
was gone. 

I pursued my way with a sorrowful heart, 
and sought no further the society of men. I 



kept myself in the darkest wood, and was many 
a time compelled, in order to pass over a space 
where the sun shone, to wait for whole hours, 
least some human eye should forbid me the 
transit. In the evening I sought for a small ir.ri 
in the villages. I went particularly in quest of 
a mine in the mountains where I hoped to get 
work under the oath; since, besides that my 
present situation made it imperative that I 
should provide for my support, I had discovered 
that the most active labor alone could protect 
me from my own annihilating thoughts. 

A few rainy days advanced me well on the 
way, but at the expense, of my boots, whose 
soles had been calculated for the Graf Peter, 
and not for the pedestrian laborer. 1 was al- 
ready barefoot; I must procure a jiair of new 
boots. Tin next morning I transacted this bu- 
siness with much gravity in a village where 
was held a Wake, and where in a booth old and 
new boots stood for sale. I selected and bar- 
gained long. I was forced to deny myself a 
new pair, which I would gladly have had, but 
the extravagant demand frightened me. I there- 
fore contented myself with an old pair, which 
were yet good and strong, and which the hand- 
some, blond-haired boy who kept the stall, for 
present cash payment handed to me with a 
friendly smile, and wished tne good luck on my 
journey. I put them on at once, and left the 
place by the northern gate. 

I was sunk very deep in my thoughts and 
scarcely saw where I set my feet, for I was 
pondering on the mine which I hoped to reach 
by evening, and where I hardly knew how I 
should propose myself. I had not advanced two 
hundred strides when I observed that I had got 
out of the way. I therefore looked round me, 
and found myself in a wild and ancient forest, 
where the axe appeared never to have been 
wielded. I pressed forward, still a fevf steps, 
and beheld myself in the midst of desert rocks 
which were overgrown only with moss and 
lichens, and between which lay fields of snow 
and ice. The air was intensely cold ; I looked 
round, — the wood had vanished behind me. I 
took a few strides more, — and around me 
reigned the silence of death: boundlessly ex- 
tended itself the ice whereon I stood, and on 
which rested a thick, heavy fog. The suit stood 
blood-red on the edge of the horizon. The cold 
was insupportable. 

I knew not what had happened to me ; the 
benumbing fiost compelled me to hasten my 
steps; I heard alone the roar of distant waters; 
a step and I was on the ice margin of an ocean. 
Innumerable herds of seals plunged rushing be 
fore me in the flood. I jiurdued this shore; I 
saw naked rocks, land, birch and pine forests ; 
I now advanced for a few minutes right on- 
wards. It was stifiing hot. I looked around, — 
I stood amongst beautifully cultivated rice-fields, 
and beneath mulberry-trees. I seated myself in 
their shade; I looked at my watch; I had left 
the market town only a quarter of an hour be- 



CHAMISSO. 



5G5 



fere. I fancied that I dreamed ; I bit my tongue 
to awalie myself. 1 closed my eyes in order to 
collect my thonglits. I heard before me singu- 
lar accents pronounced through the nose. I 
looked lip. Two Chinese, unmistakeable from 
their Asiatic form of coimtenance, if indeed I 
would have given no credit to their costume, 
addressed me in their speech with the accustom- 
ed salutations of their country. I arose and 
stepped two paces backward ; I saw them no 
more. The landscape was totally changed, 
trees and forests instead of rice-fields. I con- 
templated these trees, and the plants which 
bloomed around me, which I recognised as the 
growth of south-eastern Asia. I wished to ap- 
proach one of tliese trees, — one step, and again 
all was changed. I marched now like a recruit 
who is dTilleJ, and strode slowly, and with 
mensured steps. Wonderfully diversified lands, 
rivf"-s, meadows, mountain chains, steppes, 
deserts of sand, unrolled themselves before my 
astonished eyes. There was no doubt of it, — I 
had seven-leagued boots on my feet. 

CHAPTER X. 

I FELL in speechless adoration on my knees 
and shed tears of thankfulness, for suddenly 
stood my fortune clear before iny soul. For 
early offence thrust out from the society of men, 
I was cast, for compensation, upon Nature, 
which I ever loved ; the earth was given me 
«s a rich garden, study for the object and strength 
of my life, and science for its goal. It was no 
resolution which 1 adopted. I have since then, 
with severe, unremitted diligence, striven faith- 
fully to represent what then stood clear and 
lerl'ect before my eye, and my satisfaction has 
deiiended on the agreement of the demonstration 
with the original. 

I prepared without hesitation, with a liasty 
survey, to take possession of the field which I 
should hereafter reap. I stood on the lieights 
of Thibet, and the suu, whic;i had risen upon 
me only a few hours before, now already stooped 
to tlie evening sky. I waiidered over Asia from 
east to west, overtaking him in his course, and 
entered Airica. 1 gazed about me with eager 
curiosity, as I repeatedly traversed it in all di- 
rections. As I surveyed the ancient pyramids 
and temples in passing through Egyi't, 1 descried 
in tlie desert not far from hundred-gated Thebes, 
the caves where the christian anchorites once 
dwelt. It was suddenly firm and clear in me — 
here is thy liome! I selected one of the most 
concealed whicli was at the same lime spacious, 
convenient and inaccessible to the jackalls, for 
Tiy future abode, and again went forward. 

I pas=ed at the pillars of Hercules, over to 
Europe, and when I had reviewed the southern 
and northern provinces, I crossed from northern 
Alia over the polar glaciers to Greenland and 
America; traversed both parts of that continent, 
and the winter whicli already reigned in the 
stiJlh drove me speec'ily bacli uortliwards from 
Cape Horn 



I tarried awhile till it was day in eastern 
Asia, and after some repose, continued my 
wandering. I traced through both Americas 
the mountain chain which comprehends the 
higliest known inequalities on our globe. I 
stalked slowly and cautiously from summit to 
summit, now over flaming volcanoes, now snow- 
crowned peaks, often breathing witli difficulty; 
when reaching Mount Elias, I sprang across 
Behring's Straits to Asia. I followed the west- 
ern shores, in their manifold windings, and ex- 
amined with especial care which of the islands 
there located were accessible to me. From the 
peninsula of Malacca my boots carried me to 
Sumatra, Java, Bali and Lamboc. I attempted 
often with danger, and always in vain, a north- 
west passage over the lesser islets and rocks 
with which this sea is studded to Borneo and 
the other islands of this Archipelago. I was 
compelled to abandon the hope. At length I 
seated myself on the extremest part of Lamboc, 
and gazing towards the south and east, wept, 
as at the fast closed grating of my prison, that 1 
had so soon discovered my limits. New-Hol- 
land so extraordinary, and so essentially neces- 
sary to the comprehension of the earth and its 
sun-woven garment, of the vegetable and the 
animal world, with the South-Sea and its Zoo- 
phyte islands, was interdicted to me, and thus, 
at the very outset, all that I should gatlier and 
build up was destined to remain a mere frag- 
ment ! Oh, my Adelbert, what after all, are the 
endeavors of men ! 

Often did I in the severest winter of the 
southern hemisphere, endeavor, passing the 
polar glaciers westward, to leave behind me 
those two hundred strides out from' Cape Horn, 
which sundered me probably from Van Uie- 
mans Land and New Holland, regardless of my 
return, or wliether this dismal region should 
close upon me as my coffin-lid, making despe- 
rate leaps from ice-drift to ice-drift, and bidding 
defiance to the cold and the sea. In vain — I 
never reached New-Holland, but every time, I 
came back to Lamboc, seated myself on its 
extremest peak, and wept again, with my face 
turned towards the south and east, as at the fast 
closed bars of my prison. 

I tore myself at length from this spot, and re- 
turned with a sorrowful heart into inner Asia. 
I traversed tliat farther, pursuing the morning 
dawn westward, and came yet in the night to 
my proposed home in the Thebais, whic'.i I had 
touched upon in the afternoon of the day before. 
As soon as I was somewhat rested, and when 
it was day again in Europe, I made it iny first 
care to procure everything which I wanted. 
First of all, stop-shoes; fur I hail experienced 
how inconvenient it was when I wished to ex- 
amine near objects, not to be able to slacken my 
stride, except by pulling otf my boots. A pair 
of slippers drawn over them had completely the 
effect which I anticipated, and later I always 
carried two pairs, since I sometimes threw them 
from my feet, witliout having time to pick them 
48 



566 



CH AMIS SO. 



up asralTL, when lions, men, or li/Luuas startled 
me from u;y botanising. My very excellent 
watch -v'iS, for the short duration of my passa<;e, 
a capital nhionomeler. Besides this I needed 
a sextant, some scientific instruments and books. 
To procure all this, I made several anxious 
journeys to London and Paris, which, auspi- 
ciously for me, a mist just then overshadowed. 
As the remains of my enchanted gold was now 
exhausted, I easily accomplislied the payment 
by gathering African ivory, in which, however, 
I was obliged to select only the smallest tusks, 
as not too heavy for me. I was soon furnished 
and eriuipped with all these, and commenced 
immediately, as private philosopher, my new 
course of life. 

I roamed about the earth, now determining 
the altitudes of mountains; now the tempera- 
ture of its springs and the air; now contem- 
plating the animal, now inquiring into the ve- 
getable tribes. I hastened from the equator to 
the pole ; from one world to the other, comparing 
facts with facts. The eggs of the African ostrich 
or the northern sea-fowl, and fruits, especially 
of the tropical palms and Bananas, were even 
my ordinary food. In lieu of happiness I had 
tobacco, and of human society and the ties of 
love, one faithful poodle, which guarded my 
cave in the Thebais, and when I returned home 
with fresh treasures, sprang joyfully towards 
me, and gave me still a human feeling, that I 
was not alone on the earth. An adventure was 
yet destined to conduct me back amongst man- 
kind. 

CHAPTER Xt. 

As I once-scotched my boots on the shores of 
the north, and gathered lichens and sea-weed, 
an ice-bear came unawares upon me round the 
corner of a rock. Flinging off my slippers, I 
M'ould step over to an opposite island, to which 
a naked crag which protruded midway from the 
waves offered me a passage. I stepped with 
one foot firmly on the rock, and plunged over on 
the other side into the sea, one of my slippers 
having unobserved remained fasten the foot. 

The excessive cold seized on me; I with dif- 
ficulty rescued my life from this danger; and 
the moment I reached land, I ran with the ut- 
most speed to the Lybian deserts in order to 
dry myself in the sun, but as I was here exposed, 
it burned me so furiously on the head that I 
staggered back aguin very ill towards the north. 
I sought to relieve myself by rapid motion, and 
ran with swift, uncertain steps, from we9t to 
east, from east to west. I found myself now m 
the day, now in the night; now in summer now 
in the winter's cold. 

I know not how long I thus reeled about on 
(he earth. A burning fever glowed in my veins; 
with deepest distress I felt my senses forsaking 
me. As mischief would liave it, in my incau- 
tious career, I now trod on some one's foot; I 
must have hurt him ; I received a heavy blow, 
and fell to the ground. 



When I again returned to consciousness, I lay 
comfortably in a good bed, which stood amongst 
many other beds in a handsome hall. Some 
one sate at my head; people went through the 
hall from one bed to another. They came to 
mine, and spake together about me. They 
styled me Number Twelve ; and on the wall at 
my feet stood, — yes, certainly it was no delusion, 
I could distinctly read on a black tablet of mar- 
ble in great golden letters, quite correctly writ- 
ten, my name — 

PETEn SCHLEMIHL. 

On the tablet beneath my name were two other 
rown of letters, but [ was too weak to put thein 
together. I again closed my eyes. 

I heard soinething of which the subject was 
Peter Schlemihl read aloud, and articulately, 
but I could not collect the sense. I saw a 
friendly man, and a very lovely woman in black 
dress appear at my bedside. The forms were 
not strange to me, and yet I could not recognise 
them. 

Some time went over, and I recovered my 
strength. I was called Number Twelve, and 
Number Tvwlve, on account of his long beard, 
passed for a Jew, on which account, however, 
he was not at all the less carefully treated. 
That he had no shadow appeared to have been 
unobserved. My boots, as I was assured, were, 
with all that I had brought hither, in good keep- 
ing, in order to be restored to me on my recovery. 
The place in which f lay was called the Schle- 
MIHLIUM. What was daily read alou<l concerning 
Peter Schlemihl, was an exhortation to pray for 
him as the Foimder and Benefactor of this in- 
stitution. The friendly man whom I had seen by 
mybed wasBendel; the lovely woman was Mina. 

I recovered unrecognised in the Schleinihl- 
ium ; and learned yet farther that I was in 
Bendels native city, where, with the remains 
of my otherwise unblessed gold, he had in my 
natne founded this Hospital, where the unhappy 
blessed me, and himself maintained its superin 
tendcnce. Mina was a widow. An unhappy 
criminal process had cost Mr. Rascal his life, 
and her the greater part of her property. Her 
parents were no more. She lived here as a 
pious widow, and practised works of mercy. 

Once she conversed with Mr. Bendel at the 
bedside of Number Twelve. "Why, noble lady, 
will you so often expose yourself to the bad at- 
mosphere which prevails here ? Does fate then 
deal so hardly with you that you wish to die ?'' 

"No, Mr. Bendel, since I have dreamed out 
tny long dream, and have awoke in myself, all 
is well with me; since then 1 crave not, and 
fear not death. Since then, I reflect calmly on 
the past and the future. Is it not also with a 
still and inward happiness that yoo now, in so 
devout a manner, serve your master and frieml '" 
"Thank God, yes, noble lady. But we have 
seen wonderful things; we have unwarily 
drunk much good, and bitto/ woes, out of the 
full cup. Now it is empty, and we may believe 
that the whole has been only a trial ; and armed 



CHAMISSO. 



567 



with wise iliscernment, await the real begiii- 
niiii;. Tlie real beginning is of another fashion ; 
ami we wish not back the first jugglery, and are 
on the whole glad, such as it was, to liave lived 
tlnough it. I feel also witliin me a confidence 
that it must now be belter than formerly with 
o;ir old friend." 

"In me too," replied the lovely widow, and 
then passed on. 

The conversation left a deep impression upon 
me, but I was undecided in myself, whether I 
should make myself known, or depart hence 
unrecognised. 1 took my resolve. I requested 
paper and pencil, and wrote tliese words: — "It 
is indeed better with your old friend now than 
formerly, and if he does penance it is the pen- 
ance of reconciliation.' 

Hereupon I desired to dress myself, as I found 
myself stronger. The key of the small ward- 
robe which stood near my bed, was brought, 
and I found therein, all tliat belonged to me. I 
put on my clothes, suspended my botanical case, 
in which I rejoiced still to find my northern li- 
chens, round my black Polonaise, drew on my 
boots, laid tlie written paper on my bed, and as 
the door opened, I was already far on the way 
to the Thebais. 

As I took the way along the Syrian coast, on 
which I for the last time had wandered from 
home, I perceived my poor Figaro coming to- 
wards me. This excellent poodle, who had 
long expected his master at home, seemed to 
desire to trace him out. I stood still and called 
to him. He sprang barking towards me, with 
a thousand moving assurances of his inmost and 
most extravagant joy. I took him up under my 
arm, for in truth he could not follow me, and 
brouglit him with me home again. 

I found all in its old order; and returned 
gradually as my strength was recruited, to my 
former employment and mode of life, except 
that I kept myself for a whole year out of the, 



to me, wholly insupportable polar cold. And 
thus, my dear Chamisso, I live to this day. My 
boots are no worse (or the wear, as that very 
learned work of the celebrated Tieckius, De 
Rebus Gestis Polticelli, at first led me to fear. 
Their force remains imimpaired, my strength 
only decays: yet I have the comfort to have 
exerted it in a continuous and not fruitless 
pursuit of one object. I have, so far as my 
boots could carry me, become more fundament- 
ally acquainted than any man before me with 
the earth, its shape, its elevations, its tempe- 
ratures, the changes of its atmosphere, the exhi- 
bitions of its magnetic power, and the life 
upon it, especially in the vegetable world. The 
facts I have recorded with the greatest possible 
exactness, and in perspicuous order in several 
works, and stated my deductions and views 
briefiy in several treaties. I have settled the 
geography of the interior of Africa, and of the 
northern polar regions; of the interior of Asia, 
and its eastern shores. My Historia Stirpium 
Platitarum Utriusque Orbis stands as a grand 
fragment of tfie Flora Universalis Terrae, and as 
a branch of mySystema Naturae. I believe that 
I have therein not merely augmented, at a mo- 
derate calculation, the amount of known species, 
more than one tliird, but have done soinelhing 
for tlie Natural System, and for the Geography 
of Plants. I shall labor diligently at my Fauna. 
I shall take care that, before my death, my 
works shall be deposited in the Berlin Univer 
sity. 

And thee, my dear Chamisso, have I selected 
as the preserver of my singular history, which, 
jierhaps, when I have vanished from the earth, 
may aflbrd valuable instruction to many of its 
inhabitants. But thou, my friend, if thou wilt 
live among men, learn before all things to rev- 
erence the shadow, and then the gold. Wishest 
thou to live only for thyself and for tliv better 
self — oh, then! — thou needest no counsel. 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



[Boin 1799. Died 18B5 



The name of Heine, completes our selection 
from the prose writers of Germany, whose 
birth was prior to 1800. By nativity a child 
of the last century, he belongs to this by all 
his sympathies as well as by all his subsequent 
3'ears. A native of Dusseldorf, of Jewish 
parentage on the father's side, — the beauties, 
the Rhine-land, and the household traditions 
of his people, were chief among the influences 
that acted on the mind and heart of the child. 
Of his early years we know nothing and have 
no data from which to judge, beyond an 
occasional allusion in his works. In 1819, he 
entered the University of Bonn ; in 1820, that 
of Gottingen, from which he was soon rusti- 
cated for duelling. In 1823, he returned, 
having spent the intervening time in Berlin, 
and took the degree of Doctor of Laws at 
Gottingen, in 1825. 

His Reisebilder, (Pictures of Travel,) the 
harvest of his tourings in his own and other 
lands, — the first fruits of his genius — appeared 
in a series published at Hamburg, between 
the years 1826-1830, and created an immense 
enthusiasm. Since the "Sorrows of Werther" 
no book had so profoundly stirred the German 
mind. Meanwhile, the author had renounced 
Judaism, and received Christian baptism. 
How much of conviction went with this 
conversion it is hard to say. The act appears 
in strange contrast with the indifference, not 
to say contempt, for historical religion, which 
he manifests in his writings. 

The French Revolution of 1830, awakened 
in the youth of Germany, political hopes and 
aspirations, which Heine shared, in their 
fullest extent, and to which he gave utterance 
in print. He became obnoxious to the German 
authorities, and found it expedient at last to 
cross "the Jordan", as he called it, of the 
Rhine, and to take up his abode in the " Prom- 
ised Land",. in Paris, the " New Jerusalem." 
That city became thenceforward his home. 
There he married his " Mathilde;" there for eight 
years he lay bed ridden with a painful disease 
of the spine, still pursuing his literary labors, 
and there he died on the 17th of February, 1856. 



As a writer, Heine takes rank with the 
foremost satirists of modern time. But he 
was more than a satirist : he was a lyric poet 
of the highest order. A union unparalleled 
in any writer before or since, of lyric sensibility 
with bitter sarcasm, of the tenderest sweetness 
with the sharpest irony, is characteristic of 
the man. To say that he is the wittiest of 
German writers is saying liitle ; for German 
writers are not remarkable for wit. We may 
say without hesitation, he is one of the 
wittiest of men ; we may place him by the 
side of Lucien and Voltaire. 

The best critique of Heine, in English, is an 
essay by Matthew Arnold. We will add to our 
brief notice some portions of this essay, which 
appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, for August, 
1863. 

" Heine is noteworthy, because he is the 
most important German successor and con- 
tinuator of Goethe in Goethe's most important 
line of activity. And which of Goethe's lines 
of activity is this ? His line of activity as 'a 
soldier in the war of liberation of humanity.' 

"Heine himself would hardly have admitted 
this affiliation, though he was far too power- 
ful-minded a man to decry, with some of the 
vulgar German liberals, Goethe's genius. 

" ' The wind of the Paris Revolution,' he 
writes after the three days of 1830, ' blew 
about the candles a little in the dark night of 
Germany, so that the red curtains of a German 
throne or two caught fire ; but the old watch- 
men, who do the police of the german king- 
doms, are already bringing out the fire-engines, 
and will keep the candles closer snutfed fcr 
the future. Poor, fast-bound German people, 
lose not all heart in thy bonds ! The fashion- 
able coating of ice melts off from my heart, 
my soul quivers and my eyes burn, and that is 
a disadvantageous state of things tor a writer, 
who should control his subject-matter and keep 
himself beautifully objective, as the artistic 
school would have us, and as Goethe has done ; 
he has come to be eighty years old doing this, 
and minister, and in good condition — poor 
German people ! that is thy greatest man !' 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



569 



" It was the year 1830; the German sove- 
reigns had passed the preceding fifteen years 
in breaking the promises of freedom they had 
made to their subjects when they wanted their 
help in the final struggle with Napoleon. 
Great events were happening in France ; the 
revolution, defeated in 1815, had arisen from 
its defeat, and was wresting from its adversa- 
ries the power. Heinrich Heine, a young man 
of genius, born at Hamburg, and with all the 
culture of Germany, but by race a Jew ; with 
warm sympathies for France, whose revolution 
had given to his race the rights of citizenship, 
and whose rule had been, as is well known, 
popular in the Rhine provinces, where he 
passed his youth ; with a passionate admira- 
tion for the great French Emperor, with a 
passionate contempt for the sovereigns who 
had overthrown him, for their agents, and for 
their policy — Heinrich Heine was in 1830 in 
no humor for any such gradual process of lib- 
eration from the old order of things as that 
which Goethe had followed. His counsel was 
for open war. With that terrible modern 
weapon, the pen, in his hand, he passed the 
remainder of his life in one fierce battle. 
What was that battle ? the reader will ask. 
It was a life and death battle with Philistinism. 

^'Philislinism — we have not the expression in 
English. Perhaps we have not the word 
because we have so much of the thing. At 
Soli, I imagine, they did not talk of solecisms ; 
and here, at the very headquarters of Goliath, 
nobody talks of Philistinism. The French 
have adopted the term Spicier, grocer, to 
designate the sort of being whom the Germans 
designate by the term Philistine ; but the 
French term — besides that it casts a slur upon 
a respectable class, composed of living and 
susceptible members, while the original Phil- 
istines are dead and buried long ago — is really, 
I think, in itself much less apt and expressive 
than the German term. Efforts have been 
made to obtain in English some term equiva- 
lent to Philister or Spicier; Mr. Carlyle has 
made several such efforts : ' Respectability 
with its thousand gigs,' he says ; — well, the 
occupant of every one of those gigs is, Mr. 
Carlyle means, a Philistine. However, the 
word respeclahle is far too valuable a word to 
be thus perverted from its proper meaning ; if 
the English are ever to have a word for the 
thing we are speaking of— and so prodigious 



are the changes which the modern spirit is 
introducing, that even we English shall per- 
haps one day come to want such a word — I 
think we had much better take the term Phil, 
istine itself. 

"Philistine must have originally meant, in 
the mind of those who invented the nickname, 
a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of 
the chosen people, of the cliildren of the light. 
The party of change, the would-be remodel- 
lers of the old traditional European order, 
the invokers of reason against custom, the 
representatives of the modern spirit in every 
sphere where it is applicable, regarded them- 
selves, with the robust self-confidence natural 
to reformers, as a chosen people, as children 
of the light. They regarded their adversaries 
as humdrum people, slaves to routine, enemies 
to the light ; stupid and oppressive, but at the 
same time very strong. This explains the 
love which Heine, that Paladin of the modern 
spirit, has for France ; it explains the prefer- 
ence which he gives to France over Germany: 
'The French,' he says, 'are the chosen 
people of the new religion, its first gospels 
and dogmas have been drawn up in theii 
language ; Paris is the new Jerusalem, and 
the Rhine is the Jordan which divides the 
consecrated land of freedom from the land oi 
the Philistines.' He means that the French, 
as a people, have shown more accessibility to 
ideas than any other people ; that prescription 
9,nd routine have had less hold upon them 
than upon any other people ; that they have 
shown most readiness to move and to alter at 
the bidding (real or supposed) of reason. 
This explains, too, the detestation which 
Heine had for the English: 'I might settle 
in England,' he saj-s in his exile, ' if it were 
not that I should find there two things, coal- 
smoke and Englishmen; I cannot abide either.' 
What he hated in the English was the ' acht- 
brittische Beschranktheit,' as he calis it — the 
genuine British narrowness. In truth, the 
English, profoundly as they have modified the 
old Middle-Age order, great as is the liberty 
which they have secured for themselves, have 
in all their changes proceeded, to use a 
familiar expression, by the rule of thumb ; 
what was intolerably inconvenient to them 
they have suppressed, and as they have sup- 
pressed it not because it was irrational, but 
because it was practically inconvenient, they 



570 



HBINRICH HEINE. 



have seldom in suppressing it appealed to 
reason, but always, if possible, to some prece- 
dent, or form, or letter, which served as a 
convenient instrument for their purpose, and 
which saved them from the necessity of re- 
curring to general principles. They have 
thus become, in a certain sense, of all people 
the most inaccessible to ideas, and the most 
impatient of them ; inaccessible to them be- 
cause of their want of familiarity with them, 
and impatient of them because they have got 
on so well without them, that they despise 
those who, not having got on so well as 
themselves, still make a fuss for what they 
themselves have done so well without. But 
there has certainly followed from hence, in this 
country, somewhat of a general depression of 
pure intelligence : Philistia has come to be 
thought by us the true Land of Promise, and 
it is anything but that ; the born lover of 
ideas, the born hater of commonplaces, must 
feel, in this country, that the sky over his 
bead is of brass and iron. The enthusiast for 
the idea, for reason, values reason, the idea, 
in and for themselves ; he values them, irre- 
spectively of the practical conveniences which 
their triumph may obtain for him ; and the 
man who regards the possession of these 
practical conveniences as something suflScient 
in itself, something which compensates for the 
absence or surrender of the idea, of reason, is, 
in his eyes, a Philistine. This is why Heine 
so often and so mercilessly attacks the liberals ; 
much as he hates conservatism, he hates Phil- 
istinism even more, and whoever attacks con- 
servatism itself ignobly, not as a child of light, 
not in the name of the idea, is a Philistine. 

" But, in 1830, Heine very soon found that 
the fire-engines of the German governments 
were too much for his direct efforts at incendi- 
arism. ' What demon drove me,' he cries, 
' to write my Reisebilder, to edit a newspaper, 
to plague myself with our time and its inter- 
ests, to try and shake the poor German Hodge 
out of his thousand years' sleep in his hole ? 
What good did I get by it? Hodge opened 
his eyes, only to shut them again immediately; 
he yawned, only to begin snoring again the 
next minute louder than ever; he stretched 
his stiff ungainly limbs, only to sink down 
again directly afterwards, and lie like a dead 
man in the old bed of his accustomed habits. 
I must have rest; but where am I to find a 



resting-place ? In Germany I can no longer 
stay.' " 

This is Heine's jesting account of his own 
efforts to rouse Germany : now for his pathetic 
account of them ; it is because he unites so 
much wit with so much pathos that he is so 
effective a writer : 

The Emperor Charles the fifth sate in sore 
straits, in the Tyrol, encompassed by his enemies. 
All his knights and courtiers had forsaken him ; 
not one came to his help. I knew not if he had at 
that time the cheese face with which Holbein has 
painted him for us. But I am sure that under-lip 
of his, with its contempt for mankind, stuck out 
even more than it does in his portraits. How 
could he but contemn the tribe which in the sun- 
shine of his prosperity had fawned on him so 
devotedly, and now, in his dark distress, left him 
all alone? Then suddenly his door opened, and 
there came in a man in disguise, and, as he threw 
back his cloak, the Kaiser recognized in him his 
faithful Conrad von der Rosen, the court jester. 
This man brought him comfort and counsel, and 
he was the court jester ! 

German fatherland ! dear German people ! I 
am thy Conrad von der Rosen. The man whose 
proper business was to amuse thee, and who in 
good times should have catered only for thy mirth, 
makes his way into thy prison in time of need; 
here under my cloak, I bring thee thy sceptre and 
crown; dost thou not recognize me, my Kaiser? 
If I cannot free thee, I will at least comfort thee, 
and thou shalt at least have one with thee who will 
prattle with thee about thy sorest affliction, nnd 
whisper courage to thee, and love thee, and whose 
best joke and best blood shall be at thy service. 
For thou, my people, art the true Kaiser, the true 
lord of the land; thy will is sovereign, and mure 
legitimate far than that purple Tel eat nutre plaisir, 
which invokes a divine right with no better war- 
rant than the anointings of shaven and shorn 
jugglers; thy will, ray people, is the sole rightful 
source of power. Though now thou liest down in 
thy bonds, yet in the end will thy rightful cause 
prevail; the day of deliverance is at hand, a new 
time is beginning. My Kaiser, the night is over, 
and out there glows the ruddy dawn. 

" Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou art mis- 
taken ; perhaps thou takest a headsman's gleaming 
a.xe for the sun, and the red of dawn is only blood." 

" No, my Kaiser, it is the sun, though it is 
rising in the west; these six thousand years it has 
always risen in the east; it is high time there 
should come a change." 

" Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou hast lost 
the bells out of thy red cap, and it has now such 
an odd look, that red cap of thine !" 

"Ah, my Kaiser, thy distress has made me shake 
my head so hard and fierce, that the fool's bells 
have dropped off my cap ; the cap is none the worse 
for that !" 

" Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, what is that 
noise of breaking and cracking outside there ?" 

" Hush ! that is the saw and the carpenter's axe, 
and soon the doors of thy prison will be burst open, 
and thou wilt be free, my Kaiser!" 

"Am I then really Kaiser? Ah, I forgot, it is 
the fool who tells me so !" 

" Oh, sigh not, my dear master, the air of thy 
prison makes thee so desponding: when once thou 
hast got thy rights again, thou wilt feel once more 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



5n 



the bold imperial blood in thy veins, and thou 
wilt be proud like a Kaiser, and violent, and 
gracious, and unjust, and smiling, and ungrateful, 
as princes are." 

" Conrad von der Kosen, my fool, when I am 
free, what wilt thou do then ? 

" I will then sew new bells on to my cap." 
" And how .«hall I recompen.«e thy fidelity?" 
"Ah, dear master, by not leaving me to die in a 
ditch !" 

I wish to mark Heine's place in modern 
European literature, the scope of his activity, 
and his value. I cannot attempt to give here 
a detailed account of his life, or a description 
of bis separate works. In May, 1831, he went 
over his Jordan, the Rhine, and fixed himself 
in his new Jerusalem, Paris. There, thence- 
forward, he lived, going in general to some 
French watering-place in the summer, but 
making only one or two short visits to Ger- 
many during the rest of his life. His works, 
in verse and prose, succeeded each other 
without stopping; a collected edition of them, 
filling seven closely-printed octavo volumes, 
has been published in America; in the col- 
lected edition of few people's works is there so 
little to skip. Those who wish for a single 
good specimen of him should read his first 
important work, the work which made his 
reputation, the Reisebilder, or " Travelling 
Sketches ;" * prose and verse, wit and serious- 
ness, are mingled in it, and the mingling 
of these is characteristic of Heine, and is 
nowhere to be seen practised more naturally 
and happily than in his Reisebihhr. In 1847 
his health, which till then had always been 
perfectly good, gave way. He had a kind of 
paralytic stroke. His malady proved to be 
a softening of the spinal marrow : it was 
incurable ; it made rapid progress. In May, 
1848, not a year after his first attack, he went 
out of doors for the last time ; but his disease 
took mere than eight years to kill him. For 
nearly eight years he lay helpless on a couch, 
with the use of his limbs gone, wasted almost 
to the proportions of a child, wasted so that a 
woman could carry him about; the sight of 
one eye lost, that of the other greatly dimmed, 
and requiring, that it might be exercised, to 
have the palsied eyelid lifted and held up by 
the finger; all this, and suffering, besides 
this, at short intervals, paroxysms of nervous 
agony. I have said he was not pre-eminently 

* Pictures of Travel. Translated by Charles G. Lelaud. 
Fourth eJilion. F. Leypoldt, Philadelphia, 1863. 



brave ; but in the astonishing force of spirit 
with which he retained his activity of mind, 
even his gaiety, amid all this suffering, and 
went on composing with undiminished fire to 
the last, he was truly brave. Nothing could 
clog that aerial lightness. " Pouvez-vous 
sifiler?" his doctor asked him one day, when 
he was almost at his last gasp ; — " siffler," as 
every one knows, has the double meaning of 
to whistle and to hiss: — "Helas! non," was his 
whispered answer; "pas m6me une comedic 
de M. Scribe!" M. Scribe is, or was, the 
favourite dramatist of the French Philistine. 
" My nerves," he said to some one who asked 
him about them in 1855, the year of the Great 
Exhibition in Paris, " my nerves are of that 
quite singularly remarkable miserableness of 
nature, that I am convinced they would get 
at the Exhibition the grand medal for pain 
and misery." He read all the medical books 
which treated of his complaint. " But," said 
he to some one who found him thus engaged, 
"what good this reading is to do me I don't 
know, except that it will qualify me to give 
lectures in heaven on the ignorance of doctors 
on earth about diseases of the spinal marrow." 
What a matter of grim seriousness are our 
ailments to most of us ! yet with this gaiety 
Heine treated his to the end. That end, so 
long in coming, came at last. Heine died on 
the 17th of February, 1856, at the age of 
fifty-eight. By his will he forbade that his 
remains should be transported to Germany. 
He lies buried in the cemetery of Montmartre, 
at Paris. 

His direct political action was null, and this 
is neither to be wondered at nor regretted ; 
direct political action is not the true function 
of literature, and Heine was a born man of 
letters. Even in his favorite France the turn 
taken by public affairs was not at all what he 
wished, though he read French politics by no 
means as we in England, most of us, read 
them. He thought things were tending there 
to the triumph of communism ; and to a 
champion of the idea like Heine, what there 
is gross and narrow in communism was very 
repulsive. " It is all of no use," he cried on 
his death-bed, " the future belongs to our ene- 
mies, the Communists, and Louis Napoleon is 
their John the Baptist." "And yet" — he added 
with all his old love for that remarkable entity, 
so full of attraction for him, so profoundly 



572 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



unknown in England, the French people, — 
" do not believe that God lets all this go for- 
ward merely as a grand comedy. Even though 
the Communists deny him to-day, he knows 
better than they do that a time will come 
when they will learn to believe in him." After 
1831 his hopes of soon upsetting the German 
■ governments had died away, and his propa- 
gandism took another, a more truly literary 
character. It took the character of an intrepid 
application of the modern spirit to literature. 
To the ideas with which the burning questions 
of modern life filled him, he made all his sub- 
ject-matter minister. He touched all the great 
points in the career of the human race, and 
here he but followed the tendency of the wide 
oilture of Germany ; but he touched them 
with a wand which brought them all under a 
light where the modern eye cares most to see 
them, and here he gave a lesson to the culture 
of Germany, — so wide, so impartial, that it is 
apt to become slack and powerless, and to lose 
itself in its materials for want of a strong 
central idea round which to group all its 
ideas. So the mystic and romantic school of 
Germany lost itself in the Middle Ages, was 
overpowered by their influence, came to ruin 
by its vain dreams of renewing them. Heine, 
with a far profounder sense of the mystic and 
romantic charm of the Middle Age than Gorres, 
or Brentano, or Arnim, Heine the chief roman- 
tic poet of Germany, is yet also much more 
than a romantic poet; he is a great modern 
poet, he is not conquered by the Middle Age, 
he has a talisman by which he can feel, — along 
with but above the power of the fascinating 
Middle Age itself, — the power of modern ideas. 
A French critic of Heine thinks he has said 
enough in saying that Heine proclaimed in 
German countries, with beat of drum, the 
ideas of 1789, and that at tjie cheerful noise 
of his drum the ghosts of the Middle Age took 
to flight. But this is rather too French an 
account of the matter. Germany, that vast 
mine of ideas, had no need to import ideas, as 
such, from any foreign country ; and if Heine 
had carried ideas, as such, from France into 
Germany, he would but have been carrying 
coals to Newcastle. But that for which 
France, far less meditative than Germany, is 
eminent, is the prompt, ardent, and practical 
application of an idea, when she seizes it, in 
all departments of human activity which ad- 



mit it. And that in which Germany most 
fails, and by failing in which she appears so 
helpless and impotent, is just this practical 
application of her innumerable ideas. '• When 
Candide," says Heine himself, " came to El- 
dorado, he saw in the streets a number of boys 
who were playing with gold-nuggets instead 
of marbles. This degree of luxury made him 
imagine that they must be the king's children, 
and he was not a little astonished when he 
found that in Eldorado gold-nuggets are of 
no more value than marbles are with us, and 
that the school-boys play with them. A 
similar thing happened to a friend of mine, a 
foreigner, when he came to Germany and 
first read German books. He was perfectly 
astounded at the wealth of ideas which he 
found in them : but he soon remarked that 
ideas in Germany are as plentiful as gold- 
nuggets in Eldorado, and that those writers 
whom he had taken for intellectual princes, 
were in reality only school-boys." Heine 
was, as he calls himself, a " Child of the 
French Revolution," an " Initiator," because he 
vigorously assured the Germans that ideas 
were not counters or marbles, to be played 
with for their own sake ; because he exhibited 
in literature modern ideas applied with the 
utmost freedom, clearness, and originality. 
And therefore he declared that the great 
task of his life had been the endeavor to 
establish a cordial relation between France 
and Germany. It is because he thus operates 
a junction between the French spirit, and 
German ideas and German culture, that he 
founds something new, opens a fresh period, 
and deserves the attention of criticism far 
more than the German poets his contempo- 
raries, who merely continue an old period till 
it expires. 

Heine's intense modernism, his absolute 
freedom, his utter rejection of stock classicism 
and stock romanticism, his bringing all things 
under the point of view of the nineteenth 
century, were understood and laid to heart by 
Germany, through virtue of her immense, 
tolerant intellectualism, much as there was in 
all Heine said to affront and wound Germany. 
The wit and ardent modern spirit of France 
Heine joined to the culture, the sentiment, the 
thought of Germany. This is what makes 
him so remarkable ; his wonderful clearness, 
lightness, and freedom, united with such 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



573 



power of feeling and width of range. Is there 
anywhere keener wit than in his story of the 
French abb6 who was his tutor, and who 
wanted to get from him that la religion is 
French for der Glaube: " Six times did he ask 
me the question : ' Henry, what is der Glaube 
in French?' and six times, and each time 
with a greater burst of tears, did I answer 
him, — ' It is le cridit.' And at the seventh 
time, his face purple with rage, the infuriated 
examiner screamed out: 'It is la religion;^ 
and a rain of cuffs descended upon me, and 
all the other boys burst out laughing. Since 
that day I have never been able to hear la 
religion mentioned, without feeling a tremor 
run through my back, and my cheeks grow 
red with shame." Or in that comment on the 
fate of Professor Saalfeld, who had been ad- 
dicted to writing furious pamphlets against 
Napoleon, and who was a professor at Gyttin- 
gen, a great seat, according to Heine, of 
pedantry and Philistinism : " It is curious," 
says Heine, " the three greatest adversaries of 
Napoleon have all of them ended miserably. 
Castlereagh cut his own throat ; Louis the 
Eighteenth rotted upon his throne ; and Pro- 
fessor Saalfeld is still a professor at Gottin- 
gen." It is impossible to go beyond that. 

What wit, again, in that saying which 
every one has heard : " The Englishman loves 
liberty like his lawful wife, the Frenchman 
loves her like his mistres*?, the German loves 
her like his old grandmother." But the turn 
Heine gives to this incomparable saying is 
not so well known ; and it is by that turn he 
shows himself the born poet he is, — full of 
delicacy and tenderness, of inexhaustible re- 
source, infinitely new and striking : — 

"And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how 
things miiy turn out. The grumpy Englishman, in 
an ill-temper with his wife, is capable of some day 
putting a rope round her neck, and taking her to 
be sold at Smithfield. The inconstant French- 
man may become unfaithful to his adored mistress, 
and be seen fluttering about the Palais Royal after 
another. But the German will never quite abrindon 
hie old fjriitidmi>tlier; he will always keep for her a 
nook by the chimney-corner, where she can tell 
her fairy stories to the listening children." 

Is it possible to touch more delicately and 
happily both the weakness and the strength 
of Germany ; — pedantic, simple, enslaved, free, 
ridiculous, admirable Germany? 

And Heine's verse, — his Lieder? 0, the 
comfort, after dealing with French people of 



genius, irresistibly impelled to try and ex- 
press themselves in verse, launching out into 
a deep which destiny has sown with so many 
rocks for them, — the comfort of coming to a 
man of genius, who finds in verse his freest 
and most perfect expression, whose voyage 
over the deep of poetry destiny makes smooth ! 
After the rhythm, to us, at any rate, with the 
German paste in our composition, so deeply 
unsatisfying, of 

"Ah ! que me dites-vou9, et que Tons dit mnn ame ? 
Que dit le ciel k Taube et la ilamme k la flamuie ?" 

what a blessing to arrive at rhythms like^ 

" Take, 0, take those lips away, 
That so sweetly were forsworn, — " 
or — 

" Siehst sehr sterbeblasslich aua, 
Doch getiost ! du bist zu Uaus, — " 

in which one's soul can take pleasure ! The 
magic of Heine's poetical form is incompara- 
ble; he chiefly uses a form of old German 
popular poetry, a ballad form which has more 
rapidity and grace than any ballad form of 
ours ; he employs this form with the most 
exquisite lightness and ease, and yet it has at 
the same time the inborn fulness, pathos, and 
old-world charm of all true forms of popular 
poetry. Thus in Heine's poetry, too, one 
perpetually blends the impression of French 
modernism and clearness with that of German 
sentiment and fulness ; and to give this blended 
impression is, as I have said, Heine's great 
characteristic. To feel it, one must read him ; 
he gives it in his form as well as in his con- 
tents, and by translation I can only reproduce 
it so far as his contents give it. But even the 
contents of many of his poems are capable of 
giving a certain sense of it. Here, for instance, 
is a poem in which he makes his profession 
of faith to an innocent, beautiful soul, a sort 
of Gretchen, the child of some simple mining 
people, having their hut among the pines at 
the foot of the Hartz Mountains, who re- 
proaches him with not holding the old articles 
of the Christian creed : — 

"Ah, my child, VThile I was yet a little boy,. while 
I yet sate upon my mother's knee, I believed in 
God the Father, who rules up there in Heaven, 
good and great ; 

" Who created the beautiful earth, and the beauti- 
ful men and women thereon ; who ordained for 
sun, moon, and stars their courses. 

"When I got bigger, my child, I comprehended 
yet a great deal more than this, and comprehended, 
and grew intelligent; and I believe on the Son also; 

"On the beloved Son, who loved us, and revealedi 
love to us ; and for his reward, as always happens, 
was crucified by the people. 



574 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



"Now, when I am grown up, have read much, 
have travelled much, my heart swells within me, 
and with my whole heart I believe on the Holy 
Ghost. 

" The greatest miracles were of his working, and 
still greater miracles doth he even now work ; he 
burst in sunder the oppressor's stronghold, and he 
burst in sunder the bondsman's yoke. 

" He heals old death-wounds, and renews the old 
right ; all mankind are one race of noble equals 
before him. 

" He chases away the evil clouds and the dark 
cobwebs of the brain, which have spoilt love and 
joy for us, which day and night have lowered on us. 

"A thousand knights, well harnessed, has the 
Holy Ghost chosen out to fulfil his will, and he 
has put couriige into their souls. 

"Their good swords flash, their bright banners 
wave; what, thou wouldst give much, my child, to 
look upon such gallant knights? 

" Well, on me, my child, look ! kiss me, and look 
boldly upon rae ! one of those knights of the Holy 
Ghost am I." 

No account of Heine is complete which 
does not notice the Jewish element in him. 
His race he treated with the same freedom 
with which he treated everything else, but he 
derived a great force from it, and no one knew 
this better than himself. He has excellently- 
pointed out how in the sixteenth century there 
was a double renaissance, — a Hellenic renais- 
sance and a Hebrew renaissance, — and how 
both have been great powers ever since. He 
himself had in him both the spirit of Greece 
and the spirit of Judea; both these spirits 
reach the infinite, which is the true goal of 
all poetry and all art, — the Greek spirit by 
beauty, the Hebrew spirit by sublimity. By 
his perfection of literary form, by his love of 
clearness, by his love of beauty, Heine is 
Greek ; by his intensity, by his untamableness, 
by his " longing which cannot be uttered," he 
is a Hebrew. Yet what Hebrew ever treated 
the things of the Hebrews like this? — 

" There lives at Hamburg, in a one-roomed lodg- 
ing in the Baker's Broad Walk, a man whose name 
is Moses Lump; all the week he goes about in 
wind and rnin, with his pack on his back, to earn 
his few shillings; but when on Friday evening he 
comes home, he finds the candlestick with seven 
candles lighted, and the table covered with a fair 
white cloth, and he puts away from him his pack 
and his cares, and he sits down to table with his 
squinting wife and yet more squinting daughter, 
and eats fish with them, fish which has been 
dressed in beautiful white garlic sauce, sings there- 
with the grandest psalms of King David, rejoices 
with his whole heart over the deliverance of the 
children of Israel out of Egypt, rejoices, too, that 
all the wicked ones who have done the children of 
I-^rael harm, have ended by taking themselves off; 
that King Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, An- 
tiochus, "Titus, and all such people are well dead, 
while he, Moses Lump, is yet alive, and eating fish 
with wife and daughter; and I can tell you, 



Doctor, the fish is delicate and the man is happy, 
he has no call to torment himself about culture, 
he sits contented in his religion and in his green 
bed-gown, like Diogenes in his tub, he contemplates 
with satisfaction his candles, which he on no ac- 
count will snutf for himself; and I can tell you, if 
the candles burn a little dim, and the snutfers- 
woman, whose business it is to snuff them, is not 
at hand, and Rothschild the Great were at that 
moment to come in, with all his brokers, bill- 
discounters, agents, and chief clerks, with whom 
he conquers the world, and Rothschild were to say, 
' Moses Lump, ask of me what favor you will, and 
it shall be granted you ;' — Doctor, I am convinced, 
Moses Lump would quietly answer, ' Snuff me 
those candles !' and Rothschild the Great would 
exclaim with admiration, ' If I were not Rothschild, 
I would be Moses Lump.' " 

Nor must Heine's sweet note be unheard, 
— his plaintive note, his note of melancholy. 
Here is a strain which came from him as he 
lay, in the winter night, on his " mattress- 
grave " at Paris, and let his thoughts wander 
home to Germany, " the great child, entertain, 
ing herself with her Christmas-tree." " Thou 
tookest," — he cried to the German exile, — 

" Thou tookest thy flight towards sunshine 
and happiness ; naked and poor returnest thou 
back. German truth, German shirts, — one 
gets them worn to tatters in foreign parts. 

" Deadly pale are thy looks, but take com- 
fort, thou art at home ; one lies warm in 
German earth, warm as by the old pleasant 
fireside. 

" Many a one, alas ! became crippled, and 
could get home no more : longingly he stretches 
out his arms ; God have mercy upon him !" 

God have mercy upon him ! for what re- 
main of the days of the years of his life are 
few and evil. " Can it be that I still actually 
exist? My body is so shrunk that there is 
hardly anything of me left but my voice, and 
my bed makes me think of the melodious 
grave of the enchanter Merlin, which is in 
the forest of Broceliand in Brittany, under 
high oaks whose tops shine like green flames 
to heaven. Ah, I envy thee those trees, 
brother Merlin, and their fresh waving ; for 
over my mattress-grave here in Paris no green 
leaves rustle ; and early and late I hear nothing 
but the rattle of carriages, hammering, scold- 
ing, and the jingle of the piano. A grave 
without rest, death without the privileges of 
the departed, who have no longer any need to 
spend money, or to write letters, or to compose 
books. What a melancholy situation !" 

He died, and has left a blemished name ; 
with his crying faults, — his intemperate sus- 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



575 



ceptibilit}', his unscrupulousness in passion, 
his inconceivable attacljs on his enemies, his 
still more inconceivable attacks upon his 
friends, his want of generosity, his sensuality, 
his incessant mocking, — how could it be other- 
wise ? Not only was he not one of Mr. Car- 
lyle's " respectable " people, he was profoundly 
(fwrespectable and not even the merit of not 
being a Philistine can make up for a man's 
being that. To his intellectual deliverance 
there was an addition of something else want- 
ing, and that something else was something 
immense ; the old-fashioned, laborious, eter- 
nally needful moral deliverance. Goethe 
says that he was deficient in love; to me his 
weakness seems to be not so much a deficiency 



in love as a deficiency in self-respect, in true 
dignity of character. But on this negative 
side of one's criticism of a man of great genius, 
I, for my part, when I have once clearly 
marked that this negative side is and must be 
there, have no pleasure in dwelling. I prefer 
to say of Heine something positive. He is 
not an adequate interpreter of the modern 
world. He is only a brilliant soldier in the 
war of liberation of humanity. But, such as 
he is, he is (and posterity too, I am quite 
sure, will say this), in the European literature 
of that quarter of a century which follows the 
death of Goethe, incomparably the most im- 
portant figure. 



GREAT MEN. 

FKOM THE KEISEBILDER. 

And it is now so lonely in the island, that I 
seem to myself like Napoleon on St. Helena. 
Only that I have here found something entertain- 
ing, which he wanted. For it is with the great 
Emperor himself with whom I am now busied. A 
young Enghshman recently presented me with 
Maitland's book, published not long since, in 
which the mariner sets forth the way and manner 
in which Napoleon gave himself up to him, and 
deceived himself on the Belierophon, till he, by 
command of the British ministry was brought on 
board the Northumberland. From this book it 
appears clear as day, that the Emperor, in a spirit 
of romantic confidence in British magnanimity, 
and to finally give peace to the world, went to the 
English more as a guest than as a prisoner. It 
was an error which no other man would have 
fallen into, and least of all, a Wellington. But 
history will declare that this error was so beautiful, 
so elevated, so sublime, that it required more true 
greatness of soul than we, the rest of the world, can 
elevate ourselves to in our greatest deeds. 

The cause which has induced Captain Maitland 
to publish this book, appears to be no other than the 
moral need of purification, which every honorable 
man experiences who has been entangled by bad 
fortune in a piece of business of a doubtful com- 
plexion. The book itself is an invaluable contri- 
l)ution to the history of the imprisonment of Na- 
poleon, as it forms the last portion of his life, sin- 
gulariy solves all the enigmas of the earlier parts, 
and amazes, reconciles, and purifies the mind, as 
the last act of a genuine tragedy should. The 
cliaracteristic differences of the four principal 
writers who have informed us as to his captivity, 
and particularly as to his manner and method of 
regarding things, is not distinctly seen, save by 
their comparison. 

Maitland, the stem, cold, English sailor, de- 



scribes events without prejudic3, and as accurately 
as though they were maritime occurrences to be 
entered in a log-book. Las Casas, like an enthu- 
siastic chamberlain, lies, as he writes, in every line, 
at the feet of his Emperor ; not like a Russian 
slave, but like a free Frenchman, who involuntarily 
bows the knee to unheard of heroic greatness and 
to the dignity of renown. O'Meara, the physician, 
though born in Ireland, is still altogether a Britain, 
and as such was once an enemy of the Emperor. 
But now, recognizing the majestic rights of adver- 
sity, he writes boldly, without ornament, and con- 
scientiously ; — almost in a lapidary style, while 
we recognize not so much a style as a stiletto in 
the pointed, striking manner of writing of the 
Italian Autommarchi, who is altogether mentally 
intoxicated with the vindictiveness and poetry of 
his land. 

Both races, French and English, gave from 
either side a man of ordinary powers of mind, un- 
influenced by the powers that be, and this jury 
has judged the Emperor, and sentenced him to 
live eternally — an object of wonder and of com- 
miseration. 

There are many great men who have already 
walked in this world. Here and there we see the 
gleaming marks of their footsteps, and in holy 
hours they sweep like cloudy forms before our 
souls ; but an equally great man sees his prede- 
cessors far more significantly. From a single 
spark of the traces of their earthly glory, he recog- 
nises their most secret act, from a single word left 
behind, he penetrates every fold of their hearts, 
and thus in a mystical brotherhood live the great 
men of all times. Across long centuries they bow 
to each other, and gaze on each other with signifi- 
cant glances, and their eyes meet over the graves 
of buried races whom they have thrust aside be- 
tween, and they understand and love each other. 
But we little ones, who may not have such inti- 
mate intercourse with the great ones of the past, 
of whom we but seldom see the traces and cloudy 



576 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



forms, it is of the highest importance to learn so 
much of these great men, that it will be easy for 
us to take them distinct, as in life, into our own 
souls, anJ thereby enlarge our minds. Such a 
man is Napoleon Bonaparte. We know more of 
his life and deeds than of the other great ones of 
this world, and day by day we learn still more and 
more. We s^e the buried form divine, slowly dug 
forth, and with every spade full of earth which is 
removed, increases our joyous wonder at the sym- 
metry and splendor of the noble figure which is 
revealed, and the spiritual lightnings with which 
foes would shatter the great statue, serve but to 
light it up more gloriously. Such is the case with 
the assertions of M'me de Stael, who, with all her 
bitterness, says nothing more than that the Empe- 
ror was not a man like other men, and that his 
soul could be measured with no measure known 
to us. 

It is to such a spirit that Kant alludes, when he 
says, that we can think to ourselves an understand- 
ing, which, because it is not discursive like our 
own, but intuitive, goes from the synthetic uni- 
versal, of the observation of the whole, as such, to 
the particular — that is to say, from the whole to a 
part. Yes — Napoleon's spirit saw through that 
which we learn by weary analytical reflection, and 
long deduction of consequences, and comprehended 
it in one and the same moment. Thence came 
his talent to understand his age, to cajole its spirit 
into never abusing him, and being ever profitable 
to him. 

But as this spirit of the age is not only revolu- 
tionary, but is formed by the antagonism of both 
sides, the revolutionary and the counter-revolution- 
ary, so did Napoleon act not according to either 
alone, but according to the spirit of both principles, 
both efforts, which found in him their union, and 
he accordingly always acted naturally, simply and 
greatly ; never convulsively and harshly — ever 
composed and calm. Therefore he never intrigued 
in details, and his striking effects were ever brought 
about by his ability to comprehend and to bend 
the masses. to his will. Little analytical souls in- 
cline to entangled, wearisome intrigues, while, on 
the contrary, synthetic intuitive spirits understand 
in a wondrously genial manner, so to avail them- 
selves of the means which are affi^-ded them by the 
present, as quickly to turn them to their own ad- 
vantage. The former often founder, because no 
mortal wisdom can foresee all the events of life, and 
life's relations are never long permanent; the latter, 
on the contrary, the intuitive men, succeed most 
easily in thfir designs, as they only require an ac- 
curate computation of that which is at hand, and 
act so quickly, that their calculations are not mis- 
carried by any ordinary agitation, or by any sudden 
unforseen changes. 

It is a fortunate coincidence that Napoleon lived 
just in an age which had a remarkable inclination 
for history, for research, and for publication. Ow- 
ing to this cause, thanks to the memoirs of con- 
temporaries, but few particulars of Napoleon's life 
have been withheld from us, and the number of 
histories which represent him as more or less allied 



to the rest of the world, increase every day. On 
this account the announcement of such a work by 
Scott awakens the most anxious anticipation. 

All those who honor the genius of Scott must 
tremble for him, for such a hook may easily prove 
to be the Moscow of a reputation which he has 
won with weary labor by an array of historical ro- 
mances, which, more by their subject than by their 
poetic power, have moved every heart in Europe. 
This theme is, however, not merely an elegiac lament 
over Scotland's legendary glory, which has been 
little by little banished by foreign manners, rule, 
and modes of thought, but the greatest suffering 
for the loss of those national peculiarities which 
perish in the universality of modern civilization — • 
a grief which now causes the hearts of every nation 
to throb. For national memories lie deeper in 
man's heart than we generally imagine. Let any 
one attempt to bury the ancient forms, and overnight 
the old love blooms anew with its flowers. This 
is not a mere figure of speech, but a fact, for when 
Bullock, a few years ago, dug up in Mexico an old 
heathen stone image, he found, next morning, 
that during the night it had been crowned with 
flowers ; although Spain had destroyed the old 
Mexican faith with fire and sword, and though 
the souls of the natives had been for three centuries 
digged about and ploughed, and sowed with 
Christianity. And such flowers as these bloom in 
Walter Scott's poems. These poems themselves 
awaken the old feeling, and as once in Grenada 
men and women ran with the wail of desperation 
from their houses, when the song of the departure 
of the Moorish king rang in the streets, so that it 
was prohibited, on pain of death, to sing it, so 
hath the tone which rings through Scott's romance 
thrilled with pain a whole world. This tone re- 
echoes in the hearts of our nobles, who see their 
castles and armorial bearings in ruins ; it rings 
again in the hearts of our burghers, who have been 
crowded from the comfortable narrow way of their 
ancestors by wide-spreading, uncongenial modern 
fashion ; in Catholic cathedrals, whence faith has 
fled ; in Rabbinic synagogues, from which even 
the faithful flee. It sounds over the whole world, 
even into the Banian groves of Hindostan, where 
the sighing Brahmin sees before him the destruc- 
tion of his gods, the demolition of their primeval 
cosmogony, and the entire victory of the Briton. 

But his tone — the mightiest which the Scottish 
bard can strike upon his giant harp — accords not 
with the imperial song of Napoleon, the new man 
— the man of modern times — the man in whom 
this new age mirrors itself so gloriously, that we 
thereby are well nigh dazzled, and never think 
meanwhile of the vanished Past, nor of its faded 
splendor. It may well be pre-supposed that Scott, 
according to his predilections, will seize upon the 
stable element already hinted at, the counter-revo- 
lutionary side of the character of Napoleon, while, 
on the contrary, other writers will recognize in 
him the revolutionary principle. It is from this 
last side that Byron would have described him — 
Byron, who forms in every respect an antithesis to 
Scott, and who, instead of lamenting like him the 



HBINRICH HEINE. 



577 



destruction of old forms, even feels himself vexed 
and bounded by those which remain, and would 
fliin annihilate them with revolutionary laughter 
and with gnashing of teeth. In this rage he de- 
stroys the holiest flowers of life with hi^ melodious 
poison, and like a mad harlequin, strikes a dagger 
into his own heart, to mockingly sprinkle with 
the jetting black blood the ladies and gentlemen 
around. 

I truly realize at this instant that I am no wor- 
shipper, or at least no bigoted admirer of Byron. My 
blood is not so splentically black, my bitterness 
comes only from the gall-apples of my ink, and if 
there be poision in me it is only an anti-poison, 
for those snakes which lurk so threateningly amid 
the shelter of old cathedrals and castles. Of all 
great writers Byron is just the one whose writings 
excite in me the least passion, while Scott, on the 
contrary, in his every book, gladdens, tranquillizes, 
and strengthens my heart. Even his imitators 
please tne, as in such instances as Willibald, 
Alexis, Bronikowski, and Cooper, the first of 
whom, in the ironic " Walladmoor," approaches 
nearest his pattern, and has shown in a later work 
such a wealth of form and of spirit, that he is fully 
capable of setting before our souls with a poetic 
originality well worthy of Scott, a series of histori- 
cal novels. 

But no true genius follows paths indicated to 
him, these lie beyond all critical computation, so 
that it may be allowed to pass as a harmless play 
of thought, if I may express my anticipatory judg- 
ment over Walter Scott's History of Napoleon. 
Anticipatory judgment is here the most compre- 
hensive expression. Only one thing can be said 
with certainty, which is that the book will be read 
from its uprising even unto the down-setting 
thereof, and we Germans will translate it. 

We have also translated Segur. Is it not a 
pretty epic poem 1 We Germans also write epic 
poems, but their heroes only exist in our own 
heads. The heroes of the French epos, on the 
contrary, are real heroes, who have performed 
more doughty deeds and suffered far greater woes 
than we in our garret rooms ever dreamed of. 
And yet we have much imagination, and the 
French but little. Perhaps on this account the 
Lord helped them out in another manner, for they 
only need truly relate what has happened to them 
during the last thirty years to have such a litera- 
ture of experience as no nation and no age ever 
yet brought forth. Those memoirs of statesmen, 
soldiers, and noble ladies which appear daily in 
France, form a cycle of legends in which posterity 
will find material enough for thought and song — 
a cycle in whose centre the life of the great Em- 
peror rises like a giant tree. Segur's History of 
the Russian Campaign is a song, a French song 
of the people which belongs to this legend cycle 
and which in iU tone and matter, is, and will re- 
main, like the epic poetry of all ages. A heroic 
poem which from the magic words " freedom and 
equality" has shot up from the soil of France, and 
as in a trium|)hal procession, intoxicated with 
glory and led by the Goddess Fame herself, has 



swept over, terrified and gloiified the world. And 
now at last it dances clattering sword-dances on 
the ice fields of the North, until they break in, 
and the children of fire and of freedom perish by 
cold and by the Slaves. 

Such a description of the destruction of a heroic 
world is the key note and material of the epic 
poems of all races. On the rocks of Ellora and 
other Indian grotto-temples, there remain such 
epic catastrophies, engraved in giant hieroglyphics, 
the key to which must be sought in the Maliaba- 
rata. The North too in words not less rocklike, 
has narrated this twilight of the gods in its Edda, 
the Nibelungen sings the same tragic destruction, 
and has in its conclusion a striking similarity with 
Segur's description of the burning of Moscow. 
The Roland's Song of the battle of Roncesvalles, 
which though its words have perished still exists 
as a legend, and which has recently been raised 
again to life by Immermann, one of the greatest 
poets of the Father Land, is also the same old 
song of woe. Even the song of Troy gives most 
gloriously the old theme, and yet it is not grander 
or more agonizing than that French song of the 
people in which Segur has sung the downfall of 
his hero world. Yes, this is a true epos, the 
heroic youth of France is the beautiful hero who 
early perishes as we have already seen in the 
deaths of Balder, Siegfried, Roland, and Achilles, 
who also perished by ill-fortune and treachery ; and 
those heroes whom we once admired in the Iliad 
we find again in the song of Segur. We see them 
counselling, quarrelling, and fighting, as once of 
old before the Skaisch gate. If the court of the 
King of Naples is somewhat too variedly modern, 
still his courage in battle and his pride are greater 
than those of Pelides ; a Hector in mildness, and 
bravery is before us in " Prince Eugene, the knight 
so noble." Ney battles like an Ajax, Berliner is 
a Nestor without wisdom ; Davoust, Daru, Cau- 
lincourt, and others, possess the souls of Menelaus, 
of Odysseus, of Diomed — only the Emperor alone 
has not his like — in his head is the Olympus of 
poem, and if I compare him in his heroic appari- 
tion to Agamemnon, I do it because a tragic end 
awaited him with his lordly comrades in arms, and 
because his Orestes yet lives. 

There is a tone in Segur's epos like that in 
Scott's poems which moves our hearts. But this 
tone does not revive our love for the long-vanished 
legions of olden time. It is a tone which brings 
to us the present, and a tone which inspires us 
with its spirit. 

But we Germans are genuine Peter Schlemihls ! 
In later times we have seen much and suffered 
much — for example, having soldiers quartered on 
us, and pride from our nobility ; and we have given 
away our best blood, for example, to England, 
which has still a considerable annual sum to pay 
for shot-off arms and legs, to their former owners, 
and we have done so many great things on a 
small scale, that if they were reckoned up together, 
they would result in the grandest deeds imaginable, 
for instance, in the Tyrol, and we have lost much, 
for instance, our " greater shadow," the title of the 



578 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



holy darling Roman empire — and still, with all 
our losses, sacrifices, self-denials, misfortunes, and 
great deeds, our literature has not gained one such 
monument of renown, as rise daily among our 
neighbors, liice immortal trophies. Our Leipzig Fairs 
have profited but little by the battle of Leipzig. A 
native of Gotha, intentis, as I hear, to sing them 
successively in epic form, but as he has not as yet 
determined whether he belongs to the one hundred 
thousand souls of Hildburghausen, or to tlie one 
hundred and fifty thousand of Meiningen, or to 
tlie one hundred and sixty thousand of Altenburg, 
he cannot as yet begin his epos, and must accord- 
ingly begin with, " Sing, immortal souls, Hildburg- 
hausian souls, Meiningian or even Altenburgian 
souls, sing, all the same, sing the deliverance of 
the sinful Germans !" This soul murderer, and 
his fearful ruggedness, allows no proud thought, 
and still less, a proud word to manifest itself, our 
hrightest deeds become ridiculous by a stupid re- 
sult ; and while we gloomily wrap ourselves in the 
purple mantle of German heroic blood, there comes 
a political waggish knave and puts his cap and 
bells on our head. 



NAPOLEON. 

FROM THE SAME. 

When I think of the great Emperor, all in my 
memory again becomes summer-green and golden. 
A long avenue of lindens rises blooming around, 
on the leafy twigs sit singing nightingales, the 
water-fall rustles, flowers are growing from full 
round beds, dreamily nodding their fair heads — I 
stood amidst them once in wondrous intimacy, the 
rouged tulips, proud as beggars, condescendingly 
greeted nie, the nervous sick lilies nodded witli 
woeful tenderness, the tipsy red roses nodded at 
me at first sight from a distance, the night-violets 
sighed — with the myrtle and laurel I was not then 
acquainted, for they did not entice with a shining 
bloom, but the rese'la, with whom I am now on 
such bad terms, was my very particular friend. — I 
am speaking of the court garden of Dusseldoif, 
where I often lay upon the bank, and piously 
listened there when Monsieur Le Grand told of the 
warlike feats of the great Emperor, beating mean- 
while the marches which were drummed during 
the deeds, so that I saw and heard all to the life. 
I saw the passage over the Simplon — the Emperor 
in advance and his brave grenadiers climbing on 
behind him, while the scream of frightened birds 
of prey sounded around, and avalanches thundered 
in the distance — I saw the Emperor with flag in 
hand on the bridge of Lodi — I saw the Emperor 
in his gray cloak at Marengo — I saw the Emperor 
mounted in the battle of the Pyramids — naught 

around save powder, smoke and Mamelukes I 

saw the Emperor in the battle of Austerlitz ha! 

how the bullets whistled over the smooth, icy road ! 
. — I saw, I heard the battle of .Fena — dum, dum, 

dum I saw, I heard the battles of Eyiau, of 

Wagram — no,. I could hardly stand it ! Monsieur 



Le Grand drummed so that I nearly burst my owii 
sheepskin. 

But what were my feelings when I first saw 
with highly blest and with my own eyes him, Ho- 
sannah! the Emperor ! 

It was exactly in the avenue of the Court Gar- 
den at Dusseldorf. As I pressed through the gap 
ing crowd, thinking of the doughty deeds and bat- 
tles which Monsieur Le Grand had drummed to 
me, my heart beat the " general march " — yet at 
the same time I thought of the police regulation, 
that no one should dare under penalty of five dol- 
lars fine, ride through the avenue. And the Em- 
peror with his cortege rode directly down the ave- 
nue. The trembling trees bowed towards him as 
he advanced, the sun-rays quivered, friglitened, yet 
curiously through the green leaves, and in the 
blue heaven above there swam visibly a golden 
star. The Emperor wore his invisible-green uni- 
form and the little world-renowned hat. He rode 
a white palfi'ey which stepped with such calm 
pride, so confidi^ntly, so nobly — had I then been 
Crown Prince of Prussia I would have envied that 
horse. The Emperor sat carelessly, almost lazily, 
holding with one hand his rein, and with the other 

good naturedly patting the neck of the horse It 

was a sunny marble hand, a mighty hand — one 
of the pair which bound fast the many-headed 
monster of anarchy, and reduced to order the war 
of races — and it good naturedly patted the neck 
of the horse. Even the face had that hue which 
we find in the marble Greek and Roman busts, 
the traits were as nobly proportioned as in the an- 
tiques, and on that countenance was plainly writ- 
ten, " Thou shall have no Gods before me !" 
A smile, which warmed and tranquillized every 
heart, flitted over the lips — and yet all knew that 
those lips needed but to whistle — et la Prufme 
n' existait plus — those lips needed but to whistle — - 
and the entire clergy would have stopped their 
ringing and singing — those lips needed but to whis- 
tle — and the entire holy Roman realm would have 
danced. It was an eye, clear as Heaven, it could 
read the hearts of men, it saw at a glance all 
things at once, and as they were in this world, 
while we ordinary mortals see them only one by 
one and by their shaded hues. The brow was 
not so clear, the phantoms of future battles were 
nestling there, and there was a quiver which 
swept over the brow, and those were the creative 
thoughts, the great seven-mile-boots thoughts, 
wherewith the spirit of the Emperor strode in- 
visibly over the world — and I believe that every 
one of those thoughts would have given to a Ger- 
man author full material wherewith to write, all 
the days of his lite. 

The Emperor is dead. On a waste island in 
the Indian Sea lies his lonely grave, and he for 
whom the world was too narrow, lies silently under 
a little hillock, where five weeping willows hang 
their green heads, and a gentle little brook, mur- 
muring sorrowfully, ripples by. There is no in- 
scription on his tomb ; but Clio, with unerring pen, 
has written thereon invisible words, which will re- 
sound, like spirit-tones, through thousairels of years. 



HEIXRICH HEIJfE. 



579 



Britannia ! the sea is thine. But the sea hath 
not water enough to wash away the shame with 
which the death of that Mighty One hath covered 
thee. Not tijy windy Sir Hudson — no, thou thy- 
self wert the Sicilian bravo with whom perjured 
Ivings bargained, that they might revenge on the 
man of the people that which the people had once 

inflicted on one of themselves And he was thy 

guest, and had seated himself hy thy hearth. 

Until the latest times the boys of France will 
sing and tell of the terrible hospitality of the Bel- 
lerophon, and when those songs of mockery and 
tears resound across the strait, there will be a blush 
on the cheeks of every honorable Briton. But a 
day will come when this song will ring thither, 
and there will be no Britannia in existence — when 
the people of Pride will be humbled to the earth, 
when Westminster's monuments will be broken, 
and when the royal dust which they enclosed will 

be forgotten And St. Helena is the Holy Grave, 

whither the races of the East and of the West will 
make their pilgrimage in ships, with pennons of 
many a hue, and their hearts will grow strong 
with great memories of the deeds of the worldly 
Saviour, who suffered and died under Sir Hudson 
Lowe, as it is written in the evangelists, Las Casas, 
O'Meara and Autommarchi. 

Strange ! A terrible destiny has already over- 
taken the three greatest enemies of the Emperor. 
Londonderry has cut his throat, Louis XVHI has 
rotted away on his throne, and Professor Saalfeld 
is still, as before, Professor in Gottingen. 



THE THREE RIVERS. 

FROM THE SAME. 

The Hartz Journey is, and remains, a fragment, 
and the variegated th'-eads which were so neatly 
wound through it, with the intention to bind it 
into a harmonious whole, have been suddenly 
snapped asunder as if by the shears of the im])lac- 
alile Destinies. It may be that I will one day 
weave them into new songs, and that that which 
is now stingily withheld, will then be spoken in 
full. But when or what we have spoken will all 
come to one and the same thing at last, provided 
that we do but speak. The single works may 
ever remain fragments, if they only form a whole 
by their union. 

By such a connection the defective may here 
and there be supplied, the rough be polished down, 
and that which is altogether too harsh be modified 
and softened. This is perhaps especially applica- 
ble to the first pages of the Hartz journey, and 
they would in all probability have caused a far 
less unfavorable impression could the reader in 
some other place have learned that the ill- 
humor which I entertain for Gottingen in general, 
although greater than I have here expressed it, is 
still far from being equal to the respect which I 
entertain for certain individuals there. And why 
should I conceal the fact that I here allude partic- 
ularly to that estimable man, who in earlier years 



received me so kindly, in.spiring me even then 
with a deep love for the study of History ; who 
strengthened my zeal for it later in life and thus 
led my soul to calmer paths ; who indicated to my 
peculiar disposition its peculiar paths, and who 
finally gave me those historical consolations, 
without which I should never have been able to 
support the painful events of the present day. I 
speak of George Sartorius, the great investigator 
of history and of humanity, whose eye is a bright 
star in our dark times, and whose hospitable heart 
is ever open to all the griefs and joys of others — 
for the needs of the beggar or the king, and for 
the last sighs of nations perishing with their 
gods. 

I cannot here refrain from remarking that the 
Upper Hartz — that portion of which I described 
as far as the beginning of the llscthal, did not by 
any means, make so favorable an impression on 
nie as the romantic and picturesque Lower Hartz, 
and in its wild, dark fir-tree beauty contrasts 
strangely with the other, just as the three valleys 
formed by the Use, the Bode and the Selke, beau- 
tifully contrast with each otiier, when we are able 
to individualize the character of each. They are 
three beautiful women of whom it is impossible to 
determine which is the fairest. 

I have already spoken and sung of the fair, sweet 
Use, and how sweetly and kindly she received me. 
The darker beauty — the Boch — was not so gra- 
cious in her reception, and as I first beheld her in 
the smithy-dark, Turnip-land, she appeared to me 
to be altogether ill-natured and hid herself beneath 
a silver-grey rain-veil: but with impatient love she 
suddenly threw it off, as I ascended the summit 
of the Rosstrappe, her countenance gleamed upon 
mc with the sunniest splendour, from every feature 
beamed the tenderness of a giantess, and from the 
agitated, rocky bosom, there was a sound as of 
sighs of deep longing and melting tones of woe. 
Less tender, but far merrier, did I find the pretty 
Selke, an amiable lady whose noble simplicity and 
calm repose held at a distance all sentimental fa- 
miliarity ; but who by a half-concealed smile be- 
trayed her mocking mood. It was perhaps to this 
secret, merry spirit that I might have attributed 
the many " little miseries" which beset me in the 
Selkethal — as for instance, when I sough to spring 
over the rivulet, I plunged in exactly up to my 
middle ; how when I continued my wet campaign 
with slippers, one of them was soon " not at hand," 
or rather " not at foot," for I lost it : — how a puff 
of Vi\nA bore away my cap, — how thorns scratched 
me, &c., &c. Yet do I forgive the fair lady all 
this, for she is fair. And even now she stands 
before the gates of Imagination, in all her silent 
loveliness and seems to say. " Though I laugh I 
mean no harm, and I pray you, sing of me !" 
The magnificent Bode also sweeps into my mem- 
ory and her dark eye says, " Thou art like me in 
pride and in pain, and I will that thou lovest me." 
Also the fair Use comes merrily springing, delicate 
and fascinating in mien, form, and motion, in all 
thnigs like the dear being who blesses my dreains, 
and like her she gazes on me with unconquerable 



580 



HEINRICH HEINE. 



indifference, and is withal so deeply, so eternally, 
so manifestly true. Well, I am Paris, and I award 
the appie to the fair Use. 

It is the first of May, and spring is pouring like 
a sea of life over the earth, a foam of white blossoms 
covers the trees, the glass in the town windows 
flashes merrily, swallows are again building on the 
roofs, people saunter along the street, wondering 
that the air afTects them so much, and that they 
feel so cheerful ; the oddly dressed Vierlander girls 
are selling boquets of violets, foundling children, 
with their blue jackets and dear little illegitimate 
faces, run along the Jungfernstieg, as happily as 
if they had all found their fathers; the beggar on 
the bridge looks as jolly as though he had won the 
first lottery-prize, and even on the grimy and as 
yet unhung pedlar, who scours about with his ras- 
cally " manufactory goods "countenance, the sun 
shines with his best-natured rays, — I will take a 
walk beyond the town-gate. 

It is the first of May, and I think of thee, thou 
fair Use — or shall I call thee by the name which I 
better love, of Agnes 1 — I think of thee and would 
fiiin see once more how thouleapest in light adown 
thy hill. But best of all were it, could I stand in 
the valley below, and hold thee in my arms. It 
is a lovely day ! Green — the colour of hope — is 
everywhere around me. Everywhere, flowers — 
those dear wonders — are blooming, and my heart 
will bloom again also. This heart is also a flower 
of etiange and wondrous sort. It is no modest 
violet, no smiling rose, no pure lily, or similar 
flower, which with good gentle loveliness makes 
glad a maiden's soul, and may be fitly placed be- 
fore her pretty breast, and which withers to-day, 
and to-morrow blooms again. No, this heart 
rather resembles that strange, heavy flower, from 
the woods of Brazil, which, according to the legend, 
blooms but once in a century. I remember well 
that I once, when a boy, saw such a flower. 
During the night we heard an explosion, as of a 
pistol, and the next morning a neighbor's children 
told me that it was their" aloe," which had bloomed 
with the shot. They led me to their garden. 



where I saw to my astonishment that the low, 
hard plant, with ridiculously broad, sharp-pointed 
leaves, which were capable of inflicting wounds, 
had shot high in the air and bore aloft beautiful 
flowers, like a golden crown. We children could 
not see so high, and the old grinning Christian, 
who liked us all so well, built a wooden stair 
around the flower, upon which we scrambled like 
cats, and gazed curiously into the open calyx, from 
which yellow threads, like rays of light, and 
strange foreign odors, pressed forth in unheard-of 
splendcjr. 

Yes, Agnes, this flower blooms not often, not 
without effort ; and according to my recollection it 
has as yet opened but once, and that must have 
been long ago — certainly at least a century since. 
And I believe that, gloriously as it then unfolded 
its blossoms, it must now miserably pine for want 
of sunshine and warmth, if it is not indeed shat- 
tered by some mighty wintry storm. But now it 
moves, and swells, and bursts in my bosom — dost 
thou hear the explosion 1 Maiden, be not terrified ! 
I have not shot myself, but my love has burst its 
bud and shoots upwards in gleaming songs, in 
eternal dithyrambs, in the most joyful fullness of 
poesy! 

But if this high love has grown too high, then, 
young lady, take it comfortably, climb the wooden 
steps, and look from them down into my blooming 
heart. 

It is as yet early; the sun has hardly left half his 
road behind him, and my heart already breathes 
forth so powerfully its perfumed vapor that it be- 
wilders my brain, and I no longer know where 
irony ceases and heaven begins, or that I people 
the air with my sighs, and that I myself would 
fain dissolve into sweet atoms in the uncreated Di- 
vinity ;- — how will it be when night comes on, and 
the stars shine out in heaven, " the unlucky stars, 
who could tell thee " 

It is the first of May, the lowest errand-boy has 
to-day a right to be sentimental, and would you 
deny the privilege to a poet % 



THE END 



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